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diff --git a/17977.txt b/17977.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1330606 --- /dev/null +++ b/17977.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3312 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Charles Lamb, by Walter Jerrold + +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: Charles Lamb + +Author: Walter Jerrold + +Release Date: March 13, 2006 [EBook #17977] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLES LAMB *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + [Illustration: CHARLES LAMB AT THE AGE OF FIFTY-ONE. + BY HENRY MEYER. +From the original painting at the India Office, reproduced by permission + of the Secretary of State for India in Council.] + + + Bell's Miniature Series of Great Writers + + + CHARLES LAMB + + + BY + + WALTER JERROLD + + + + + LONDON + GEORGE BELL & SONS + 1905 + + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + + +THE STORY OF HIS LIFE + +HIS PRINCIPAL WRITINGS: + + Poetry + The Drama + Stories + Verses + Criticism + Essays + Letters + +THE ESSAYS OF ELIA + +HIS STYLE + +CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS + +POSTHUMOUS WORKS AND COLLECTED EDITION + +BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + +CHARLES LAMB AT THE AGE OF 51. + _By Henry Meyer_ _Frontispiece_ + +CHRIST'S HOSPITAL + +THE DINING HALL, CHRIST'S HOSPITAL + +SKETCH OF CHARLES LAMB AT THE AGE OF 44 + _By G. F. Joseph, A.R.A._ + +HOLOGRAPH LETTER TO JOHN CLARE THE + PEASANT POET, 31 August, 1822 + + + + +CHARLES LAMB + +THE STORY OF HIS LIFE + + +Charles Lamb's biography should be read at length in his essays and +his letters--from them we get to know not only the facts of his life +but almost insensibly we get a knowledge of the man himself such as +cannot be conveyed in any brief summary. He is as a friend, a loved +friend, whom it seems almost sacrilegious to summarize in the compact +sentences of a biographical dictionary, of whom it would be a wrong to +write if the writing were to be used instead of, rather than as an +introduction to, a literary self-portrait, more striking it may be +believed than any of the canvases in the Uffizi Gallery. When he was +six-and-twenty Charles Lamb wrote thus in reply to an invitation from +Wordsworth to visit him in Cumberland: + + I have passed all my days in London ... the lighted shops of + the Strand and Fleet Street; the innumerable trades, + tradesmen and customers, coaches, waggons, playhouses; all + the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden; the + very women of the town; the watchmen, drunken scenes, + rattles; life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the + night; the impossibility of being dull in Fleet Street; the + crowds, the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses + and pavements, the print shops, the old bookstalls, parsons + cheapening books, coffee houses, steams of soups from + kitchens, the pantomimes--London itself a pantomime and a + masquerade--all these things work themselves into my mind, + and feed me, without a power of satiating me. The wonder of + these sights impels me into night walks about her crowded + streets, and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from + fulness of joy at so much life. All these emotions must be + strange to you; so are your rural emotions to me. But + consider, what must I have been doing all my life, not to + have lent great portions of my heart with usury to such + scenes? + +In whimsical exaggeration Lamb sometimes wrote of his aversion from +country sights and sounds, adopting that method partly perhaps for the +purpose of rallying his correspondents, and partly for the purpose of +accentuating his own "unrural notions." He was a Londoner of +Londoners. In London he was born and educated, and in London--with a +few of his later years in what is now but an outer suburb--he passed +the fifty-nine years of his life. Beyond some childish holidays in +pleasant Hertfordshire, a few brief trips into the country--to +Coleridge at Stowey and at Keswick, to Oxford and Cambridge, and one +short journey to Paris--he had no personal contact with the outer +world. He delighted in his devotion to London, and stands pre-eminent +as the Londoner in literature. + +Charles Lamb was the son of John Lamb, who had left his native +Lincolnshire--probably from the neighbourhood of Stamford--as a child, +and who finally found himself attached to one Samuel Salt, a Bencher +of the Inner Temple, in the capacity of "his clerk, his good servant, +his dresser, his friend, his 'flapper,' his guide, stop-watch, +auditor, treasurer." Salt's chambers were at 2, Crown Office Row, and +there John Lamb lived with a family consisting of himself, his wife, +an unmarried sister, Sarah Lamb ("Aunt Hetty"), a son John, aged +twelve, and a daughter Mary, aged eleven, when on 10th February, 1775, +there was born to him another son to whom was given the now familiar +name. Seven children had been born from 1762 to 1775, but of them all +these three alone survived. The father and his employer are sketched, +unforgetably, in Lamb's essay on "The Old Benchers of the Inner +Temple," Salt, under his own name, and Lamb under that of Lovel: "I +knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible and losing honesty. A +good fellow withal and 'would strike.' In the cause of the oppressed +he never considered inequalities, or calculated the number of his +opponents." The whole passage must be read in the essay itself. From +his father Charles Lamb inherited at once his literary leanings and +his humour, both heightened to an incalculable degree. We have Elia's +word for it that John Lamb the elder "was the liveliest little fellow +breathing" with a face as gay as Garrick's, and we know further that +he published a small volume of simple verse. From the father, too, +the family derived a heavier inheritance, which was to cast its shadow +over their lives from the day of Charles's early manhood to the day +half a century later, when his sister Mary, the last survivor of the +family circle, was laid to rest. + +Lamb's mother, Elizabeth Field, is--for obvious reasons--the only +member of the immediate family circle whom we do not meet in his +writings. His maternal grandmother--the grandame who is to be met in +his verses and in some of his essays--was for over half a century +housekeeper at Blakesware in Hertfordshire, and with her, as a small +boy, Charles spent pleasant holidays. + +Little Charles Lamb was sent for a time to "a humble day-school, at +which reading and writing were taught to us boys in the morning, and +the same slender erudition was communicated to the girls, our sisters, +etc., in the evening." In a letter to Coleridge (5th July, 1796) we +have a hint that Lamb may have had yet earlier teaching in an infant +school in the Temple for he writes: "Mr. Chambers lived in the Temple; +Mrs. Reynolds, his daughter, was my schoolmistress"; though it may be +that the lady referred to was employed in Mr. Bird's school. This +school, kept by William Bird "in the passage leading from Fetter Lane +into Bartlett's Buildings," was the one to which Mary Lamb appears to +have owed her regular training; but Samuel Salt had a goodly +collection of old books in his chambers, and among these the brother +and sister browsed most profitably, to use his own expressive word, +acquiring an early liking for good literature and learning to take +their best recreation in things of the mind. But if from the "school +room looking into a discoloured dingy garden" Mary Lamb was presumed +to be able to acquire a sufficiency of knowledge, it was seen that her +younger brother needed something more than Mr. Bird could give to fit +him for a life in which he would have to take an early place as +bread-winner. John Lamb's friendly employer--whom lovers of Lamb can +never recall but to honour--secured a nomination for the boy to +Christ's Hospital, and thither in his eighth year the little fellow +was transferred from the home in the Temple. + +Should a zealous compiler seek to arrange an autobiography of Charles +Lamb from his writings he would not have a difficult task, and he +would find two delightful essays devoted to the famous school--so long +the distinguishing feature of Newgate Street--where "blue-coat boys" +passed the most importantly formative period of their lives. +Handicapped somewhat by a stuttering speech Charles Lamb did not +perhaps join in all the boyish sports of his fellows, though there are +many testimonies to the regard in which he was held by his +school-mates, and the fact is stressed that though the only one of his +surname at Christ's Hospital, he was never "Lamb" but always "Charles +Lamb," as though there were something of an endearment in the constant +use of his Christian name. "The Christ's Hospital or Blue-coat boy, +has a distinctive character of his own, as far removed from the abject +qualities of a common charity-boy as it is from the disgusting +forwardness of a lad brought up at some other of the public schools." +In the essay from which this is quoted, Charles Lamb, looking back a +quarter of a century after leaving the old foundation, summed up the +characteristics of his school as reflected in the character of its +boys of whom he and the close friend he made there are the two whose +names are the most commonly on the lips of men. It is, indeed, worthy +of remark that from amid the countless boys educated at Christ's +Hospital since it was founded three centuries and a half ago by "the +flower of the Tudor name ... boy patron of boys," the names that stand +out most prominently are those of the two who were at the school +together--Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was at that old +"Hospital," recently, alas, demolished, that these men, so different +in genius, so similar in many of their intellectual tastes, began a +memorable friendship that was only to be broken by death more than +half a century later. + +A schoolfellow's description of him may help us to visualize the +elusive figure of which we have no early portraits, and the later +portraits of which are understood to be wanting in one regard or +another. His countenance, says this early observer, was mild; his +complexion clear brown, with an expression that might lead you to +think that he was of Jewish descent. His eyes were not each of the +same colour: one was hazel, the other had specks of grey in the iris, +mingled as we see red spots in the bloodstone. His step was +plantigrade, which made his walk slow and peculiar, adding to the +staid appearance of his figure. + +[Illustration: CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.] + +For seven years--from October 1782 until November 1789--Charles Lamb +remained at Christ's Hospital, and then, close upon fifteen years of +age, returned to his parents in the Temple. His brother John had +obtained an appointment in the South Sea House, probably through the +kindly offices of Samuel Salt, who was a Deputy-Governor, and at some +unascertained date between 1789 and 1792, Charles found employment in +the same office; not, however, for long, for in April of 1792 he was +appointed clerk in the accountant's office of the East India House, at +a commencing salary of L70 per annum. This same year which thus saw +the founding of Charles Lamb's humble fortunes, saw also the beginning +of the break-up of his home, for the immortal old Bencher, Samuel +Salt, died, and the Lamb family was left without its mainstay. John +Lamb the elder was past work, already, we may believe, passing into +senility; and John Lamb the younger, who appears to have been +prospering in the South Sea House, had presumably set up his bachelor +home elsewhere. Salt bequeathed to his clerk and factotum a pension of +L10 a year, and various legacies amounting to about L700. The old +home in the Temple had to be given up, but whither the family first +removed is not known. Four years later they were living in Little +Queen Street--now a portion of Kingsway--off Holborn, in a house on +the west side, the site of which is now covered by a church. + +At the end of 1794--though his first known verses are dated five years +earlier--Charles Lamb had, so far as we are aware, the pleasure of +seeing himself for the first time "in print," and curiously enough +here at the earliest beginning of his life as author he was intimately +associated with Coleridge; indeed, his "effusion," a sonnet addressed +to Mrs. Siddons, appeared in "The Morning Chronicle" on 29th December, +with the signature "S. T. C." Coleridge, we learn from Lamb's letters, +altered the sonnet and was welcome to do so, and the poem properly +appears in both of their collected works; the recension is certainly +not an improvement on the original. In the spring of 1796 a small +volume of Coleridge's poems was published, four sonnets by Lamb being +included in it; and in May, 1796, was written the earliest of the rich +collection of Lamb's letters which have come down to us. In this +letter we have the first mention of the shadow which overhung the Lamb +family. + + My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks + that finished last year and began this, your very humble + servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse at Hoxton. I am + got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. But mad I + was; and many a vagary my imagination played with me, + enough to make a volume, if all were told.... Coleridge, it + may convince you of my regard for you when I tell you my + head ran on you in my madness as much almost as on another + person, who I am inclined to think was the more immediate + cause of my temporary frenzy. + +It is assumed that the closing reference here is to Lamb's romantic +love for A---- W----; the "Anna" of some of his sonnets written about +this time, the "Alice W----" of the later "Dream Children," and other +of the essays, and that it was to the unhappy course of a deep love +that Charles Lamb owed his brief period of mental aberration. This +year, 1796, which was to close in tragic gloom, was indeed marked +almost throughout by unhappiness, lightened only by the close and +friendly correspondence with Coleridge. From these letters we learn +that besides his own mental trouble, his sister had been very ill, his +brother was laid up and demanded constant attention, having a leg so +bad that for a time the necessity of amputation appeared to be +probable.[1] Through it all Charles Lamb was conscious of being "sore +galled with disappointed hope," and felt something of enforced +loneliness, consequent upon his being, as he described himself, "slow +of speech and reserved of manners"; he went nowhere, as he put it, +had no acquaintance, and but one friend--Coleridge. It is difficult, +in reading much in these letters, to realize that the writer was but +just come of age in the previous February. The first twenty or so of +the letters of Lamb which have come down to us are addressed to +Coleridge (1796-1798). Between the seventh of the series (5th July, +1796) and the eighth (27th September, 1796) there is a gap of time at +the close of which happened the tragedy that coloured the whole of +Charles Lamb's subsequent life and caused him to give himself up to a +life of devotion to which it would not be easy to find a parallel. + +[Footnote 1: It is curious that a quarter of a century later, when +writing of his brother in "Dream Children," Lamb speaks of his being +lame-footed, and of having his limb actually taken off.] + +The story is best told in the poignant simplicity of Lamb's first +letter to Coleridge after the calamity: + + MY DEAREST FRIEND, + + White, or some of my friends, or the public papers, by this + time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that + have fallen on our family. I will only give you the + outlines: My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of + insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at + hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. + She is at present in a madhouse, from whence I hear she must + be moved to an hospital. God has preserved to me my senses, + I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment, I believe, + very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am + left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris of the + Blue-Coat School, has been very kind to us, and we have no + other friends; but, thank God, I am very calm and composed, + and able to do the best that remains to do. Write as + religious a letter as possible, but no mention of what is + gone and done with. With me "the former things are passed + away," and I have something more to do than to feel. + + God Almighty have us all in His keeping! + + C. LAMB. + + Mention nothing of poetry, I have destroyed every vestige of + past vanities of that kind. Do as you please, but if you + publish, publish mine (I give free leave) without name or + initial, and never send me a book, I charge you. + + Your own judgment will convince you not to take any notice + of this yet to your dear wife. You look after your family; I + have my reason and strength left to take care of mine, I + charge you, don't think of coming to see me. Write. I will + not see you if you come. God Almighty love you and all of + us! + + C. LAMB. + +At the inquest the only possible verdict was returned, that of +homicide during temporary insanity, against the young woman who, in +her frenzy, had killed her own mother and destroyed a home which she +had been working hard, as a mantua maker, to help support. The awful +shock had, perhaps, a steadying effect on Charles Lamb. Here he was at +the age of one-and-twenty suddenly placed in a position that might +have tried a strong-minded man in his prime; his brother, a dozen +years his senior, so far as we are aware mixed himself as little as +might be with the family tragedy; poor Mary had to be placed in an +asylum and supported there, and a pledge taken for her future +safe-guarding, while in the home a physically feeble old aunt and a +mentally feeble old father had to be looked after and companioned. +Humbly and unhesitatingly he who was but little more than a youth in +years took up a task which it is painful even to contemplate; the +simple spirit in which he did so may be realized from a noble letter +which he sent to his friend at the time. The shattered family removed +from Little Queen Street to 45, Chapel Street, Pentonville, and there +in the following year Aunt Hetty died. In the spring of 1799 old John +Lamb also passed away, and Mary returned to share her brother's home, +to be tended always with loving solicitude, though ever and again she +had to be removed during recurring attacks of her mental malady. In +this brief summary of the story of Charles Lamb's life it is not +necessary to keep referring to this fact, though it should be borne in +mind that from time to time throughout their lives, Mary, affected now +by solitariness and now by the over-excitement of seeing many friends, +had to be placed under restraint for periods varying from a few weeks +to several months. In this spring of 1799, too, with Mary's return to +share her brother's life, began a new trouble. They were, as Lamb put +it, "in a manner marked," and had frequently to change their lodgings +until they were once more domiciled in the sanctuary of the Temple, +where