Chapter XXXIV: Part II: , were published in 1697. The passage quoted is from that "On (1)

Musick," the second essay in Part II. I have restored his italics and capitals.

Page 183, at foot. "_His genius...._" Collier's words are: "His genius was jocular, but when disposed he could be very serious."

Page 184. X.--[PLAYHOUSE MEMORANDA.]

_The Examiner_, December 19, 1813. Signed ‡. Leigh Hunt reprinted it in _The Indicator_, December 13, 1820.

The paper, towards the end, becomes a first sketch for the _Elia_ essay "My First Play," 1821. As a whole it is hardly less charming than that essay, while its analysis of the Theatre audience gives it an independent interest and value.

Page 185, line 3. _They had come to see Mr. C----._ It was George Frederick Cooke, of whom Lamb writes in the criticism on page 41, that they had come to see. Possibly the Cooke they saw was T. P. Cooke (1786-1864), afterwards famous for his sailor parts; but more probably an obscure Cooke who never rose to fame. A Mr. Cook played a small part in Lamb's "Mr. H." in 1806.

Page 186, line 6. _The system of Lucretius._ Lucretius, in _De Rerum Natura_, imagined the gods to be above passion or emotion, heedless of this world's concerns, figures of absolute peace.

Page 186, line 22. _It was "Artaxerxes."_ An opera by Thomas Augustine Arne, produced in 1762, founded upon Metastasio's "Artaserse." From the other particulars of Lamb's early play-going, given in the _Elia_ essay "My First Play," we know the date of this performance to be December 1, 1780, that being the only occasion in that or the next season when "Artaxerxes" was followed by "Harlequin's Invasion." But none of the singers named by Lamb were in the caste on that occasion. "Who played, or who sang in it, I know not," he says; merely setting down likely and well-known names at random. As a matter of fact Artaxerxes was played by Mrs. Baddeley, Arbaces by Miss Pruden, and Mandane by "a young lady." Mr. Beard was John Beard (1716?-1791), the tenor. Leoni was the discoverer and instructor of Braham. He made his début in "Artaxerxes" in 1775. Mrs. Kennedy, formerly Mrs. Farrell, was a contralto. She died in 1793.

Page 186, line 10 from foot. _I was, with Uriel._

Th' archangel Uriel, one of the sev'n
Who in God's presence, nearest to his throne,
Stand ready at command.

_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 648-650.

Uriel's station was the sun. See also _Paradise Lost_, III. 160, IV. 577 and 589, and IX. 60.

* * * * *

Page 187. WORDSWORTH'S "EXCURSION."

The _Quarterly Review_, October, 1814. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Wordsworth's _Excursion_ was published in 1814; and it seems to have been upon his own suggestion, made, probably, to Southey, who was a power in the _Quarterly_ office, that Lamb should review it. In his letter to Wordsworth of August 29, 1814, Lamb expressed a not too ready willingness. Writing again a little later, when the review was done, he spoke of "the circumstances of haste and peculiar bad spirits" under which it was written, viewing it without much confidence; and adding, "But it must speak for itself, if Gifford and his crew do not put words in its mouth, which I expect." As Lamb expected, so it happened. Lamb's next letter, after the publication of the October _Quarterly_ (which does not seem to have come out until very late in the year), ran thus:--

"DEAR WORDSWORTH,--I told you my Review was a very imperfect one. But what you will see in the Quarterly is a spurious one which Mr. Baviad Gifford has palm'd upon it for mine. I never felt more vexd in my life than when I read it. I cannot give you an idea of what he has done to it out of spite at me because he once sufferd me to be called a lunatic in his Thing. The _language_ he has alterd throughout. Whatever inadequateness it had to its subject, it was in point of composition the prettiest piece of prose I ever writ, and so my sister (to whom alone I read the MS.) said. That charm if it had any is all gone: more than a third of the substance is cut away and that not all from one place, but _passim_, so as to make utter nonsense. Every warm expression is changed for a nasty cold one. I have not the cursed alteration by me, I shall never look at it again, but for a specimen I remember--I had said the Poet of the Excurs^n 'walks thro' common forests as thro' some Dodona or enchanted wood and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher lovelays.' It is now (besides half a dozen alterations in the same half dozen lines) 'but in language more _intelligent_ reveals to him'--that is one I remember. But that would have been little, putting his damnd Shoemaker phraseology (for he was a shoemaker) in stead of mine which has been tinctured with better authors than his ignorance can comprehend--for I reckon myself a dab at _Prose_--verse I leave to my betters--God help them, if they are to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter. I have read 'It won't do.'[65] But worse than altering words, he has kept a few members only of the part I had done best which was to explain all I could of your 'scheme of harmonies' as I had ventured to call it between the external universe and what within us answers to it. To do this I had accumulated a good many short passages, rising in length to the end, weaving in the Extracts as if they came in as a part of the text, naturally, not obtruding them as specimens. Of this part a little is left, but so as without conjuration no man could tell what I was driving it [? at]. A proof of it you may see (tho' not judge of the whole of the injustice) by these words--I had spoken something about 'natural methodism--' and after follows 'and therefore the tale of Margaret sh^d have been postponed' (I forget my words, or his words): now the reasons for postponing it are as deducible from what goes before, as they are from the 104th psalm. The passage whence I deduced it, has vanished, but clapping a colon before a _therefore_ is always reason enough for Mr. Baviad Gifford to allow to a reviewer that is not himself. I assure you my complaints are founded. I know how sore a word alterd makes one, but indeed of this Review the whole complexion is gone. I regret only that I did not keep a copy. I am sure you would have been pleased with it, because I have been feeding my fancy for some months with the notion of pleasing you. Its imperfection or inadequateness in size and method I knew, but for the _writing part_ of it, I was fully satisfied. I hoped it would make more than atonement. Ten or twelve distinct passages come to my mind which are gone, and what is left is of course the worse for their having been there, the eyes are pulld out and the bleeding sockets are left. I read it at Arch's shop with my face burning with vexation secretly, with just such a feeling as if it had been a review written against myself, making false quotations from me. But I am ashamd to say so much about a short piece. How are _you_ served! and the labors of years turn'd into contempt by scoundrels.

"But I could not but protest against your taking that thing as mine. Every _pretty_ expression, (I know there were many) every warm expression, there was nothing else, is vulgarised and frozen--but if they catch me in their camps again let them spitchcock me. They had a right to do it, as no name appears to it, and Mr. Shoemaker Gifford I suppose never waved a right he had since he commencd author. God confound him and all caitiffs.

"C. L."

[65] "This will never do"--the beginning of the review in the
_Edinburgh_.--ED.

The word "lunatic" refers to the _Quarterly's_ review in December, 1811, of _The Dramatic Works of John Ford_, by Henry William Weber, Sir Walter Scott's assistant, where, alluding to the comments on Ford in Lamb's _Specimens_, quoted by Weber, the reviewer described them as "the blasphemies of a maniac." See page 57 of this volume for Lamb's actual remarks on Ford. Southey wrote Gifford a letter of remonstrance, and Gifford explained that he had used the words without knowledge of Lamb's history--knowing of him nothing but his name--and adding that he would have lost his right arm sooner than have written what he did had he known the circumstances. The late Mr. Dykes Campbell, whose opinion in such matters was of the weightiest, declined to let Gifford escape with this apology. Reviewing in _The Athenæum_ for August 25, 1894, a new edition of Lamb's _Dramatic Specimens_, Mr. Campbell wrote thus:--