they had been born and where they had passed their childhood and +youth. + +[Illustration: CHRIST'S HOSPITAL: THE DINING HALL.] + +In the first feeling of his horror after his mother's death, and with +a sense of all the responsibility that had fallen upon his shoulders +Lamb had disclaimed any further interest in literature, had asked +Coleridge not to mention it, not to include his name in a projected +volume. Yet he was to find in reading and in writing--and in the +friendship of those who cared for reading and writing--at once a +solace and a joy in his own life and a passport to the affections of +generations of readers. In 1797 there was published a new edition of +Coleridge's Poems, "to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and +Charles Lloyd." In the summer of the same year he spent a week at +Nether Stowey with Coleridge,[2] and in the autumn he and Lloyd passed +a fortnight with Southey in Hampshire. He was consolidating the +friendships which were to bind him ever closer to letters. With +Coleridge, as we have seen, he was on terms of intimacy, and when that +poet went abroad for a while Southey became Lamb's most intimate +correspondent. The keenly sensitive young man later resented being +dubbed "gentle-hearted," and an apparent assumption of lofty +superiority on the part of his friend, stung him to a memorable +retort. We may take the story from one of Lamb's own letters to +Southey: + + Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the eternal regret of his native + Devonshire, emigrates to Westphalia: "poor Lamb" (these were + his last words), if he wants any knowledge, he may apply to + me. In ordinary cases I thank him. I have an "Encyclopaedia" + at hand; but on such an occasion as going over to a German + University, I could not refrain from sending him the + following proposition to be by him defended or oppugned (or + both) at Leipsic or Gottingen. + +[Footnote 2: Coleridge, disabled by some slight accident, was unable +to accompany his friends on their walks during this visit of the +Lambs, and once when they had left him he wrote the beautiful poem, +"This Lime Tree Bower My Prison," which he "addressed to Charles Lamb, +of the India House, London." In it that friend was referred to in this +passage: + + Yes! they wander on + In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad, + My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined + And hungered after Nature, many a year, + In the great City pent, winning thy way + With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain + And strange calamity! +] + +The Theses, as given in the letter to Coleridge, are as follows: + + Theses Quaedam Theologicae. + + First, Whether God loves a lying angel better than a true + man? + + Second, Whether the Archangel Uriel could affirm an untruth? + and if he could, whether he would? + + Third, Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, or not rather + to be reckoned among those qualities which the school men + term _virtutes minus splendidae_? + + Fourth, Whether the higher order of Seraphim illuminati ever + sneer? + + Fifth, Whether pure intelligences can love? + + Sixth, Whether the Seraphim ardentes do not manifest their + virtues by the way of vision and theory; and whether + practice be not a sub-celestial and merely human virtue? + + Seventh, Whether the vision beatific be anything more or + less than a perpetual re-presentment to each individual angel + of his own present attainments and future capabilities, + somehow in the manner of mortal looking-glasses, reflecting + a perpetual complacency and self-satisfaction? + + Eighth, and last. Whether an immortal and amenable soul may + not come to be condemned at last, and the man never suspect + it before hand? + +The poet did not reply, and the misunderstanding between the two was +happily not long continued. I have sometimes doubted whether Coleridge +ever knew Lamb so well as Lamb knew Coleridge, though of his affection +for the brother and sister there can be no doubt; of them he wrote at +the end of his life: + + Dear to my heart, yea as it were my heart. + +In his "Sidelights on Charles Lamb," too, Mr. Bertram Dobell rescued a +remarkably interesting testimony "minuted down from the lips of +Coleridge," which shows that the poet came to know Lamb better than +when he sent his provocative message: + + Charles Lamb has more totality and individuality of + character than any other man I know, or have ever known in + all my life. In most men we distinguish between the + different powers of their intellect as one being predominant + over the other. The genius of Wordsworth is greater than his + talent, though considerable. The talent of Southey is + greater than his genius, though respectable; and so on. But + in Charles Lamb it is altogether one; his genius is talent, + and his talent is genius, and his heart is as whole and one + as his head. The wild words that come from him sometimes on + religious subjects would shock you from the mouth of any + other man, but from him they seem mere flashes of fireworks. + If an argument seem to his reason not fully true, he bursts + out in that odd desecrating way; yet his will, the inward + man, is, I well know, profoundly religious. Watch him, when + alone, and you will find him with either a Bible or an old + divine, or an old English poet; in such is his pleasure. + +In 1798 was published "A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Poor Blind +Margaret," a story of which Lamb wrote in the following year: +"Rosamund sells well in London, malgre the non-reviewal of it," and in +1798 also, Lloyd and Lamb published a joint volume of "Blank Verse." + +It was in the spring of 1801--a pleasant beginning of the new century +for them--that the Lambs, after having had all too frequently to +change their lodgings owing to the "rarity of Christian charity," +which objected to housing a quiet couple because of their affliction, +at length found pleasant residence in 16, Mitre Court Buildings. +Writing to his friend, Thomas Manning--one of the correspondents with +whom he was ever in the happiest vein--Lamb expatiated upon the moving +very much in the style of his later essays: + + I am going to change my lodgings, having received a hint + that it would be agreeable, at our Lady's next feast. I + have partly fixed upon most delectable rooms, which look out + (when you stand a tip-toe) over the Thames and Surrey Hills, + at the upper end of King's Bench walks in the Temple. There + I shall have all the privacy of a house without the + encumbrance, and shall be able to lock my friends out as + often as I desire to hold free converse with my immortal + mind; for my present lodgings resemble a minister's levee, I + have so increased my acquaintance (as they call 'em), since + I have resided in town. Like the country mouse, that had + tasted a little of urban manners, I long to be nibbling my + own cheese by my dear self without mouse-traps and + time-traps. By my new plan, I shall be as airy, up four pair + of stairs, as in the country; and in a garden, in the midst + of enchanting, more than Mahometan paradise, London, whose + dirtiest, drab-frequented alley, and her lowest-bowing + tradesman, I would not exchange for Skiddaw, Helvellyn + James, Walter, and the parson into the bargain. O! her lamps + of a night! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, toy-shops, + mercers, hardwaremen, pastry-cooks! St. Paul's churchyard! + the Strand! Exeter Change! Charing Cross, with the man + _upon_ a black horse! These are thy gods, O London! Ain't + you mightily moped on the banks of the Cam? Had you not + better come and set up here? You can't think what a + difference. All the streets and pavements are pure gold, I + warrant you. At least I know an alchemy that turns her mud + into that metal,--a mind that loves to be at home in crowds. + +Here we have the voice of the best of London-lovers, and here we have +also a hint of the way in which he was finding himself too much +"accompanied"--to use a phrase from one of his unpublished letters. He +frequently chafed against the number of visitors who ate up his day, +and at times had even to resent the way in which an intimate friend +would be over-zealous in entertaining him, when for his own part he +would rather have been alone. One special evening in each week was set +apart for cards and conversation, and those occasions are perhaps +among the best remembered features of early nineteenth-century +literary life. Representative evenings will be found described in +various works.[3] The company was not limited to literary folk, though +many notable men of letters were to be met there, along with humbler +friends, for the Lambs were catholic in their friendships, and had +nothing of the exclusiveness of more pretentious salons. "We play at +whist, eat cold meat and hot potatoes, and any gentleman that chooses +smokes." At these gatherings Mary Lamb moved about observantly looking +after her diverse guests, while Lamb himself, it has been said, might +be depended upon for at once the wisest and the wittiest utterance of +the evening. Here it was that he made his whimsical reproach to a +player with dirty hands: "I say, Martin, if dirt were trumps what a +hand you'd have." And it was on some such occasion, too, that he +retorted on Wordsworth, who had said that the writing of "Hamlet" was +not so very wonderful: "Here's Wordsworth says he could have written +'Hamlet'--_if he had the mind_." + +[Footnote 3: In Talfourd's "Memorials" of Lamb; in Hazlitt's essay "Of +Persons One would wish to have Seen."] + +In the opening years of the century Lamb contributed epigrams and +paragraphs to "The Albion," "The Morning Chronicle," and "The Morning +Post" (thanks to Coleridge's introduction). His latest contribution to +the first-named journal helped to bring about its sudden demise. One +of the latest which was pointed at Sir James Mackintosh (author of +"Vindicae Gallicae") may serve as a specimen of the personal epigram in +which Lamb considered himself happiest: + + 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. + +Lamb's position after ten years at the India House had no doubt +considerably improved, but he was glad of the opportunity of making an +additional couple of guineas a week as epigrammatist to "The Morning +Post." He did not, however, continue long at the work; it was too +severe a tax to be ever wondering how this, that, or the other person +or event could be hit off in a few lines of copy, and the irksomeness +he felt, combined with the editorial exactions, caused him to give it +up. In 1802 came a memorable visit by the Lambs to Coleridge at +Keswick, a visit which resulted in Charles Lamb's thinking kindlier of +mountains than he had hitherto done, without in any way lessening his +strong local attachment to the metropolis. Of the day in which he +climbed Skiddaw he said: "It was a day that will stand out, like a +mountain, I am sure, in my life"; a happy simile which would not have +occurred to one who stood, so to speak, on a familiar footing with +mountains. + +The life in the Temple was roughly divided into two portions: the +first, at Mitre Court Buildings, extended from the spring of 1801 to +that of 1809; then there seems to have been a brief stay of a few +weeks at 34, Southampton Buildings, Holborn, and at the end of the +following May or beginning of June, the Lambs moved into 4, Inner +Temple Lane, which "looks out upon a gloomy churchyard-like court, +called Hare Court, with thin trees and a pump in it.... I was born +near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six +years old." Here Lamb and his sister lived until 1817, continuing in +their pleasant weekly evenings to afford a memorable centre for the +meeting of memorable men. At one of these meetings when it was being +debated, whom it was the different members of the company would like +best to meet from among the notable men of letters of the past, Lamb +promptly fixed upon Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville. How many of +us in such a debate to-day would as promptly name Charles Lamb! + +During the first half of these years in the Temple, Charles Lamb had +written much that now endears him to us; but little, it is to be +feared, that made the great body of contemporary readers aware of his +existence. In 1806 he essayed dramatic authorship, had had his farce, +"Mr. H.," performed at Drury Lane, had been present on the occasion of +its solitary appearance when it was incontinently damned, and had +himself taken part in the damnatory hissing. At the beginning of 1807 +was published the "Tales from Shakspeare," for which he and his sister +were jointly responsible, and for which they received a sum of sixty +guineas; in 1808 came another book for children in "The Adventures of +Ulysses," and in the same year the "Specimens of English Dramatic +Poets Contemporary with Shakspeare." + +During the second half of the stay in the Temple--the years at 4, +Inner Temple Lane, which have been regarded as the happiest portion of +his life--Lamb made but slight advance in literary reputation, but he +was already firmly established in the favour of the few who had been +privileged to know him, to hear his stammered wit, his spoken wisdom. +Though this period from 1809 to 1817 is not marked by the production +of notable books, it was during this time that he contributed to Leigh +Hunt's "Reflector," wrote his "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" for +the "Gentleman's Magazine," and his "Confessions of a Drunkard" for a +friend's publication. Here were most Elia-like precursors of the +famous "Essays." + +In the autumn of 1817 the Lambs removed from the Temple in which they +had passed the greater part of their lives, taking rooms over a +brazier's shop at 20, Russell Street, Covent Garden, at the corner of +Bow Street, where, as Mary Lamb put it, they had "Drury Lane Theatre +in sight of our front, and Covent Garden from our back windows." +Covent Garden, as Charles said, "dearer to me than any garden of +Alcinous, where we are morally sure of the earliest peas and +'sparagus." One of the first letters from the new lodgings Lamb +whimsically addressed as from "The Garden of England." The half dozen +years during which he lived here forms from a literary point of view +the most memorable period of Lamb's life. Here he arranged for the +publication of the two precious little volumes of his "Works" which +were issued in the summer of 1818--volumes which he found "admirably +adapted for giving away," having no exaggerated idea of the sensation +which the publication was likely to make. That publication was +arranged, apparently, at the request of the publishers, the brothers +Ollier, whom he now numbered among his friends. Writing to Southey of +the venture he said: "I do not know whether I have done a silly thing +or a wise one, but it is of no great consequence. I run no risk and +care for no censure." Here in Russell Street Lamb continued his +sociable weekly evenings--changed from Wednesdays to Thursdays--here, +indeed, he had to chafe anew at the difficulty of having himself to +himself; he was never C. L., he declared, but always C. L. and Co. He +had, indeed, something of a genius for friendship; however much he +might wish to be alone, he was, there can be little doubt, ever +genial, ever his wise and whimsical self, even when suffering under +the untimely advent of "Mr. Hazlitt, Mr. Martin Burney, or Morgan +Demigorgon"; he had to suffer--or imagine that he suffered--from the +effects of a personal charm of which he was wholly unaware; but if he +had not been so friendlily accessible the world would probably have +lacked record of many of the delightful hints which help towards our +realization of one of the most attractive personalities in our +literary history. + +[Illustration: SKETCH OF CHARLES LAMB AT THE AGE OF FORTY-FOUR. + BY G. F. JOSEPH, A.R.A. +From the original in the Print Room of the British Museum.] + +Lamb was already in middle age--in his forty-sixth year--when there +came to him an opportunity of expressing himself in the way best +suited to his genius. Early in 1820 there was started a new periodical +under the simple title of "The London Magazine." Several of Lamb's +friends were among the contributors, and he also was probably invited +to write for it at an early date. His first contribution appeared in +the number for August signed "Elia" (call it "Ellia," said he), the +name having occurred to Lamb's memory as that of a whilom fellow-clerk +of his thirty years earlier at the South Sea House; for several years +he continued his contributions to this remarkable miscellany, finding +in the personal informal essay the most congenial medium for +expressing his mature wisdom, his whimsical humour, his radiant wit. +By the close of 1822 there were essays enough to make a volume, and in +1823, such duly appeared. Even with this Lamb was not to touch +popularity--it may be doubted whether he ever did that in his +lifetime. He was known, admired, loved by a large circle of friends +and acquaintances, but his work made little impression, we may +believe, upon the wider reading public; it was, however, fully +appreciated by those of his contemporaries best able to judge, and +"Elia" came to be recognized as one of the literary mainstays of a +magazine which counted among its contributors, De Quincey, Allan +Cunningham, B. W. Procter, William Hazlitt, Hartley Coleridge, Horace +Smith, and many more writers of note in their day. + +Little more than six months after Lamb's first essay signed "Elia" had +appeared in the "London," the editor of that magazine was wounded in a +duel and died, and in the summer of 1821 the periodical changed hands, +but retained its brilliant staff of contributors, and acquired the +services of Thomas Hood, then a young man of two-and-twenty, as a +"sort of sub-editor." The new proprietors gave monthly dinners to +their writers, and here Lamb would meet some of his old friends and +many new. Hood has recorded his first meeting with Elia in the offices +of the magazine, and his account may be quoted, affording as it does +something like a glimpse of Lamb in his habit as he lived at the time +of the full maturity of his powers: + + I was sitting one morning beside our Editor, busily + correcting proofs, when a visitor was announced, whose name, + grumbled by a low ventriloquial voice, like Tom Pipes + calling from the hold through the hatchway, did not resound + distinctly on my tympanum. However, the door opened, and in + came a stranger,--a figure remarkable at a glance, with a + fine head, on a small spare body, supported by two almost + immaterial legs. He was clothed in sables, of a bygone + fashion, but there was something wanting, or something + present about him, that certified he was neither a divine, + nor a physician, nor a school master: from a certain + neatness and sobriety in his dress, coupled with his sedate + bearing, he might have been taken, but that such a costume + would be anomalous, for a _Quaker_ in black. He looked still + more like (what he really was) a literary Modern Antique, a + New-Old Author, a living anachronism, contemporary at once + with Burton the Elder, and Colman the Younger. Meanwhile he + advanced with rather a peculiar gait, his walk was + plantigrade, and with a cheerful "How d'ye do," and one