Had Gifford merely called Lamb a "fool" or a "madman," the epithet
would have been mere "common form" as addressed by the _Quarterly_
of those days to a wretch who was a friend of other wretches such
as Hunt and Hazlitt; but he went far beyond such common form and
used language of the utmost precision. Weber, wrote Gifford, "has
polluted his pages with the blasphemies of a poor maniac, who it
seems once published some detached scenes from the 'Broken Heart.'
For this unfortunate creature every feeling mind will find an
apology in his calamitous situation." This passage has no meaning
at all if it is not to be taken as a positive statement that Lamb
suffered from chronic mental derangement; yet Gifford when
challenged confessed that when he wrote it he had known absolutely
nothing of Lamb, except his name! It seems to have struck neither
Gifford nor Southey that this was no excuse at all, and something a
good deal worse than no excuse--that even as an explanation it was
not such as an honourable man would have cared to offer. Gifford
added a strongly-worded expression of his feeling of remorse on
learning that his blows had fallen with cruel effect on a sore
place. Both feeling and expression may have been sincere, for,
under the circumstances, only a fiend would be incapable of
remorse. But the excuse or explanation is open to much suspicion,
owing to the fact (revealed in the Murray "Memoirs") that Lamb's
friend Barron Field had been Gifford's collaborator in the
preparation of the article in which the offending passage occurs.
Field was well acquainted with Lamb's personal and family history,
and while the article was in progress the collaborators could
hardly have avoided some exchange of ideas on a subject which
stirred one of them so deeply. Gifford may have said honestly
enough, according to his lights, that only a maniac could have
written the note quoted by Weber, a remark which would naturally
draw from Field some confidences regarding Lamb's history. This is,
of course, pure assumption, but it is vastly more reasonable and
much more likely to be in substantial accordance with the facts
than Gifford's statement that when he called Lamb a poor maniac,
whose calamitous situation offered a sufficient apology for his
blasphemies, he was imaginatively describing a man of whom he knew
absolutely nothing, except that he was "a thoughtless scribbler."
If, as seems only too possible, Gifford deliberately poisoned his
darts, it is also probable that he did not realize what he was
doing. It would be unfair to accept Hazlitt's picture of him as a
true portrait; but Lamb's apology for Hazlitt himself applies with
at least equal force to the first editor of the _Quarterly_. "He
does bad actions without being a bad man." Perhaps it is too
lenient, for though Gifford's attack on Lamb was undoubtedly one of
the bad actions of his life, it was, after all, a matter of
conduct. The apology, whether truthful or the opposite, reveals
deep-seated corruption of principle if not of character.

Lamb's phrase, "Mr. Shoemaker Gifford," had reason for its existence. William Gifford (1756-1826) was apprenticed to a shoemaker in 1772. Lamb later repaid some of his debt in the sonnet "St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford," which appeared in _The Examiner_, October 3, 1819, and was reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ in 1822. Gifford, who was editor of the _Quarterly_ on its establishment in 1809, held the post until his death, in 1826.

The original copy of Lamb's review of Wordsworth, Mr. John Murray informs me, no longer exists. I have collated the extracts with the first edition of the _Excursion_ and have also corrected the Tasso.

Page 187, line 3 of essay. _To be called the Recluse._ Wordsworth never completed this scheme. A fragment called _The Recluse_, Book I., was published in 1888.

Page 188, line 7. _Which Thomson so feelingly describes._ This is the passage, from Thomson's _Seasons_, "Winter," 799-809:--

There, through the prison of unbounded wilds,
Barr'd by the hand of Nature from escape,
Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around
Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow;
And heavy-loaded groves; and solid floods,
That stretch'd, athwart the solitary vast,
Their icy horrors to the frozen main;
And cheerless towns far-distant, never bless'd,
Save when its annual course the caravan
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,
With news of human-kind.

* * * * *

Page 200. ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS.

_The Champion_, December 4, 1814. _Works_, 1818.

The editor of _The Champion_ was then John Scott, afterwards editor of the _London Magazine_, which printed Lamb's best work. From a letter written by Lamb to Scott in 1814 (in the late Dr. Birkbeck Hill's _Talks about Autographs_, 1896) it seems that he was to contribute more or less regularly to _The Champion_. Lamb wrote:--

"SIR,--Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I accede
to your proposal most willingly.