of + the blandest, sweetest smiles that ever brightened a manly + countenance, held out two fingers to the Editor. The two + gentlemen in black soon fell into discourse; and whilst they + conferred the Lavater principle within me set to work upon + the interesting specimen thus presented to its speculations. + It was a striking intellectual face, full of wiry lines, + physiognomical quips and cranks, that gave it great + character. There was much earnestness about the brows, and a + deal of speculation in the eyes, which were brown and + bright, and "quick in turning"; the nose, a decided one, + though of no established order; and there was a handsome + smartness about the mouth. Altogether it was no common + face--none of those _willow-pattern_ ones, which Nature + turns out by thousands at her potteries;--but more like a + chance specimen of the Chinese ware, one to the set--unique, + antique, quaint. No one who had once seen it, could pretend + not to know it again. It was no face to lend its + countenance to any confusion of persons in a Comedy of + Errors. You might have sworn to it piecemeal,--a separate + affidavit for every feature. In short his face was as + original as his figure; his figure as his character; his + character as his writings; his writings the most original of + the age. After the literary business had been settled, the + Editor invited his contributor to dinner, adding "we shall + have a hare"-- + + "And--and--and--and many friends?" + + The hesitation in the speech, and the readiness of the + allusion were alike characteristic of the individual, who + his familiars will perchance have recognized already as the + delightful Essayist, the capital Critic, the pleasant Wit + and Humorist, the delicate-minded and large-hearted Charles + Lamb! + +This gives us at once something of a glimpse of Lamb as he appeared to +the eyes of his contemporaries, and an indication of the impression +which his genius had made on another man of genius. With his Elia +essays he may be said to have crowned his achievements in the eyes of +those who knew him, and, in fact, his active work, or that part of it +which counts, may be said to have ended with the production of these +essays, which he wrote at first for the "London," and occasionally +later for other periodicals. + +In 1823 came another removal. During the summer, or when busy over +some piece of writing, Lamb had stayed a while at Dalston or other +semi-rural place away from the time-wasting friends and fascinations +of town. Thus when it was decided to leave Russell Street the move +was made to semi-suburban quietude and retirement. + + When you come London-ward you will find me no longer in Covt + Gard. I have a Cottage, in Colebrook row, Islington. A + cottage, for it is detach'd; a white house, with 6 good + rooms; the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if + a moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot + of the house; and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I + assure you), pears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, + cabbages, to delight the heart of old Alcinous. You enter + without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all studded + over and rough with old Books, and above is a lightsome + Drawing-room 3 windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a + great Lord, never having had a house before.... + + I heard of you from Mr. Pulham this morning, and that gave a + fillip to my Laziness, which has been intolerable. But I am + so taken up with pruning and gardening, quite a new sort of + occupation to me. I have gather'd my Jargonels, but my + Windsor Pears are backward. The former were of exquisite + raciness. I do now sit under my own vine, and contemplate + the growth of vegetable nature. I can now understand in what + sense they speak of FATHER ADAM. I recognize the + paternity, while I watch my tulips. + +Were Lamb a matter-of-fact correspondent it might be pointed out that +tulips are not much to watch in September. During the winter of 1824-5 +he suffered from ill health, and in April, 1825, he was allowed to +retire from the East India House with a pension of two-thirds of his +salary, less a small sum to assure an annuity for his sister in the +event of his dying first. For thirty-three years had he continued in +his office, and his salary had gradually grown from the modest L70 of +the beginning to ten times that amount at his retirement, so that he +became a superannuated man with an income ample for the modest +requirements of himself and Mary. On the subject of his retirement he +wrote some touching letters to friends such as Wordsworth and Bernard +Barton, and also in his accustomed manner made the crucial event the +subject of a delightful "Elia" essay. He had before expatiated on the +excellent position of the authors who were not "authors for +bread"--men who like himself were employed in business during the day +and had to dally with literature in off hours. Certainly Lamb's "hack +work," the work done for the booksellers during the early part of the +century, was his least memorable achievement, and we cannot help +feeling what a boon it was to Lamb himself and to Letters that he was +chained so long to the desk's dead wood, instead of being dependent on +the favour of the booksellers for his livelihood, and upon the popular +taste of the moment for his themes. + +In 1820, during a summer holiday at Cambridge, Lamb met an orphan +girl, Emma Isola, then eleven years of age, whom he and Mary later +adopted, and the letters have many references to the welcome +companionship of Emma, who gave something of a new interest in life to +the brother and sister.[4] In 1827 the household removed again, this +time to the Chase, Enfield. Two years later they gave up the house of +their own and boarded with a Mr. and Mrs. Westwood, their next-door +neighbours. In 1833 Mary, who had had frequently to be "from home," as +it has been euphemistically put, was under the charge of Mr. and Mrs. +Walden at Bay Tree Cottage, Edmonton, when Charles decided to live +under the same roof with her, even during her periods of mental +derangement, and followed her thither, in + + The not unpeaceful evening of a day + Made black by morning storms. + +[Footnote 4: Emma Isola married Edward Moxon, the publisher.] + +How much Mary's companionship meant to him may be gathered from an +open-hearted letter which he had written in 1805 to Dorothy +Wordsworth--and it meant no less in the years that followed: + + I have every reason to suppose that this illness, like all + her former ones, will be but temporary; but I cannot always + feel so. Meantime she is dead to me and I miss a prop. All + my strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her + co-operation. I dare not think, lest I should think wrong; + so used am I to look up to her in the least and the biggest + perplexity. To say all that I know of her would be more than + I think anybody could believe, or even understand; and when + I hope to have her well again with me, it would be sinning + against her feelings to go about to praise her; for I can + conceal nothing that I do from her. She is older and wiser + and better than I, and all my wretched imperfections I cover + to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would + share life and death, heaven and hell, with me. She lives + but for me. + +On 25th July, 1834, Coleridge died, and the blow was a terrible one to +Charles Lamb; "we die many deaths before we die," he had said of the +departure of friends; and the passing of Coleridge may be said to have +come as a fatal shock, for he survived him but five months, and during +that time was heard to say again and again, as though the fact were +too stupendous to believe, not to be realized, "Coleridge is dead!" +Taking his usual morning walk in the fourth week of December, Lamb +stumbled and fell, bruising his face; the bruise did not seem serious, +but erysipelas supervened, and on 27th December, 1834, the beloved +friend, the noble man, passed into the great silence. He was buried in +Edmonton Churchyard, and there, nearly thirteen years later, was laid +by him the dear sister who had so long watched over him, whom he had +so long guarded. + + * * * * * + +"'Saint Charles,' said Thackeray to me, thirty years ago, putting one +of Charles Lamb's letters to his forehead."[5] + +[Footnote 5: Edward FitzGerald's "Letters."] + + + + +HIS PRINCIPAL WRITINGS + + +The writings of Charles Lamb fall more or less naturally into four or +five groups--with, of course, inevitable overlappings--and it is +better to consider them thus, rather than in the strict order of their +production. + + +POETRY + +It was in poetry that he made his first essays, as we have seen, and +this is not to be wondered at in one who had early read the old poetic +treasures of our literature, and in the close companion of so deeply +poetic a man as Coleridge. He was, indeed, himself essentially a poet, +though his work in verse falls far below that which he achieved in +prose. The perusal of a slim volume of the sonnets of William Lisle +Bowles was the small occasion from which sprang the great event of +Lamb's and Coleridge's commencing to write poetry. To the sonnet form +Lamb returned again and again, sometimes most felicitously, for two or +three of his sonnets have that haunting quality which makes them +remain in the mind. This one, with its familiar close, may stand as +representative of the days when Bowles was still the god of his +poetic idolatry: + + 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. + +In his blank verse--and couplets--of the same period, the time when he +was yet in the early twenties of his age, Lamb shows himself an apt +disciple of Cowper (to whom, by the way, he addressed a brief poem in +this form "On His Recovery from an Indisposition"). These, however, +were but the steps of a born writer learning his craft by more or less +conscious imitation, and Lamb was not long in finding his feet and +indicating his peculiar individuality. He had learned much from the +free expressions of the old dramatic poets, and in such pieces as "The +Old Familiar Faces"--a poignant cry from a suffering soul--or in his +unconventional sonnet, "The Gipsy's Malison," written more than +thirty years later, we have some of the most markedly individual of +his poems. He was not a poet, he declared--running counter to the +judgement of some of his later critics--but essentially a prosaic +writer. All that he wrote in verse, apart from the plays, would come +within the compass of a small volume, and perhaps half of that would +be occupied with album verses, slight _vers d'occasion_, such as are +more often the products of prose-writers' leisure than of a poet who +sings because he must. He felt his way to prose through poetry as so +many lesser writers have done, and on the way uttered perhaps a dozen +pieces, which for one reason or another will ever make a lasting +appeal to readers. The sense of tragedy in "The Old Familiar +Faces"--more remarkable in that it was tragedy realized and expressed +at the age of three-and-twenty--the weird imagination of "The Gipsy's +Malison," the sweet portraiture of "Hester," the fancy of "A Farewell +to Tobacco," and the "Ode to the Treadmill," will ensure that portion +of his work to which they belong, sharing the immortality of the +essays of Elia. + + +THE DRAMA + +As an earnest student of dramatic literature Lamb early turned his +attention to the theatre, and was moved with an ambition to write for +the stage. In his twenty-fourth year he started upon a piece to be +entitled "Pride's Cure," and his letters about this time contain many +references to its progress and give various extracts from +it--extracts which by themselves might suggest that the play would be +a notable one, but the event turned out otherwise. At the end of 1799 +the piece was submitted under the title of "John Woodvil" to Kemble, +and a year later it was rejected. "John Woodvil" is poor indeed as a +play; it has some capital scenes, it has some beautiful passages, but +of dramatic story or characterization there is nothing. The play is +concerned with the fortunes of the Woodvils, a Devonshire family, at +the time of the Restoration. Sir Walter Woodvil is a Cromwellian, +living in hiding with his younger son, Simon, while John holds high +revel with boon companions. Sir Walter's ward, Margaret, who is +beloved by John, finds that young man's affection cooling, and thus +leaves him and goes (disguised as a boy) to join her guardian in +Sherwood Forest. Then John, in a moment of intoxication, blabs to one +of his companions of his proscribed father's whereabouts, and follows +it up by quarrelling with that companion, who forthwith sets off with +another to arrest Sir Walter. The old man believes that his son has +betrayed him and promptly dies of a broken heart. The play ends with +the reconciliation of John and Margaret. A ridiculously slight story +for a five-act play. Much in the writing of it shows the author's +loving study of seventeenth-century models, as may be seen from this +speech of Simon's on being asked what are the sports he and his father +use in the forest: + + 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. + +Lamb's next attempt on the theatre was the prose farce of "Mr. H----," +in which a wholly inadequate motif was made to supply material for two +acts. The piece was played once (Drury Lane, 10th December, 1806) and +damned. The eponymous hero, who chooses to be known merely by his +initial, creates quite a sensation at Bath, as he is believed to be a +nobleman travelling incognito. Hitherto always rejected by the ladies +on account of his unfortunate patronym, he has wooed successfully +under an initial, when he nearly spoils all by betraying that his +name is--Hogsflesh! He is forthwith shunned, but his ladylove remains +faithful to him on his making the very natural change of Hogsflesh +into Bacon. In his method and atmosphere, Lamb had passed from the +seventeenth to the late eighteenth century; he got a hearing, but he +did not get--and it must be admitted that he did not deserve--success. +The farce is interesting as containing in an inquisitive landlord, +Jeremiah Pry, the original, it may be assumed, of a whole family of +Paul Prys, of which to-day John Poole's is the best remembered. + +Two other dramatic pieces were written by Lamb in his later years: +"The Wife's Trial, or, The Intruding Widow" (founded upon Crabbe's +"The Confidant"), in blank verse, and a second farce, "The +Pawnbroker's Daughter," in prose. In these two pieces he had made +distinct advances, yet neither was perhaps suited for stage +representation. In "The Wife's Trial" we have a couple--Mr. and Mrs. +Selby--five years married, on whose hospitality a widow forces herself +owing to some mysterious hold which she has over the wife. Mrs. Selby +had been secretly married as a schoolgirl, though her husband left her +at the church door and had died abroad. The widow striving to use this +knowledge for purposes not far removed from blackmail, is neatly hoist +with her own petard, and the slight play ends with the cordial +reconciliation of the Selbys. In "The Pawnbroker's Daughter" once more +the story is of the slightest, though the farce seems more fitted for +the stage than "Mr. H----." Marion, the daughter of a pawnbroker, is, +against her father's wishes, wooed by a gentleman, and, thanks to the +trick of a maid, goes off with her lover while carrying some valuable +jewels with which her father has entrusted her. There are two other +lovers, Pendulous--who has been unjustly hanged and only reprieved +just in time to save his life--and Marian Flyn, and out of their +by-play comes the reconciliation of all. The feelings of the +half-hanged man had earlier been dealt with by Lamb in a letter "On +the Inconveniences Resulting from being Hanged," which he contributed +(as "Pensilis") to "The Reflector" in 1811. + + +STORIES + +After essaying poetry and the drama (for both of which he maintained a +lifelong liking, writing in each form during his latest years), the +next kind of literary expression on which Lamb ventured was that of +stories and verses for children. In "Rosamund Gray," which is scarcely +a tale for children but rather a classic novelette, he gives the story +of a young orphan girl living at Widford in Hertfordshire with her +blind grandmother. The girl is beloved by young Allan Clare, and one +evening, wandering in sheer joy over the scenes of past delightful +rambles, she is assailed by a villain. Her blind grandmother finding +her gone from the cottage dies of a broken heart, and poor Rosamund, +disgraced and terrified, seeks the home of Allan and his sister and +there dies. It is a terrible story told with a beautiful simplicity. +Of how far it may have been founded on fact we do not know, but in +Rosamund, Lamb seems to have depicted something of a likeness of the +"fair-haired maid" with whom he had been in love, and in Elinor Clare +there can be no doubt that he portrayed much of the character of his +own loved sister. + +The first of Lamb's known publications professedly for children was +"The King and Queen of Hearts: showing how notably the Queen made her +Tarts, and how scurvily the Knave stole them away: with other +particulars pertaining thereto," and this was only recovered about ten +years since after having been forgotten for the best part of a +century. The booklet, which was issued anonymously, consists of a +number of rough pictures, each accompanied by half a dozen lines of +Hudibrastic verse; the inspiration being of course the old nursery +rhyme about the tarts made by the Queen of Hearts and their subsequent +fate. + +The "Tales from Shakspeare," which followed, were written by both +Charles Lamb and his sister: indeed the work seems at first to have +been intended for Mary's hand alone, but her brother undertook the +telling of the stories of the tragedies, and to use his own words, out +of the twenty tales he was "responsible for Lear, Macbeth, Timon, +Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, for occasionally a tail-piece or correction of +grammar, for none of the cuts, and for all of the spelling." When the +work was originally produced it had illustrations to which Lamb +objected. His reference to tail-pieces is possibly an indication that +he sometimes rounded off the stories for his sister, just as he +certainly completed the preface for her. Though the dual authorship of +the volume is referred to in the preface the publisher put Charles +Lamb's name as author of the whole on the title-page of the book. The +"Tales" are of course designed for young readers--they are told, as it +has been recognized, with a kind of Wordsworthian simplicity--as an +introduction to "the rich treasures from which the small and valueless +coins are extracted." How admirably they have served their purpose for +generations of readers is to be seen in the long succession of +editions in which the work has been issued. + +Again did brother and sister collaborate in the next of the children's +books associated with the name of Lamb, and again Charles was +responsible for but about a third of the whole. Of the ten tales in +"Mrs. Leicester's School" he wrote but three. These stories, which are +supposed to be told by young girls to their school-mates, are simple +records of childish experiences recounted with childish naivete. They +met with some success during the lifetime of their authors--ten +editions being disposed of in something under twenty years--and still +hold their own, both as gift books for the young and as parts of that +wonderfully varied, yet almost wholly delightful body of literature, +associated with the name of Lamb. Here, as later in the "Essays of +Elia," we have recollections of the actual events of their own +childhood permeating the invented narratives and imparting a new +interest to the whole. Coleridge prophesied remarkably about this +little book, when in talking to a friend he said: + + It at once soothes and amuses me to think--nay, to + know--that the time will come when this little volume of my + dear and well-nigh oldest friend, Mary Lamb, will be not + only enjoyed but acknowledged as a rich jewel in the + treasury of our permanent English literature; and I cannot + help running over in my mind the long list of celebrated + writers, astonishing geniuses, Novels, Romances, Poems, + Histories, and dense Political Economy quartos, which, + compared with "Mrs. Leicester's School," will be remembered + as often and praised as highly as Wilkie's and Glover's + Epics and Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophies compared with + "Robinson Crusoe!" + +In the "Adventures of Ulysses" Lamb sought to provide what he termed a +supplement to Fenelon's long-popular "Adventures of Telemachus." He +took the story from Chapman's translation of Homer's "Odyssey," that +translation which a few years later was to inspire John Keats with one +of his finest sonnets. In a preface, a model of concise expression, +the author of the tale explained: + + By avoiding the prolixity which marks the speeches and the + descriptions in Homer, I have gained a rapidity to the + narration which I hope will make it more attractive, and + give it more the air of a romance, to young readers; though + I am sensible that, by the curtailment, I have sacrificed in + many places the manners to the passion, the subordinate + characteristics to the essential interests of the story. The + attempt is not to be considered as seeking a comparison with + any of the direct translations of the "Odyssey," either in + prose or verse; though if I were to state the obligations + which I have had to one obsolete version, I should run the + hazard of depriving myself of the very slender degree of + reputation which I could hope to acquire from a trifle like + the present undertaking. + +If Chapman's translation of Homer was "obsolete" in 1808, it was yet +to be restored to the favour of readers, thanks to the loving homage +of Lamb and Keats. "Chapman is divine," wrote the author of the +"Adventures of Ulysses" to a friend, "and my abridgement has not quite +emptied him of his divinity." In his story Lamb shows how he had +recognized the moral value of the story of Ulysses, of "a brave man +struggling with adversity," but wisely leaves that moral to be +insensibly impressed upon the reader, for he not only refrained from +formulating a definite "moral" in such a case, but has explicitly +recorded his repugnance from the method. + + +VERSES + +In "Poetry for Children" we have again a work for which brother and +sister were jointly responsible, and again--though we cannot exactly +allot the parts--Charles, as we learn from his letters, wrote but +about one third of the whole. Three years after publication the two +small volumes in which this work had been issued were out of print, +though a number of the pieces were included by the publisher in a +"Poetry Book" compilation. In 1827 Lamb wanted a copy and could not +get it, indeed the little work had disappeared in the most complete +fashion, and another half century was to pass before a copy was to be +recovered, and then it came from Australia, closely followed by one of +an American edition, "pirated" in 1812. It is strange that Charles and +Mary Lamb, "an old bachelor and an old maid," as he put it, should +have been so successful as caterers for children. That they were +successful there is no doubt, and there is no reason why this "Poetry +for Children" of theirs should not--now happily recovered in its +entirety--go on pleasing and influencing many generations of young +readers; that they _do_ please the little ones of to-day I have +readily proved. The verses are on the simplest themes, set forth in +varied metres, but chiefly such metres as children can most readily +remember, and though they are for the most part didactic, they are +didactic in a way which the child does not resent. There is no telling +a tale and then trying to enforce a moral from its consideration, but +the moral is a natural part of the whole, and doubtless has its +healthy effect. + +"Prince Dorus" is a pleasant little story in easy verse, telling of a +king who fell in love with a great Princess, but was in despair +because his love was not requited: + + "This to the King a courteous Fairy told + And bade the Monarch in his suit be bold; + For he that would the charming Princess wed, + Had only on her cat's black tail to tread, + When straight the Spell would vanish into air, + And he enjoy for life the yielding fair." + +At length he succeeds in this seemingly simple exploit, and in place +of the cat there springs up a huge man who foretells that when married +the King shall have a son afflicted with a huge nose, a son who shall +never be happy in his love: + + Till he with tears his blemish shall confess + Discern its odious length and wish it less. + +It is a pleasant little story marked with Lamb's keen sense of humour. + +"Beauty and the Beast" is a booklet in verse for young readers. It was +published shortly after "Prince Dorus," and is believed--though the +evidence as to authorship is inconclusive--to have been written by +Charles or Mary Lamb. It is a simple rendering in Hudibrastic verse of +a familiar nursery story. Perhaps a very slight piece of evidence in +favour of the Lamb authorship may be found in the fact that it shares +with "Prince Dorus" the sub-title, "A Poetical Version of an Ancient +Tale." + + +CRITICISM + +In the mid-part of the period during which Charles Lamb was writing, +either on his own account or in collaboration with his sister, the +books for children to which reference has just been made, he was also +engaged upon the work which was to bring him before the world as a +great critic, as the first of the Neo-Elizabethans if I may substitute +that nickname for the time-honoured one which calls him the last of +the Elizabethans. For us, to-day, with our bountiful acknowledgment of +all that we owe to the great body of dramatic poets who flourished +during the latter part of the sixteenth century and the first half of +the seventeenth, for us with our many collected editions of the works +of these men it is somewhat difficult to realize the benighted +condition in which our fellows were situated a century ago. +Elizabethan drama to by far the greater number of our great +grandparents meant Shakespeare and Shakespeare alone; to us +Shakespeare is only the sun of a great dramatic planetary system, and +the corrected view is largely owing to the efforts of one +revolutionary critic, and that critic was Charles Lamb. His earliest +letters show that he had revelled in this by-way of literature, and +had there found much that was of the best comparatively forgotten, or +at least wholly neglected, and he gladly availed himself of an +opportunity afforded for selecting striking passages from the English +dramatic poets. "Specimens are becoming fashionable," he wrote. "We +have 'Specimens of Ancient English Poets,' 'Specimens of Modern +English Poets,' 'Specimens of Ancient English Prose Writers,' without +end. They used to be called 'Beauties'! You have seen 'Beauties of +Shakspeare'? so have many people that never saw any beauties in +Shakspeare." Lamb was not by any means, however, an imitator of the +unfortunate clerical forger, Dodd, in the scheme which he had in hand. +When we turn to the "Specimens" themselves we discover them to be fine +indeed, and in reading them and the brief but pregnant notes upon +them, we marvel at the sureness of the touch and the maturity of the +writer. The notes, or commentary, rarely extend beyond a score of +lines, and are most often far below that, yet they are always +wonderfully pertinent; there is "no philology, no antiquarianism, no +discussion of difficult or corrupt passages," no pedantry in fact, or +dry-as-dustism. It must not be forgotten when we look over the volume +with scenes from the plays of Kyd, Peele, Marlowe, Dekker, Marston, +Chapman, Heywood, Middleton, Tourneur, Webster, Ford, Jonson, +Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Shirley and others--it must not be +forgotten that Lamb was pleading the merits of these dramatic poets +before a generation to which some of them were but names and the rest +practically non-existent. The suggestion which Lamb throws out in the +preface that he had desired to show "how much of Shakspeare shines in +the great men his contemporaries" is amply borne out in his brief +notes upon his selections. This can best be proved by giving some of +the editorial comments from the collection itself, comments which +fully establish Lamb in his high place among the clearest sighted if +least voluminous of our true critics: + + Heywood is a sort of _prose_ Shakspeare. His scenes are to + the full as natural and affecting. But we miss _the Poet_, + that which in Shakspeare always appears out and above the + surface of _the nature_. Heywood's characters, his Country + Gentlemen, etc., are exactly what we see (but of the best + kind of what we see) in life. Shakspeare makes us believe, + while we are among his lovely creations, that they are + nothing but what we are familiar with, as in dreams new + things seem old: but we awake, and sigh for the difference. + + * * * * * + + The insipid levelling morality to which the modern stage is + tied down would not admit of such admirable passions as + these scenes are filled with. A Puritanical obtuseness of + sentiment, a stupid infantile goodness, is creeping among + us, instead of the vigorous passions and virtues clad in + flesh and blood, with which the old dramatists present us. + Those noble and liberal casuists could discern in the + differences, the quarrels, the animosities of man, a beauty + and truth of moral feeling, no less than in the iterately + inculcated duties of forgiveness and atonement. With us all + is hypocritical meekness. A reconciliation scene (let the + occasion be never so absurd or unnatural) is always sure of + applause. Our audiences come to the theatre to be + complimented on their goodness. They compare notes with the + amiable characters in the play, and find a wonderful + similarity of disposition between them. We have a common + stock of dramatic morality out of which a writer may be + supplied without the trouble of copying from originals + within his own breast. To know the boundaries of honour, to + be judiciously valiant, to have a temperance which shall + beget a smoothness in the angry swellings of youth, to + esteem life as nothing when the sacred reputation of a + parent is to be defended, yet to shake and tremble under a + pious cowardice when that ark of an honest confidence is + found to be frail and tottering, to feel the true blows of a + real disgrace blunting that sword which the imaginary + strokes of a supposed false imputation had put so keen an + edge upon but lately; to do, or to imagine this done in a + feigned story, asks something more of a moral sense, + somewhat a greater delicacy of perception in questions of + right and wrong, than goes to the writing of two or three + hackneyed sentences about the laws of honour as opposed to + the laws of the land or a commonplace against duelling. Yet + such things would stand a writer nowadays in far better + stead than Captain Ager and his conscientious honour; and he + would be considered a far better teacher of morality than + old Rowley or Middleton if they were living. + + * * * * * + + Though some resemblance may be traced between the Charms in + Macbeth and the Incantations in this Play, which is supposed + to have preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much + from the originality of Shakspeare. His Witches are + distinguished from the Witches of Middleton by essential + differences. These are creatures to whom man or woman + plotting some dire mischief might resort for occasional + consultation. Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad + impulses to men. From the moment that their eyes first meet + with Macbeth's, he is spellbound. That meeting sways his + destiny. He can never break the fascination. These Witches + can hurt the body: those have power over the soul. Hecate in + Middleton has a Son, a low buffoon: the hags of Shakspeare + have neither child of their own, nor seem to be descended + from any parent. They are foul Anomalies, of whom we know + not whence they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning + or ending. As they are without human passions, so they seem + to be without human relations. They come with thunder and + lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of + them.--Except Hecate, they have no names; which heightens + their mysteriousness. Their names, and some of the + properties, which Middleton has given to his Hags, excite + smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence + cannot co-exist with mirth. But in a lesser degree the + witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power too is, + in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies, + strife, _like a thick scurf o'er life_. + +Here surely we have the right stuff. Terse, pregnant sentences; few +words, but going to the very heart of the matter. That Lamb was justly +proud of his pioneer work in this field of literary research is +certain, for in a short autobiography which he prepared for a friend's +album--in what has been called "the briefest, and perhaps the wittiest +and most truthful autobiography in the language"--he wrote as follows: + + He also was the first to draw the Public attention to the + old English Dramatists, in a work called "Specimens of + English Dramatic Writers who lived about the Time of + Shakspeare," published about fifteen years since. + +Of Lamb's work in this field the elder Disraeli admirably said, "He +carries us on through whole scenes by a true, unerring motion. His was +a poetical mind, labouring in poetry." Within the century that has +elapsed since Lamb was engaged in exploring the forgotten old tomes in +which lay buried so much excellent literature, the study which he +started has taken its place as one of the most important of its kind, +and a large library might be formed of the books and reprints which +may be looked upon as direct descendants of that modest single octavo +volume of 1808. During his later years Lamb devised something in the +nature of a supplement when he prepared further extracts from the +Garrick collection of plays in the British Museum for Hone's "Table +Book" (1827), and these extracts are now generally bound up with the +earlier ones in a single work. + + +ESSAYS + +In giving this summary account of Lamb's writings it has been thought +best only to keep to a very roughly chronological method, leaving his +letters to be touched upon last. Finding earliest expression in +poetry, he then turned to the drama, fully equipped with knowledge and +a fine enthusiasm, but lacking some of the most vitally essential +qualities necessary to success; he then passed more or less by force +of circumstance--the need of making money and the desire to help his +sister in her newly-found work--to the writing of prose and verse for +children; and later he began to make wider use of the fine critical +instinct of which he had given early indications in his +correspondence. All of these were to be in a measure overshadowed by +his achievement as essayist. That work as essayist was chiefly the +product of his prime--of the days of the "London Magazine"--but he had +made several notable contributions of this character during the +preceding twenty years; essays which are now to be found in different +posthumous collections of his writings--"Eliana," "Critical Essays," +"Essays and Sketches," "Miscellaneous Prose," and so on. When, thanks +to the kindly offices of Coleridge, Lamb became a contributor to the +"Morning Post," he proposed to furnish some imitations of Burton, the +author of the "Anatomy of Melancholy," but these, not unnaturally, +being adjudged unsuitable for a daily newspaper found a place in the +"John Woodvil" volume of 1802. Yet it was in the journal named that on +1st February, 1802, appeared a brief Essay in the form of a letter on +"The Londoner." In this essay we have Lamb using the same phrases that +he had employed a year earlier in writing to Wordsworth. In 1811-14 +Lamb was contributing essays (including "On the Inconveniences +Resulting from Being Hanged," "Recollections of Christ's Hospital," +and on "The Melancholy of Tailors") to Leigh Hunt's "Reflector," to +the "Gentleman's Magazine," and the "Champion." Eight of these essays +were included in the two volume "Works" of 1818. + +It was with the establishment of the "London Magazine" in 1820 that, +as has been said, Lamb's great opportunity came and was greatly +taken. The magazine began, as we have seen, in January, and the editor +soon gathered around him a remarkably brilliant body of contributors. +To their number in August was added "Elia," whose modest +signature--later to become perhaps the most widely-known pen-name in +our literature--was appended to an article on "The South Sea House." +Thenceforward--with the occasional missing of a month here or there, +balanced by other months presenting two--the essays appeared with such +regularity that twenty-eight months later there were twenty-seven of +the twenty-eight essays which were gathered into the volume published +in 1823 as "The Essays of Elia." + +The publication of the essays in volume form did not by any means +indicate that the author had worked out his vein; indeed, while the +book was passing through the press he was writing other essays for the +"London," though not with the same regularity; afterwards he +contributed to the "New Monthly" and other magazines. Such of this +later work as he chose to preserve formed "The Last Essays of Elia," +published ten years after the earlier work. + + +LETTERS + +All through his working life as man of letters Lamb was engaged in +manifesting that side of his genius which whilst known to but few +persons during his lifetime was to be one of those most widely and +most lovingly known afterwards. He was of the greatest of our +letter-writers. It was perhaps but another aspect of the essayist--or +rather we might say that his work as essayist was the crowning +development of his sedulous habit of being himself when communing on +paper with his intimate friends. It has been suggested that such +finished works as are many of Lamb's letters were, so to speak, built +up bit by bit, and then copied as completed wholes before being +despatched to those for whom they were designed. Whether written with +a running pen, as a large proportion of them undoubtedly were, or +written with the patience of the essayist ponderingly in search of the +_mot juste_, they are always true Lamb, individual expressions far +removed from the ordinary letters of ordinary folk; they are at once +informing revelations of the writer in his relations with his fellows, +and they are always marked by essentially literary qualities. In his +letters will be found not infrequently--both in idea and in +expression--the germs of his essays. + +Lamb was first revealed to the reading public as a great letter-writer +in Talfourd's "Memorials of Charles Lamb" nearly seventy years ago. +Since that time each further publication of the letters has brought +fresh material to light which has but gone to strengthen Lamb's +position as one of the first two or three letter-writers whose +epistles have taken their places in English literature. If we must +"place" our great men, there are not wanting critics who would accord +Lamb a position at the very head of those in this particular branch. +"To an idler like myself, to write and receive letters are both very +pleasant;" thus Lamb in one of his earliest letters to Coleridge, and +there can be little doubt that in this occupation he frequently found +the truth of the statement that the labour we delight in physics pain. +In communion with men of kindred tastes he must often have lost the +sense of his haunting troubles in intellectual and external interests. + +Two or three scraps from the letters have been quoted in the first +chapter but as their peculiarly rich wit and humour, using that +much-abused word in its fullest significance, can best be shown by +example, we may here give a couple more. The first is from a letter +written in 1810, and addressed to Manning, the correspondent with whom +Lamb was most entertainingly whimsical. The second letter, given in +its entirety, was addressed in 1827 to Thomas Hood. + + Holcroft had finished his life when I wrote to you, and + Hazlitt has since finished his life--I do not mean his own + life, but he has finished a life of Holcroft, which is going + to press. Tuthill is Dr. Tuthill. I continue Mr. Lamb. I + have published a little book for children on titles of + honour: and to give them some idea of the difference of rank + and gradual rising, I have made a little scale, supposing + myself to receive the following various accessions of + dignity from the king, who is the fountain of honour.