"As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please
call upon you for _your part of the engagement_ (supposing I shall
have performed mine) on the 1st of March next, and thence forward
if it suit you quarterly--you will occasionally wink at BRISKETS
and VEINY PIECES.

"Your Obt. Svt.,

"C. LAMB."

This essay on "Tailors" is, however, the only piece by Lamb that can be identified, although probably many of the passages from old authors quoted in _The Champion_ in Scott's time were contributed by Lamb. These might be the briskets and veiny pieces he refers to. On January 23, 1814, is "A Challenge" of the Learned Dog at Drury Lane which he might have written; but it is not interesting now. Later, after John Thelwall took over _The Champion_ in 1818, Lamb contributed various epigrams, which will be found in Vol. IV. of the present edition.

Lamb seems to have sent the present essay to Wordsworth, whose reply we may imagine took the form of an account of certain tailors within his own experience that did not comply with Lamb's scription; since Lamb's answer to that letter is the one dated beginning, "Your experience about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton [Lamb's essay is signed 'Burton, Junior']" and so forth.

When preparing this essay for the _Works_, 1818, Lamb omitted certain portions. The footnote on page 202 originally continued thus:--

"But commend me above all to a shop opposite Middle Row, in
Holborn, where, by the ingenious contrivance of the master taking
in three partners, there is a physical impossibility of the
conversation ever flagging, while 'the four' alternately toss it
from one to the other, and at whatever time you drop in, you are
sure of a discussion: an expedient which Mr. A----m would do well
to think on, for with all the alacrity with which he and his
excellent family are so dexterous to furnish their successive
contributions, I have sometimes known the continuity of the
dialogue broken into, and silence for a few seconds to intervene."

In connection with Mr. A----m there is a passage in a letter from Mary Lamb to Miss Hutchinson in 1818, wherein she says that when the Lambs, finding London insupportable after a long visit to Calne, in Wiltshire (at the Morgans'), had taken lodgings in Dalston, Charles was so much the creature of habit, or the slave of his barber, that he went to the Temple every morning to be shaved, on a roundabout way to the India House. This would very likely be Mr. A----m, Flower de Luce Court being just opposite the Temple, off Fetter Lane. The London directories in those days ignored barbers; hence his name must remain in disguise.

In _The Champion_, also, the paragraph on page 203, beginning, "I think," etc., ran thus:--

"I think, then, that they [the causes of tailors' melancholy] may
be reduced to three, omitting some subordinate ones; viz.

"The sedentary habits of the tailor.--
Something peculiar in his diet.--
Mental perturbation from a sense of reproach, &c.--"

And at the end of the article, as it now stands, came the following exposition of the third theory:--

"Thirdly, and lastly, _mental perturbation, arising from a sense of
shame_; in other words, _that painful consciousness which he always
carries about with him, of lying under a sort of disrepute in
popular estimation_. It is easy to talk of despising public
opinion, of its being unworthy the attention of a wise man &c. The
theory is excellent; but, somehow, in practice

"still the world prevails and its dread laugh.

"Tailors are men (it is well if so much be allowed them,) and as
such, it is not in human nature not to feel sore at being
misprized, undervalued, and made a word of scorn.[66] I have often
racked my brains to discover the grounds of this unaccountable
prejudice, which is known to exist against a useful and industrious
body of men. I confess I can discover none, except in the sedentary
posture, before touched upon, which from long experience has been
found by these artists to be the one most convenient for the
exercise of their vocation. But I would beg the more stirring and
locomotive part of the community, to whom the quiescent state of
the tailor furnishes a perpetual fund of rudeness, to consider,
that in the mere action of _sitting_ (which they make so merry
with) there is nothing necessarily ridiculous. That, in particular,
it is the posture best suited to contemplation. That it is that, in
which the hen (a creature of all others best fitted to be a pattern
of careful provision for a family) performs the most beautiful part
of her maternal office. That it is that, in which judges
deliberate, and senators take counsel. That a Speaker of the House
of Commons at a debate, or a Lord Chancellor over a suit, will
oftentimes _sit_ as long as many tailors. Lastly, let these
scoffers take heed, lest themselves, while they mock at others, be
found 'sitting in the seat of the scornful.'"