--As at + first, 1, Mr. C. Lamb; 2, C. Lamb, Esq.; 3, Sir C. Lamb, + Bart,; 4, Baron Lamb of Stamford; 5, Viscount Lamb; 6, Earl + Lamb; 7, Marquis Lamb; 8, Duke Lamb. It would look like + quibbling to carry it on further, and especially as it is + not necessary for children to go beyond the ordinary titles + of sub-regal dignity in our own country, otherwise I have + sometimes in my dreams imagined myself still advancing, as + 9th, King Lamb; 10th, Emperor Lamb; 11th, Pope Innocent, + higher than which is nothing but the Lamb of God. Puns I + have not made many (nor punch much), since the day of my + last; one I cannot help relating. A constable in Salisbury + Cathedral was telling me that eight people dined at the top + of the spire of the cathedral, upon which I remarked that + they must be very sharp set. But in general I cultivate the + reasoning part of my mind more than the imaginative. Do you + know Kate * * *. I am so stuffed out with eating turkey for + dinner, and another turkey for supper yesterday (turkey in + Europe and turkey in Asia), that I can't jog on. It is New + Year here. That is, it was New Year half a year back, when I + was writing this. Nothing puzzles me more than time and + space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think + about them. The Persian ambassador is the principal thing + talked of now. I sent some people to see him worship the sun + on Primrose Hill at half past six in the morning 28th + November; but he did not come, which makes me think the old + fire-worshippers are a sect almost extinct in Persia. Have + you trampled on the Cross yet? The Persian ambassador's name + is Shaw Ali Mirza. The common people call him Shaw Nonsense. + While I think of it, I have put three letters besides my own + three into the India post for you, from your brother, + sister, and some gentleman whose name I forget. Will they, + have they, did they, come safe? The distance you are at cuts + up tenses by the root. + + DEAR HOOD,--If I have anything in my head I will + send it to Mr. Watts. Strictly speaking he should have had + my Album verses, but a very intimate friend importuned me + for the trifles, and I believe I forgot Mr. Watts, or lost + sight at the time of his similar Souvenir. Jamieson conveyed + the farce from me to Mrs. C. Kemble, _he_ will not be in + town before the 27th. Give our kind loves to all at + Highgate, and tell them that we have finally torn ourselves + out right away from Colebrooke, where I had _no_ health, and + are about to domiciliate for good at Enfield, where I have + experienced _good_. + + "Lord what good hours do we keep! + How quietly we sleep!" + + See the rest in the Complete Angler. We have got our books + into our new house. I am a drayhorse if I was not asham'd of + the indigested dirty lumber as I toppled 'em out of the + cart, and blest Becky that came with 'em for her having an + unstuff'd brain with such rubbish. We shall get in by + Michael's mass. 'Twas with some pain we were evuls'd from + Colebrook. You may find some of our flesh sticking to the + door posts. To change habitations is to die to them, and in + my time I have died seven deaths. But I don't know whether + every such change does not bring with it a rejuvenescence. + 'Tis an enterprise, and shoves back the sense of death's + approximating, which tho' not terrible to me, is at all + times particular distasteful. My house-deaths have generally + been periodical, recurring after seven years, but this last + is premature by half that time. Cut off in the flower of + Colebrook. The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. + Even minnows dwindle. _A parvis fiunt MINIMI._ I fear to + invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, lest she envy it and + rote us. But when we are fairly in, I hope she will come and + try it. I heard she and you were made uncomfortable by some + unworthy to be cared for attacks, and have tried to set up + a feeble counter-action through the Table Book of last + Saturday. Has it not reach'd you, that you are silent about + it? Our new domicile is no manor house, but new, and + externally not inviting, but furnish'd within with every + convenience. Capital new locks to every door, capital grates + in every room, with nothing to pay for incoming and the rent + L10 less than the Islington one. It was built a few years + since at L1,100 expense, they tell me, and I perfectly + believe it. And I get it for L35 exclusive of moderate + taxes. We think ourselves most lucky. It is not our + intention to abandon Regent Street, and West End + perambulations (monastic and terrible thought!) but + occasionally to breathe the FRESHER AIR of the + metropolis. We shall put up a bedroom or two (all we want) + for occasional ex-rustication, where we shall visit, not be + visited. Plays too we'll see--perhaps our own. Urbani + Sylvani, and Sylvan Urbanuses in turns. Courtiers for a + spurt, then philosophers. Old homely tell-truths and + learn-truths in the virtuous shades of Enfield. Liars again + and mocking gibers in the coffee-houses and resorts of + London. What can a mortal desire more for his bi-parted + nature? + + O the curds and cream you shall eat with us here! + O the turtle soup and lobster sallads we shall devour with you there! + O the old books we shall peruse here! + O the new nonsense we shall trifle with over there! + O Sir T. Browne!--here. + O Mr. Hood and Mr. Jerdan there! thine, C(urbanus) L(sylvanus) + (ELIA ambo)-- + + Inclos'd are verses which Emma sat down to write, her first, + on the eve after your departure. Of course they are only for + Mrs. H.'s perusal. They will shew you at least that one of + our party is not willing to cut old friends. What to call + 'em I don't know. Blank verse they are not, because of the + rhymes.--Rhimes they are not, because of the blank verse. + Heroics they are not, because they are lyric, lyric they are + not, because of the Heroic measure. They must be called EMMAICS.-- + + * * * * * + +The full charm of the long early letters, with their pleasant +expatiations on literary themes can scarcely be sampled without doing +violence. The various editions in which the letters are obtainable +will be found referred to in the bibliographical list at the end of +this little book. In illustration of their continued appreciation it +may be mentioned that three editions have been published during the +past year or so, each of which contains letters denied to the others. +The latest edition--that of Mr. E. V. Lucas--is also the fullest, both +in the number of letters included and in the elaboration of its +annotatory matter. + + * * * * * + +[Illustration: Holograph letter to John Clare, "the Peasant Poet." +Reduced facsimile from the original in the British Museum.] + + [Transcript of the Handwritten Letter To John Clare.] + + India house 31 Aug 1822 + + Dear Clare, I thank you heartily for your present. I am an + inveterate old Londoner, but while I am among your choice + collections, I seem to be native to them, and free of the + country. The quantity of your observation has astonished me. + What have most pleased me have been Recollections after a + Ramble, and those Grongar Hill kind of pieces in eight + syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as Cowper Hill + and Solitude. In some of your story telling Ballads the + provincial phrases sometimes startle me. I think you are too + profuse with them. In poetry slang [underlined] of every + kind is to be avoided. There is a rustick Cockneyism + as little pleasing as ours of London. Transplant Arcadia to + Helpstone. The true rustic style, the Arcadian English, I + think is to be found in Shenstones. Would his + Schoolmistress, the prettiest of poems, have been better, if + he had used quite the Goody's own language? Now and then a + home rusticism is fresh & startling, but where nothing is + gained in expression, it is out of tenor. It may make + people [crossed out] folks smile and stare, but the + ungenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases will + prevent you in the end from being so generally tasted, as + you deserve to be. Excuse my freedom, and take the same + liberty with my puns [underlined]. + + I send you two little volumes of my spare hours. They are of + all sorts, there is a methodist hymn for Sundays, and a + farce for Saturday night. Pray give them a place on your + shelf. Pray accept a little volume, of which I have + duplicate, that I may return in an equal number to your + welcome presents-- + + I think I am indebted to you for a sonnet in the London for + August. + + Since I saw you I have been in France, and have eaten frogs. + The nicest little rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look + about for them. Make Mrs. Clare pick off the hind quarters, + boil them plain, with parsley and butter. The + four [crossed out] fore quarters are not so good. She may + let them hop off by themselves. Yours sincerely, Cha^s + Lamb. + + + + +THE ESSAYS OF ELIA + + +"Shakespeare himself might have read them and Hamlet have acted them; +for truly was our excellent friend of the genuine line of Yorick." +Thus it was that Leigh Hunt referred to the essays which without doubt +stand as the most characteristic of Charles Lamb's contributions to +literature. His reputation, as was recognized and acknowledged within +a few years of his death, "will ultimately rest on the Essays of Elia, +than which our literature rejoices in few things finer." + +The intimate footing upon which he puts himself and his reader, is +perhaps not so much a peculiarity of his own as it is the dominant +note always in the work of your born essayist. He discourses high +truth or fresh philosophy, truest poetry, richest wit, or the most +delicate humour, he presents personal experiences with that simplicity +of pure camaraderie which assumes that the reader could do the +same--if he had the mind, as Lamb himself put it when wittily snubbing +Wordsworth. In most books, as De Quincey has pointed out, the author +figures as a mere abstraction, "without sex or age or local station," +whom the reader banishes from his thoughts, but in the case of Lamb +and that brilliant line of authors to which he belongs, we must know +something of the man himself, and as I have said earlier, we get it +abundantly scattered up and down his writings. Even if we do not +happen to be acquainted with the actual biography, we can build up in +our minds on reading the essays of Elia a life story not far removed +from actuality, though it would be wanting in any hint of tragedy. It +is this intimacy which at once attracts and repels readers, attracts +all those who are, in however small a degree, kindred spirits, and +repels, perhaps, others. The quaintness, oddity, flippancy, are +wrought together with deep thought, poetry, and feeling to a wonderful +degree. The very diversity of theme and manner--this varying change +from grave to gay, from lively to severe--is indeed but a reflection +of life itself, which with the most fortunate of us dashes our smiles +with tears, and even to the most unfortunate imparts something of +pleasure and delight. + +The "Essays of Elia" may fittingly be dealt with as at once the most +representative and the finest of his writings. Great as is the range +of their subjects, it will be found that they are more or less unified +by the author's individuality both in point of view and in treatment, +that they are all informed with what has been termed Lamb's calm and +self-reposing spirit, that they are all more or less strongly marked +by that style which, based upon a loving study of the Elizabethan and +seventeenth-century writers, was yet for the most part distinguished +by concision and ease. He took from his models their richness of +language without their prolixity, their felicity of expression without +their tendency to the elaboration of conceits; he unconsciously +employed their varied styles, to form an individual style of his own. + +It is only possible in one small section of a small volume such as +this to indicate a portion of the wealth in the Elia series, so varied +are the themes which inspired the essayist: the delicious drollery of +the "Dissertation upon Roast Pig"; the immortal characterization of +"Mrs. Battle's Opinions upon Whist"; the pleasant personal touches in +a score of the essays; the cry of stifled affection in "Dream +Children"; the whimsicality of "Popular Fallacies"; each of these, and +as many again unspecified might be made the subject of separate +comment. Indeed, for variety in unity there are few books to compare +with our Elia. In the opening essay--the first of the series to appear +in the "London Magazine," the one to stand in the forefront of the +volume--Lamb blends reminiscences with fancy, as he continued to do +frequently throughout the series, in a way that is as suggestive to +the seeker after autobiographical data as it is engaging to the reader +in search of nothing further than the rich delight which comes of +passing time with a literary gem. Lamb pictures "The South Sea House" +as it was when he knew it thirty years earlier--he speaks of it as +forty years. There is a presentation of the old place, fallen more or +less completely upon days of desuetude, with some wonderfully-limned +portraits of the officials. Here is the deputy-cashier, Thomas Tame: + + He had the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken + him for one, had you met him in one of the passages leading + to Westminster Hall. By stoop, I mean that gentle bending of + the body forwards, which, in great men, must be supposed to + be the effect of an habitual condescending attention to the + applications of their inferiors. While he held you in + converse, you felt strained to the height in the colloquy. + The conference over, you were at leisure to smile at the + comparative insignificance of the pretensions which had just + awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest order. It did + not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind was in its + original state of white paper. A sucking babe might have + posed him. What was it then? Was he rich! Alas, no! Thomas + Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife looked outwardly + gentle folks, when I fear all was not well at all times + within. She had a neat meagre person, which it was evident + she had not sinned in over-pampering; but in its veins was + noble blood. She traced her descent, by some labyrinth of + relationship, which I never thoroughly understood--much less + can explain with any heraldic certainty at this time of + day--to the illustrious but unfortunate house of + Derwentwater. This was the secret of Thomas's stoop. This + was the thought, the sentiment, the bright solitary star of + your lives, ye mild and happy pair, which cheered you in the + night of intellect, and in the obscurity of your station! + This was to you instead of riches, instead of rank, instead + of glittering attainments, and it was worth them all + together. You insulted none with it; but, while you wore it + as a piece of defensive armour only, no insult likewise + could reach you through it. _Decus et solamen._ + +Then at the close Elia says, "Reader, what if I have been playing with +thee all this while--peradventure the very names, which I have +summoned up before thee, are fantastic--insubstantial--like Henry +Pimpernel and old John Naps of Greece; be satisfied that something +answering to them has had a being. Their importance is from the past." +The names may have been mostly fantastic--in one case we know that it +was not, for "Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of letters" is +known to delvers among dead books--the types are immortal. In this +first essay we find in such sentences as "their sums in triple +columniations, set down with formal superfluity of cyphers," an +illustration of Lamb's wonderful use of what an antipathetic critic +might term an informal superfluity of syllables. + +The next essay, reflecting the atmosphere of "Oxford in the Vacation," +was written presumably during a holiday visit to the University of +Cambridge, though Elia touching upon matters concerning church +holidays breaks off with-- + + ... but I am wading out of my depths. I am not the man to + decide the limits of civil and ecclesiastical authority--I + am plain Elia--no Selden, nor Archbishop Usher--though at + present in the thick of their books here in the heart of + learning, under the shadow of mighty Bodley. + +Then follows a passage eminently characteristic of Elia's happy manner +of playing with a theme: + + I can here play the gentleman, enact the student To such a + one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young years of + the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is so + pleasant to while away a few idle weeks at one or other + of the universities. Their vacation, too, at this time of + the year, falls in pat with _ours_. Here I can take my walks + unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree of standing I + please. I seem admitted _ad eundem_. I fetch up past + opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that + it rings for _me_. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or + a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Gentleman + Commoner. In graver moments, I proceed Master of Arts. + Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable + character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed-makers + in spectacles drop a bow or curtsey as I pass, wisely + mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, + which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend + quadrangle I can be content to pass for nothing short of a + Seraphic doctor. + + The walks at these times are so much one's own--the tall + trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen! The halls + deserted, and with open doors inviting one to slip in + unperceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder or noble or + royal Benefactress (that should have been ours), whose + portrait seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman, and + to adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in by the + way at the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique + hospitality: the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen + fire-places, cordial recesses; ovens whose first pies were + baked four centuries ago; and spits which have cooked for + Chaucer! Not the meanest minister among the dishes but is + hallowed to me through his imagination, and the Cook goes + forth a Manciple. + +The next essay, "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," should +be read along with an earlier one, which does not belong actually to +the Elia series, "Recollections of Christ's Hospital." In the later +essay Lamb affected to look at the school as it might have been to a +scholar less fortunately circumstanced than himself, a boy far from +his family and friends, and the boy whom he selected was that one of +his school companions whom he knew best and with whom in manhood he +had sustained the closest friendship--S. T. Coleridge. That friend he +thus apostrophizes in a passage which has frequently been quoted: + + Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day-spring + of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before + thee--the dark pillar not yet turned--Samuel Taylor + Coleridge--Logician, Metaphysician, Bard! How have I seen + the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, + entranced with admiration (while he weighed the + disproportion between the _speech_ and the _garb_ of the + young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet + intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus or Plotinus (for + even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such + philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or + Pindar, while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to + the accents of the inspired charity-boy! + +"The Two Races of Men," divides men into those who borrow and those +who lend, the theme being followed out with great humour, and going on +to those "whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than +closed in iron coffers," and then giving pleasant bits about +Coleridge--under his _nomme de guerre_ of Comberbatch--and his theory +that "the title to property in a book ... is in exact ratio to the +claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the same." "Should +he go on acting upon this theory," adds Elia, "which of our shelves is +safe?" + +"New Year's Eve" suggests a train of reflections--not, in the +platitudinous manner of looking back over the errors of the past year +and making good resolutions for the coming one--but on mortality +generally, and on the passing of time and the passing of life: + + I am not content to pass away like a weaver's shuttle! These + 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 + solitude, 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. + +Next comes the immortal "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist,"--Mrs. +Battle, whose wish for "a clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour +of the game" has become almost proverbial so commonly is it repeated, +whose heart-whole devotion to her game will make true Elians whist +players when bridge is forgotten. In "A Chapter on Ears," Elia +expatiates upon his insensibility to music; in "All Fool's Day" he +puts wisdom under motley in a truly Shakespearian fashion, with the +fine conclusion, "and take my word for this, reader, and say a fool +told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in +his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition." + +"The Quakers' Meeting" is a delicate and impressive verbal +representation of the spirit of Quakerdom as revealed to one not a +Quaker but ready to appreciate the quietist spirit. Those who have +never attended a meeting of the kind feel that they have realized its +significance when they come across a passage such as this: + + More frequently the meeting is broken up without a word + having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go away + with a sermon, not made with hands. You have been in the + milder caverns of Trophonius; or as in some den, where that + fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures, the Tongue, + that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. + You have bathed with stillness--O, when the spirit is sore + fettered, even tired to sickness of the janglings and + nonsense noises of the world, what a balm and a solace it + is, to go and seat yourself for a quiet half hour, upon some + undisputed corner of a bench, among the gentle Quakers! + +Then follows a quaint Elian touch of humour in the application of a +line of Wordsworth's far from that poet's intention: "Their garb and +stillness conjoined, present an uniformity, tranquil and +herd-like--as in the pasture--'forty feeding like one.'" + +An encounter in a coach with a loquacious gentleman whom he took to be +a school-master set Lamb musing on the differences between "The Old +and the New School-Master," on the way in which the pedagogue is +differentiated by the very conditions of his labours not only from his +boys but from his fellows generally; he is a man for whom life is in a +measure poisoned, "nothing comes to him not spoiled by the +sophisticating medium of moral uses." Incidentally too, Elia informs +us that the school-master + + is so used to teaching that he wants to be teaching you. One + of these professors, upon my complaining that these little + sketches of mine were anything but methodical, and that I + was unable to make them otherwise, kindly offered to + instruct me in the method by which young gentlemen in his + seminary were taught to compose English themes. The jests of + a school-master are coarse or thin. + +The next essay--the only one in "The Essays of Elia" volume which had +not appeared in the "London Magazine"--is a pretty bit about +"Valentine's Day." This is followed by an inquiry into the existence +of "Imperfect Sympathies," the writer declaring that he had been +trying all his life--without success--to like Scotsmen, and that he +had the same imperfect sympathy with Jews. The Scotsmen are too +precise, too matter of fact at once in their own statements and those +to which alone they will attend. This would of itself be sufficient +to establish the "imperfect sympathy," for in another connection Lamb +had declared his preference for "a matter of lie man." + +"Witches and Other Night Fears" is an examination, in which +whimsicality is blent with deep seriousness, of the night terrors of +imaginative childhood; Elia showed how a picture in an old time Bible +history had shaped his fears and made his nights hideous for several +years of his early childhood, though he holds that "It is not book, or +picture, or the stories of foolish servants, which create these +terrors in children. They can at most but give them direction." He +suggests that the kind of fear is purely spiritual, and incidentally +gives a characteristically quaint turn in "My night-fancies have long +ceased to be afflictive. I confess an occasional nightmare; but I do +not, as in early youth, keep a stud of them." + +In "My Relations" we have an excellent instance of Lamb's veiled +autobiography; he begins by saying that he has no brother or sister +and at once proceeds to a close and analytical portrait of his +"cousin," James Elia, that supposed personage being Charles Lamb's own +brother John, who died in November, 1821, a few months after the +original appearance of this essay. "Mackery End in Hertfordshire," +continues the theme of relations with another striking piece of +portraiture in another supposed cousin of Elia's, Bridget (really Mary +Lamb). In limning his sister he was of course hampered somewhat by her +terrible affliction, but wonderfully has he surmounted it, and +delightful indeed it is to follow the narrative of the "cousins'" +visit to unknown cousins at the old place in "the green plains of +pleasant Hertfordshire." + +Dealing with the subject of "Modern Gallantry" Elia shows how it is +wanting in the true spirit of gallantry which should consist not in +compliments to youth and beauty but in reverence to sex. + +"The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple" is one of the essays richest at +once in personal recollections, in wonderful portraiture, and in those +subtle literary touches which impart their peculiar flavour to the +whole. A sketch of the author's father as Lovel was quoted from this +essay in the opening chapter. Elia's observation, his felicity of +expression, his originality of thought, a hint of his playfulness, may +all be recognized in the very commencement of this delicious essay: + + I was born, and passed the first seven years of my life in + the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its + fountain, its river, I had almost said--for in those young + years, what was this king of rivers to me but a stream that + watered our pleasant places?--these are my oldest + recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself + more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of + Spenser, where he speaks of this spot: + + "There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, + The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, + Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, + There whylome wont the Templar knights to bide, + Till they decayd through pride." + + Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What + a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first + time--the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street, + by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent ample squares, + its classic green recesses! what a cheerful, liberal look + hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks + the greater garden, that goodly pile + + "Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight," + + confronting, with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more + fantastically shrouded one named of Harcourt, with the + cheerful Crown Office Row (place of my kindly engendure) + right opposite the stately stream, which washes the + garden-foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and + seems but just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades! a man + would give something to have been born in such places. What + a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where + the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and fall, how + many times! to the astoundment of the young urchins, my + contemporaries, who, not being able to guess at its + recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the + wondrous work as magic! What an antique air had the now + almost effaced sun-dials with their moral inscriptions, + seeming co-evals with that Time which they measured, and to + take their revelations of its flight immediately from + heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light! + How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by + the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, never + catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests + of sleep! + + "Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand + Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived!" + + What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous + embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness + of communication, compared with the simple altar-like + structure and silent heart-language of the old dial! It + stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it + almost everywhere vanished? + +In this essay, too, we have a happy sentence where, noting an error +into which his memory had betrayed him, Elia wrote of his own +narratives: "They are, in truth, but shadows of fact--verisimilitudes, +not verities--or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts of +history." + +Dealing with "Grace Before Meat" Elia takes up an unconventional +position and defends it with spirit. It is something of an +impertinence to offer up thanks before an orgy of superfluous +luxuries, a "grace" is only fitting for a poor man sitting down before +the necessaries for which he may well feel thankful. Even such a theme +Lamb finds a fruitful occasion for pertinent literary illustration and +criticism, contrasting--from Milton's "Paradise Lost"--the feast +proffered by the Tempter to Christ in the wilderness with "the +temperate dreams of the divine Hungerer." + +With "My First Play" Elia returned to one of those autobiographic +themes in which he is so often at his happiest. He represents the +emotions of the child of six or seven at the theatre and contrasts +them with those that follow when the child has reached his teens. "At +school all play-going was inhibited." He concludes, and, most readers +will agree, concludes with justice, that "we differ from ourselves +less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six." + +"Dream Children," again, has much in it of the story of the writer's +childhood, blent with sorrow over his brother's recent death and +interwoven with a fanciful imagining of what might have been. Elia +pictures himself talking to his two children of his own childhood's +days when visiting grandmother Field: + + When suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice + looked out at her eyes with such a reality of + re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood + there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I + stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my + view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but + two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, + which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the + effects of speech: "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor + are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum + father. We are nothing, less than nothing, and dreams. We + are only what might have been, and must wait upon the + tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have + existence, and a name"--and immediately awaking, I found + myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had + fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my + side--but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever. + +This little essay, the most beautiful of the series, is as essentially +pathetic as anything in our literature, bringing tears to the eyes at +every reading though known almost by heart. + +The essay on "Distant Correspondents," in the form of a playful +epistle to a friend, B. F. (_i.e._, Barron Field, also a contributor +to the "London Magazine") has much that is characteristic of the +writer. In it he plays--as he does in other letters to distant +friends--on the way in which "this confusion of tenses, this grand +solecism of two presents" renders writing difficult; in it he airs his +fondness for a pun and enlarges upon the fugacity of that form of fun, +its inherent incapacity for travel; and in it, too, he gives some +indication--we have several such indications in his letters--of his +fondness for hoaxing his friends with invented news about other +friends, or with questions on supposititious problems set forth as +actualities. + +The next essay, "The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers," might be cited as +one of those most fully representing the characteristics of Lamb's +work as essayist. It has its touches of personal reminiscences, it +deals with an out-of-the-way subject in a surprisingly engaging +manner, and it is full of those quaint turns of expression, those more +or less recondite words which Elia re-introduced from the older +writers, Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, etc., as he had +re-introduced the dramatic writings of the seventeenth century. Here +is a passage which may be said to be thoroughly representative at once +of Elia's manner of looking at things, as well as his own manner of +describing them. Elia is discussing "Saloop." + + I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it + happens, but I have always found that this composition is + surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young + chimney-sweeper--whether the oily particles (sassafras is + slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous + concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to + adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged + practitioners; or whether Nature, sensible that she had + mingled too much of bitter wood in the lot of these raw + victims, caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for a + sweet lenitive; but so it is, that no possible taste or + odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a + delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. Being + penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the + ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly + no less pleased than those domestic animals--cats--when they + purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something + more in these sympathies than philosophy can inculcate. + +In this essay also we have an example--one of how many!