[66] "It is notorious that to call a man a _tailor_, is to heap the
utmost contempt upon him which the language of the streets can
convey. _Barber's clerk_ is an appellative less galling than this.
But there is a word, which, though apparently divested of all ill
meaning, has for some people a far deeper sting than either. It is
the insulting appellation of _governor_, with which a black-guard,
not in anger, but in perfect good will, salutes your second-rate
gentry, persons a little above his own cut. He rarely bestows it
upon the topping gentry of all, but reserves it for those of a rank
or two above his own, or whose garb is rather below their rank. It
is a word of approximation. A friend of mine will be melancholy a
great while after, from being saluted with it. I confess I have not
altogether been unhonoured with it myself."

It is told of Lamb that he once said he would sit with anything but a hen or a tailor.

Page 200. _Motto._ From Virgil's _Æneid_, Book VI., lines 617, 618. "There luckless Theseus sits, and shall sit for ever."

Page 201, line 25. _Beautiful motto._ Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who married Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., appeared at a tournament with a saddle-cloth made half of frieze and half of cloth of gold. Each side had a symbolical motto. One ran:--

Cloth of frize, be not too bold,
Though thou art match'd with cloth of gold.

The other:--

Cloth of gold do not despise,
Though thou art match'd with cloth of frize.

Page 201, line 3 from foot. _Eliot's famous troop._ General George Augustus Eliott (afterwards Lord Heathfield), the defender of Gibraltar and the founder of the 15th or King's Own Royal Light Dragoons, now the 15th Hussars, whose first action was at Emsdorf. At the time that regiment was being collected, there was a strike of tailors, many of whom joined it. Eliott, one version of the incident says, wished to get men who never having ridden had not to unlearn any bad methods of riding. Later they were engaged against the Spaniards in Cuba in 1762-1763.

Page 202, line 6. _Speculative politicians._ Lamb was probably referring to Francis Place (1771-1854), the tailor-reformer, among whose friends were certain of Lamb's own--William Frend, for example.

Page 202. _Footnote._ "_Gladden life._" From Johnson's _Life of Edmund Smith_--"one who has gladdened life"; or possibly from Coombe's "Peasant of Auburn":--

And whilst thy breast matures each patriot plan
That gladdens life and man endears to man.

Page 203, line 22. _Dr. Norris's famous narrative._ _The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris concerning the strange and deplorable Frenzy of Mr. John Dennis_ was a satirical squib by Pope against the critic John Dennis (1657-1734). The passage referred to by Lamb runs:--

_Doct._ Pray, Sir, how did you contract the Swelling?

_Denn._ By a Criticism.

_Doct._ A Criticism! that's a Distemper I never read of in _Galen_.

_Denn._ S' Death, Sir, a Distemper! It is no Distemper, but a Noble
Art. I have sat fourteen Hours a Day at it; and are you a Doctor,
and don't know there's a Communication between the Legs and the
Brain?

_Doct._ What made you sit so many Hours, Sir?

_Denn._ _Cato_, Sir.

_Doct._ Sir, I speak of your Distemper, what gave you this Tumour?

_Denn._ _Cato, Cato, Cato._

Page 204, line 2. _Envious Junos._ Lucina, at Juno's bidding, sat cross-legged before Alcmena to prolong her travail. Sir Thomas Browne in his _Pseudodoxia Epidemica; or, Enquiry into Vulgar Errors_, Book V., speaks of the posture as "veneficious," and cites Juno's case.