--of Lamb's +happiness in hitting upon an illustration, even though it be of the +ludicrous; mentioning the wonderful white of the sweep-boy's teeth he +adds, "It is, as when + + 'A sable cloud + Turns forth her silver lining on the night.'" + +"A Dissertation upon Roast Pig" is perhaps the most widely known of +all the essays of Elia. Its delightful drollery, its very revelling in +the daintiness of sucking-pig, its wonderfully rich literary +presentation, its deliberate acceptance of wild improbability as +historic basis, all unite to give it special place in the regard of +readers. The theme is of course familiar. It is that of a small +Chinese boy playing with fire who burnt down his father's flimsy hut +so that a whole litter of piglings was roasted in the conflagration. +The boy touched one of the incinerated little ones to feel if it were +alive; burnt his fingers and applied them to his mouth. His father +returned and did the same, and thus roast sucking-pig became a new +dish. Lamb plays with his subject with an inimitable mock earnestness. + + Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these + tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with + something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete + custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be + curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what + effect this process might have towards intenerating and + dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the + flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we + should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we + censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto. + +The subject Charles Lamb professed to take from a Chinese manuscript +of his friend Manning's, and there have not been wanting critics who +have sought for literary germs from which this essay might have +sprung. Such will find in the seventeenth-century "Letters writ by a +Turkish Spy" the origin of roasted meat referred to the days of +sacrifice when one of the priests touching a burning beast hurt his +fingers and applied them to his mouth--with precisely the same sequel +which followed on Bo-bo's escapade. + +"A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People" is a +delicate--perhaps partly ironical--description of a bachelor's +objections to his married friends flaunting their happiness in his +face. In the last three of the essays we have Lamb as critic of the +stage--partly, as in the Dramatic Specimens, of its literature, "On +the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century;" and partly on its actors, +"On some of the Old Actors" and "On the Acting of Munden." Here again +we have proofs of his instinctive critical power, his finely perfected +method of expressing his appreciation of men and books. + +The "Last Essays of Elia," published the year before Lamb's death, +open with a "Character of the late Elia"--an admirable piece of +self-portraiture in which Lamb hit off with great felicity some of his +own characteristics, physical and intellectual. In the first of the +essays, "Blakesmoor in H----shire," the author let his memory and +fancy play about the old house, lately razed, in which his grandmother +Field had held sway as housekeeper, in which as child he had passed +many happy holidays. Its tapestries, its haunted room, its "tattered +and diminished 'Scutcheon," its Justice Hall, its "costly fruit +garden, with its sun-baked southern wall," its "noble Marble Hall, +with its Mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars--stately busts in +marble--ranged round," each of these recalled by memory suggests some +deep thought or some pleasant turn. The opening passage at once sets +the note of the whole, and may be taken as a representation of Lamb's +contemplative mood: + + I do not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at + will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family + mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better + passion than envy; and contemplations on the great and good, + whom we fancy in succession to have been its inhabitants, + weave for us illusions, incompatible with the bustle of + modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish present + aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, + attends us between entering an empty and a crowded church. + In the latter it is chance but some present human + frailty--an act of inattention on the part of some of the + auditory--or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory on + that of the preacher--puts us by our best thoughts, + disharmonizing the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou + know the beauty of holiness? go alone on some week-day, + borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool + aisles of some country church: think of the piety that has + kneeled there--the congregations, old and young, that have + found consolation there--the meek pastor, the docile + parishioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross + conflicting comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the + place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as + the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee. + +"Poor Relations" is a beautiful example of humour--provoking to smiles +while touching to tears--with a wonderful introductory piling up of +definitions: "A Poor Relation--is the most irrelevant thing in +nature,--a piece of impertinent correspondency,--a preposterous +shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity,--an unwelcome +remembrancer," and so on. "This theme of poor relations is replete +with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations that it +is difficult to keep the account distinct without blending." The essay +includes three or four admirable examples of Elia's felicity in +drawing typical characters with just that touch of oddity that makes +them live as individuals. The theatre which we have seen always made +its triple appeal to Lamb--from the study, from the front, and from +the boards--inspired the next three essays, "Stage Illusions," "To the +Shade of Elliston," and "Ellistoniana." The first is an example of +subtle criticism showing how it is that we get enjoyment out of +unlovely attributes on the stage, thanks to the "exquisite art of the +actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us," that things are not +altogether what they seem to be. In the two essays on Elliston we have +at once an eloquent tribute to a stage-magnate of his day and a fine +character portrait. + +"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," might be cited as one of the +most characteristic of the essays of Elia. It illustrates the writer's +happiest style, and indicates his taste. In its opening passages are +words and phrases which have become quotations "familiar in the mouth +as household words" to all book-lovers. Lamb takes as his text a +remark made by Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh's "Relapse": "To mind the +inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced products +of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may +be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own." + + An ingenious acquaintance was so much struck with this + bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading + altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At + the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must + confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time + to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' + speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. + When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. + Books think for me. + + I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for + me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I + call a _book_. There are things in that shape which I cannot + allow for such. + + In this catalogue of _books which are no books_--_biblia + a-biblia_--I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket + Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on the back, + Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at Large; the + works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, + and, generally, all those volumes which "no gentleman's + library should be without"; the Histories of Flavius + Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's "Moral Philosophy." + With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless + my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. + + I confess that it moves my spleen to see these _things in + books' clothing_ perched upon shelves, like false saints, + usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, + thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a + well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some + kind-hearted playbook; then, opening what "seem its + leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To + expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find--Adam Smith; to + view a well-arranged assortment of block-headed + Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an + array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that good + leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios; + would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund + Lully to look himself again in the world. I never see these + impostors, but I long to strip them to warm my ragged + veterans in their spoils. + +He passes on to a consideration of the fitting habiliments of books; +the sizes which appealed to him; the where and when to read: "I should +not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral alone +and reading 'Candide'!"--"The Old Margate Hoy" gives reminiscences of +a visit to the popular resort--with some uncomplimentary asides at +Hastings--in the days of the boy, "ill-exchanged for the foppery and +freshwater niceness of the modern steampacket," the boy that asked "no +aid of magic fumes, and spells, and boiling cauldrons." "The +Convalescent" expatiates upon the allowable egoism of the occupant of +a sick bed, upon his "regal solitude," and goes on to show "how +convalescence shrinks a man back to his primitive state." The essay +was inspired by that ill-health which led to Lamb's retirement from +the India House in 1825. At the close he indulged his pen in his +conversational fondness for a pun: + + In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb of + sickness, yet far enough removed from the terra firma of + established health, your note, dear Editor, reached me, + requesting--an article. _In articulo mortis_, thought I; but + it is something hard--and the quibble, wretched as it was, + relieved me. + +In the "Sanity of True Genius" Elia set out to controvert the idea +expressed by Dryden in his best remembered line-- + + "Great wits to madness nearly are allied," + +and does so in a most convincing manner if, with him, we understand by +the greatness of wit poetic talent. As he says: "It is impossible for +the mind to conceive of a mad Shakespeare." + + The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in the + raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to + which they have no parallel in their own experience, besides + the spurious resemblance of it in dreams and fevers, impute + a state of dreaminess and fever to the poet. But the true + poet dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his subject + but has dominion over it. In the groves of Eden he walks + familiar as in his native paths. He ascends the empyrean + heaven, and is not intoxicated. He treads the burning marl + without dismay; he wins his flight without self-loss through + realms of chaos "and old night." Or if, abandoning himself + to that severer chaos of a "human mind untuned," he is + content awhile to be mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a + sort of madness) with Timon; neither is that madness, nor + this misanthropy, so unchecked, but that--never letting the + reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems to do so--he + has his better genius whispering at his ear, with the good + servant Kent suggesting saner counsels; or with the honest + steward Flavius recommending kindlier resolutions. Where he + seems most to recede from humanity, he will be found the + truest to it. + +"Captain Jackson" is an unforgettable picture of a poor man who would +_not_ be poor; his manners made a plated spoon appear as silver +sugar-tongs, a homely bench a sofa, and so on. As Elia concludes: + + There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon indigent + circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them + before strangers, may not always be discommendable. Tibbs + and Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our admiration + than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself; + to play the Bobadil at home; and, steeped in poverty up to + the lips, to fancy himself all the while chin-deep in + riches, is a strain of constitutional philosophy, and a + mastery over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend + Captain Jackson. + +With the next essay of this collection, that on "The Superannuated +Man," we come to one of the most notable of the series of Elia's +transmutations of matters of private experience into precious +literature. The paper is as autobiographic as any of his letters: some +slight changes--as of the East India House to the name of a city +firm--are made, but for the rest it is a record of his retirement with +a revelation of the feelings attendant upon the change from having to +go daily to an office for thirty-six years to being suddenly free: + + For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I + could only apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to + taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy + and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a + prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a + forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with + myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity--for + it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have all his Time to + himself. It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands + than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I + was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no + end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious + bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. And here let + me caution persons grown old in active business, not + lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, to forego + their customary employment all at once, for there may be + danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that my + resources are sufficient; and now that those first giddy + raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the + blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all + holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon + me I could walk it away; but I do not walk all day long, as + I used to do in those old transient holidays, thirty miles a + day, to make the most of them. If Time were troublesome, I + could read it away, but I do not read in that violent + measure, with which, having no Time my own but candlelight + Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in bygone + winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when the + fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure; I let it + come to me. I am like the man + + "---- that's born, and has his years come to him, + In some green desert." + +"The Genteel Style in Writing" is a delightful enforcement of the +"ordinary criticism" that "my Lord Shaftesbury, and Sir William +Temple, are models of the genteel style in writing," though Elia +prefers to differentiate them as "the lordly and the gentlemanly." The +essay is, for the most part, a plea, with illustrations, for a +consideration of Sir William Temple as an easy and engaging writer. +"Barbara S----" is a slight anecdote expanded into a sympathetic +little story of a child-actress who, instead of her half-guinea +salary, being once handed a guinea in error, virtuously took it back +and received the moiety. + +"The Tombs in the Abbey" is an indignant protest--in the form of a +letter to Southey--against the closing of Westminster Abbey and St. +Paul's Cathedral, except during service times, to all but those who +could afford to pay for admission; it closes with a touch of humour +where Elia suggests that the Abbey had been closed because the statue +of Major Andre had been disfigured, and adds: "The mischief was done +about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you know anything +about the unfortunate relic?" Then, in "Amicus Redivivus," we have an +accident to a friend, George Dyer, who had walked absent-mindedly into +the New River opposite Lamb's very door, made to supply matter for +treatment in Elia's pleasantest vein. + +"Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney" gives a dozen of Sidney's sonnets +with appreciatory comment. "Newspapers Thirty Years Ago" is +particularly interesting for its reminiscences of the days when Lamb +wrote half a dozen daily jests for "The Morning Post" at sixpence per +jest, and for its sketches of Daniel Stuart and Fenwick, two diversely +typical journalists of a century since. "Barrenness of the Imaginative +Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art" is a criticism of the +prevailing taste in art matters, inspired by Martin's "Belshazzar's +Feast," and contrasts the modern methods of painting as--a Dryad, "a +beautiful naked figure recumbent under wide-stretched oaks" (a figure +that with a different background would do just as well as a Naiad), +with the older method illustrated by Julio Romano's dryad, in which +was "an approximation of two natures." "Rejoicings Upon the New Year's +Coming of Age" is a graceful, sparkling piece of humorous fancy: + + I should have told you, that cards of invitation had been + issued. The carriers were the _Hours_; twelve little, merry + whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire to see, that went + all round, and found out the persons invited well enough, + with the exception of _Easter Day_, _Shrove Tuesday_, and a + few such _Moveables_, who had lately shifted their quarters. + + Well, they all met at last, foul _Days_, fine _Days_, all + sorts of _Days_, and a rare din they made of it. There was + nothing but, Hail! fellow _Day_,--well met--brother + _Day_--sister _Day_,--only _Lady Day_ kept a little on the + aloof, and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet some said _Twelfth + Day_ cut her out and out, for she came in a tiffany suit, + all white and gold, like a queen on a frost-cake--all royal, + glittering, and _Epiphanous_. The rest came--some in green, + some in white--but old _Lent and his family_ were not yet + out of mourning. Rainy _Days_ came in, dripping; and + sun-shiny _Days_ helped them to change their stockings. + _Wedding Day_ was there in his marriage finery, a little the + worse for wear. _Pay Day_ came late, as he always does; and + _Doomsday_ sent word--he might be expected. + +"The Wedding" describes such a ceremony at which Elia had assisted, +and illustrates at once his sympathy with the young people and with +their parents--"is there not something untender, to say no more of it, +in the hurry which a beloved child is in to tear herself from the +paternal stock and commit herself to strange graftings." "The Child +Angel" is a beautiful poetic apologue in the form of a dream. + +In "Old China," one of the most attractive of this varied series, Elia +is ready with reminiscences of the days when the purchase of the +books, pictures, or old china that they loved, meant a real sacrifice, +and the things purchased were therefore the more deeply prized. + + Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon + you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so + threadbare--and all because of that folio Beaumont and + Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's + in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks + before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had + not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of + the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing + you should be too late--and when the old bookseller, with + some grumbling, opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper + (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from + his dusty treasures--and when you lugged it home wishing it + were twice as cumbersome--and when you presented it to me; + and when we were exploring the perfectness of it + (_collating_ you called it)--and while I was repairing some + of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would + not suffer to be left till daybreak--was there no pleasure + in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes you + wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have + become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity, + with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit--your + old corbeau--for four or five weeks longer than you should + have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of + fifteen--or sixteen shillings, was it?--a great affair we + thought it then--which you had lavished on the old folio. + Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I + do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old + purchases now. + + When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a + less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, + which we christened the "Lady Blanch"; when you looked at + the purchase, and thought of the money,--and thought of the + money, and looked again at the picture--was there no + pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do + but walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. + Yet do you? + +"Confessions of a Drunkard" and "Popular Fallacies" complete the tale +of the "Essays of Elia" that were collected into volume form as such. +The first-named essay had been issued originally in 1813. It is an +attempt to set forth from a drunkard's point of view the evils of +drunkenness, and was first published in a periodical with a purpose +over twenty years before its inclusion in the second edition of the +"Last Essays of Elia." To accentuate the fact that it was purely a +literary performance--an attempt to project himself into the mind of a +drunkard willing to allow others to profit by his example--Lamb +reprinted it in the "London Magazine" as one of his ordinary +contributions. There have not been wanting matter-of-fact people (with +whom our Elia has recorded his imperfect sympathy) who have accepted +this essay as pure biography; because details tally with the author's +life they think the whole must do so. We have but to follow the story +of Lamb's life with understanding to realize how wrong is this +impression. The closing dozen of essays in brief, grouped under the +title of "Popular Fallacies," discuss certain familiar axioms and show +them--in the light of fun and fancy--to be wholly fallacious. + +Such is the variety of those two volumes which by common consent--by +popular appreciation and by critical judgement--have their place as +Lamb's most characteristic work. Throughout both series we find +delicate unconventionality, the same choice of subjects from among the +simplest suggestions of everyday life, lifted by his method of +treatment, his manner of looking at and treating things, out of the +sphere of every day into that of all days. However simple may be the +subject chosen it is always made peculiarly his own. + + + + +HIS STYLE + + +The style is the man. The rule was thus confined within the compass of +a brief sentence by a distinguished French naturalist, and if there be +examples which form exceptions to that rule, Charles Lamb is certainly +not one of them. Markedly individual himself he reveals that +individuality in his writings so strongly that there are not wanting +critics who consider themselves able to decide from the turn of a +phrase or the use of a word whether Lamb did or did not write any +particular piece of work which it may have been sought to father on +him. In the manner of presentation of his writings we have at once the +revelation of catholic literary taste and wide reading combined with +the deep seriousness and the almost irresponsible whimsicality of the +man himself. The man who was loved by all who knew him in the +flesh--so true is it that _le style c'est l'homme_--reveals himself as +a man to be loved by those who can only know him through the medium of +the written word. Where he has given rein to his fancy or his +imagination, he is humorous, whimsical, inventive; where he is dealing +with matters of serious fact or criticism he is simple, clear, and to +the point. Quotations already given would go to illustrate this, but +two further contrasting passages may be added. The first is from +"Table Talk," the second from a critical essay on the acting of +Shakespeare's tragedies. + + It is a desideratum in works that treat _de re culinaria_, + that we have no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed + flavours; as to show why cabbage is reprehensible with roast + beef, laudable with bacon; why the haunch of mutton seeks + the alliance of currant jelly, the shoulder civilly + declineth it; why a loin of veal (a pretty problem), being + itself unctuous, seeketh the adventitious lubricity of + melted butter; and why the same part in pork, not more + oleaginous, abhorreth it; why the French bean sympathizes + with the flesh of deer; why salt fish points to parsnip, + brawn makes a dead set at mustard; why cats prefer valerian + to heartsease, old ladies _vice versa_--though this is + rather travelling out of the road of the dietetics, and may + be thought a question more curious than relevant; why salmon + (a strong sapor _per se_) fortifieth its condition with the + mighty lobster sauce, whose embraces are fatal to the + delicater relish of the turbot; why oysters in death rise up + against the contamination of brown sugar, while they are + posthumously amorous of vinegar; why the sour mango and the + sweet jam, by turns, court and are accepted by the + compilable mutton hash--she not yet decidedly declaring for + either. We are as yet but in the empirical stage of cookery. + + * * * * * + + So to see Lear acted--to see an old man tottering about the + stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his + daughters on a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is + painful and disgusting. We want to take him into shelter and + relieve him. That is all the feeling which the acting of + Lear ever produced on me. But the Lear of Shakespeare + cannot be acted. The contemptible machinery by which they + mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more inadequate + to represent the horrors of the real elements, than any + actor can be to represent Lear: they might more easily + propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or + one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness of + Lear is not in corporal dimension but in intellectual: the + explosions of his passions are terrible as a volcano; they + are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea, + his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is + laid bare. This case of flesh and blood seems too + insignificant to be thought on; even as he himself neglects + it. On the stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities and + weakness, the impotence of rage: while we read it, we see + not Lear, but we are Lear--we are in his mind, we are + sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of + daughters and storms; in the aberrations of his reason, we + discover a mighty irregular power of reasoning, immethodized + from the ordinary purposes of life, but exerting its powers, + as the wind bloweth where it listeth, at will upon the + corruptions and abuses of mankind. What have looks or tones + to do with that sublime identification of his age with that + of the heavens themselves, when in his reproaches to them + for conniving at the injustice of his children, he reminds + them that "they themselves are old"? What gesture shall we + appropriate to this? What has the voice or the eye to do + with such things? + + From the olden time + Of Authorship thy Patent should be dated, + And thou with Marvell, Browne, and Burton mated. + +Thus did Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, close a sonnet which he +addressed to Elia, and there is keen criticism in the few words. With +the three writers mentioned Lamb was in rarest sympathy; many are the +references to them in his books and in his letters. With Andrew +Marvell he shows his kinship in his verse, with the authors of "The +Religio Medici" and of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," in diverse ways in +his prose. Now fanciful and euphemistic with these, he is, as soon as +occasion calls for plainer statement, clear and simple in expression. +As one critic has put it, he was so steeped in the literature of the +past that it became natural for him to deal with a theme more or less +in the manner in which that theme would have been dealt with by that +writer in the past most likely to have made it his own. This is +perhaps slightly exaggerated, but it has something of truth in it. +"For with all his marked individuality of manner there are perhaps few +English writers who have written so differently on different themes." +Placing special emphasis on his favourites--which besides the three +named included Jeremy Taylor, Chapman, and Wither, to say nothing of +the whole body of the dramatists of our literary renaissance--it may +be said that his wide reading, his loving study, among the authors of +our richest literary periods went far towards forming his style, +though it must be remembered--it cannot be forgotten with a volume of +his essays or letters in hand--that there is always that marked but +indescribable "individuality of manner" which pervades the varied +whole. + +Hazlitt, touching upon the characteristics of Charles Lamb, in the +essay in which he--not very felicitously--brackets Elia and Geoffrey +Crayon in the "Spirit of the Age," says: + + He is borne along with no pompous paradoxes, shines in no + glittering tinsel of a fashionable phraseology; is neither + fop nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence or froth of + new-fangled opinions. His style runs pure and clear, though + it may often take an underground course, or be conveyed + through old-fashioned conduit pipes. Mr. Lamb does not court + popularity, nor strut in gaudy plumes, but shrinks from + every kind of ostentatious and obvious pretension into the + retirement of his own mind. + +That mind was, as has been said, stored with a wealth from among the +best of English literature, and when Lamb expressed himself it was +always in pure literary fashion. He was a bookman writing for those +who love things of the mind which can only be passed from generation +to generation by means of books. In this we may recognize the +reason--wholly unconscious to the writer--for the allusiveness of his +style: it is often that subtle allusiveness which takes for granted as +much knowledge in the reader as in the writer of the thing or passage +to which allusion is made. In the sixteenth century such allusiveness +was generally fruit of an extensive knowledge of the ancient classics; +but though the references differ, the manner is much the same in +Charles Lamb as in Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne. + +Less confident critics than those mentioned at the beginning of this +section may yet readily recognize the general individuality of the +style in which Elia revealed himself through the medium of his pen. To +his lifelong habit of browsing among old books, his especial fondness +for the writers of the sixteenth century, he owed no small part of the +richness of his vocabulary, which enabled him frequently to use with +fine effect happy old words in place of current makeshifts. In one of +his early letters to Coleridge where he mentions having just finished +reading Chapman's Homer, Lamb, seizing upon a phrase in that +translation, says with gusto, "what _endless egression of phrases_ the +dog commands." The word arrided him (to employ another, the use of +which he recovered for us), and he could not forbear making a note of +it. He had, indeed, something of an instinctive genius for finding +words that had passed more or less into desuetude, and a happy way of +re-introducing them to enrich the plainer prose of his day. He did it +naturally, even as though inevitably, and without any such air of +coxcombical affectation as would have destroyed the flavour of the +whole. Lamb was so thoroughly imbued with the thought and modes of +expression of the rich Elizabethan and Stuart periods that his use of +obsolescent words was probably more often than not quite unconscious. + +The egotism of Elia's style in addressing his readers has been said to +be founded on that of Sir Thomas Browne, and in a measure there can be +little doubt that it was so--but only in a measure, for it is +something the same egotism as that of Montaigne, is, indeed, the +natural attitude of the familiar essayist who must be egotistic, not +from self-consciousness but from the lack of it. In putting his +opinions and experiences in the first person, we feel that Lamb did so +almost unconsciously, because it was for him the easiest way of +expressing himself. It was not, in fact, egotism at all in the +commonly accepted sense of meaning, too frequent or self-laudatory use +of the personal pronoun. + + + + +CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS + + +Those books with an asterisk against their date were only in part the +work of Charles Lamb. + +*1796. Poems on Various Subjects, by S. T. Coleridge (included four +sonnets signed C. L., described in the preface as by "Mr. Charles Lamb +of the India House"). + +*1796. Poems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer, by her grandson, + Charles Lloyd (included "The Grandame," by Lamb). + +*1797. Poems by S. T. Coleridge, second edition, to which are now + added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd. + +*1798. Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb. + +1798. A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret (afterwards + simply entitled "Rosamund Gray"). + +1802. John Woodvil, a Tragedy; with Fragments of Burton. + +1805. The King and Queen of Hearts: Showing how notably the Queen made + her Tarts and how scurvily the Knave stole them away with other + particulars belonging thereunto. + +*1807. Tales from Shakespear, designed for the use of young Persons. 2 + vols. (By Charles and Mary Lamb, though only the name of the + former appeared on the original title-page.) + +*1807 or 1808. Mrs. Leicester's School, or the History of several + young Ladies related by themselves (by Charles and + Mary Lamb). + +1808. The Adventures of Ulysses. + +1808. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the Time of + Shakespeare. + +*1809. Poetry for Children. Entirely original. By the author of "Mrs. + Leicester's School." + +1811. Prince Dorus; or Flattery put out of Countenance. A Poetical + Version of an Ancient Tale. + +[1811. Beauty and the Beast; or a Rough Outside with Gentle Heart. A + Poetical Version of an Ancient Tale; credited to Lamb by some + authorities but on inconclusive evidence.] + +1818. The Works of Charles Lamb. In 2 vols. + +1823. Elia. Essays which have appeared under that title in the "London + Magazine" (now known as "Essays of Elia"): + +The South-Sea House. +Oxford in the Vacation. +Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years ago. +The Two Races of Men. +New Year's Eve. +Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist. +A Chapter on Ears. +All Fools' Day. +A Quakers' Meeting. +The Old and the New Schoolmaster. +Valentine's Day. +Imperfect Sympathies. +Witches and other Night Fears. +My Relations. +Mackery End in Hertfordshire. +Modern Gallantry. +The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. +Grace before Meat. +My First Play. +Dream-Children: a Reverie. +Distant Correspondents. +The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers. +A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis. +A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. +A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People. +On some of the Old Actors. +On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century. +On the Acting of Munden. + +1830. Album Verses, with a few others. + +1831. Satan in Search of a Wife. + +1833. The Last Essays of Elia. + +Preface. +Blakesmoor in H----shire. +Poor Relations. +Stage Illusion. +To the Shade of Elliston. +Ellistoniana. +Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading. +The Old Margate Hoy. +The Convalescent. +Sanity of True Genius. +Captain Jackson. +The Superannuated Man. +The Genteel Style in Writing. +Barbara S----. +The Tombs in the Abbey. +Amicus Redivivus. +Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney. +Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago. +Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art. +Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age. +The Wedding. +The Child Angel. +Old China. +Confessions of a Drunkard. +Popular Fallacies. + + + + +II. POSTHUMOUS WORKS AND COLLECTED EDITIONS + + +1837. Poetical Works of Charles Lamb. + +1837. Letters of Charles Lamb, with a Sketch of his Life, by Thomas + Noon Talfourd. 2 vols. + +1848. The Final Memorials of Charles Lamb. By T. N. Talfourd. + +1865. Eliana. Collected by J. E. Babson. + +1875. Works. Centenary edition, with Memoir by Charles Kent. + +1876. Life, Letters and Writings of Lamb. Edited by Percy Fitzgerald. + +1883-8. Lamb's Works and Correspondence. Edited by Alfred Ainger. 12 vols. + +1886. Letters of Charles Lamb (being Talfourd's two works in one with + additions). Edited by W. Carew Hazlitt. Bohn's Standard + Library. + +1893. Bon Mots of Charles Lamb, etc. Edited by Walter Jerrold. + +1903-4. The Works of Charles Lamb. Edited by William Macdonald. 12 vols. + +1903-5. The Works of Charles Lamb. Edited by E. V. Lucas. 7 vols. + +1904. Letters of Charles Lamb. Edited by Alfred Ainger. New edition. 2 + vols. Eversley Series. + + + + +III. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM + + +See entries under 1837 and 1848, etc., in preceding section. + +1866. Charles Lamb: a Memoir. By Barry Cornwall. + +1866. Lamb, his Friends, Haunts, Books. By Percy Fitzgerald. + +1882. Charles Lamb. By Alfred Ainger in the English Men of Letters + Series (revised and enlarged edition, 1888). + +1891. In the Footprints of Lamb. By B. E. Martin. + +1897. The Lambs: New Particulars. By W. C. Hazlitt. + +1898. Charles Lamb and the Lloyds. Edited by E. V. Lucas. + +1900. Lamb and Hazlitt: Further Letters and Records, hitherto + Unpublished. Edited by W. C. Hazlitt. + +1903. Sidelights on Charles Lamb. By Bertram Dobell. + +1905. Life of Charles Lamb. By E. V. Lucas. 2 vols. + +The above list does not include separate editions of the "Essays" and +other works; most of Lamb's writings are obtainable to-day in cheap +and convenient forms. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Charles Lamb, by Walter Jerrold + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLES LAMB *** + +***** This file should be named 17977.txt or 17977.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/9/7/17977/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +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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