Page 204, at the end. _Well known that this last-named vegetable._ This is the old joke about tailors "cabbaging," that is to say, stealing cloth. The term is thus explained in Phillips' _History of Cultivated Vegetables_:--

The word cabbage ... means the firm head or ball that is formed by
the leaves turning close over each other.... From thence arose the
cant word applied to tailors, who formerly worked at the private
houses of their customers, where they were often accused of
cabbaging: which means the rolling up of pieces of cloth instead of
the list and shreds, which they claim as their due.

Lamb returned to this jest against tailors in his verses "Satan in Search of a Wife," in 1831.

In _The Champion_ for December 11, 1814, was printed a letter defending tailors against Lamb.

* * * * *

Page 204. ON NEEDLE-WORK.

_The British Lady's Magazine and Monthly Miscellany_, April 1, 1815. By Mary Lamb.

The authority for attributing this paper to Mary Lamb is Crabb Robinson. In his Diary for December 11, 1814, he writes: "I called on Miss Lamb, and chatted with her. She was not unwell, but she had undergone great fatigue from writing an article about needle-work for the new _Ladies' British Magazine_. She spoke of writing as a most painful occupation, which only necessity could make her attempt."

We know that Mary Lamb's needle was required to help keep the Lamb family, not only after Samuel Salt's death in 1792, when they had to move from the Temple, but very likely while they were there also. In one of the newspaper accounts of the tragedy of September, 1796, she is described as "a mantua-maker." Possibly she continued to sew for a while after she joined her brother, in 1799, but she would hardly call that "early life," being thirty-five in that year.

* * * * *

Page 210. ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER.

This is the one prose article that, to the best of our knowledge, made its first and only appearance in the _Works_ (1818). It was inspired by John Mathew Gutch (1776-1861), Lamb's schoolfellow at Christ's Hospital, with whom he shared rooms in Southampton Buildings in 1800. Later, when Gutch had become proprietor, at Bristol, of _Felix Farley's Bristol Journal_ (in which many of Chatterton's poems had appeared), he took advantage of his press to set up a private edition of selections from Wither, a poet then little known and not easily accessible, an interleaved copy of which, in two volumes, was sent to Lamb in 1809 or 1810. Gutch told the story in an Appendix to his _Lytell Geste of Robin Hoode_ (1847), wherein he printed a letter from Lamb dated April 9, 1810, concerning the edition, in the course of which Lamb remarks: "I never saw _Philarete_ before--judge of my pleasure. I could not forbear scribbling certain critiques in pencil on the blank leaves.... Perhaps I could digest the few critiques prefixed to the 'Satires,' 'Shepherd's Hunting,' etc., into a short abstract of Wither's character and works...."

Lamb returned the book with this letter; and Gutch seems to have then sent it to Dr. John Nott (1751-1825), of the Hot Wells, Bristol, a medical man with literary tastes, and the author of a number of translations, medical treatises, and subsequently of an edition of Herrick; who added comments of his own both upon Wither and upon Lamb.

Lamb, Gutch tells us, subsequently asked for the book again, with the intention of preparing from it the present essay on Wither, and coming then upon Nott's criticisms of himself, superimposed sarcastic criticisms of Nott. Thus the volumes contain first Wither, then Gutch and Lamb on Wither, then Nott on Wither and Lamb, and then Lamb on Nott again and incidentally on Wither again, too, for some of his earlier opinions were slightly modified.

Lamb gave the volume to his friend John Brook Pulham of the East India House, and the treasure passed to the fitting possession of the late Mr. Swinburne, who described it in a paper in the _Nineteenth Century_ for January, 1885, afterwards republished in his _Miscellanies_, 1886. Mr. Swinburne permitted me to quote from his very entertaining analysis:--

The second fly-leaf of the first volume bears the inscription, "Jas
Pulham Esqr. from Charles Lamb." A proof impression of the
well-known profile sketch of Lamb by Pulham has been inserted
between this and the preceding fly-leaf. The same place is occupied
in the second volume by the original pencil drawing, to which is
attached an engraving of it "Scratched on Copper by his Friend
Brook Pulham;" and on the fly-leaf following is a second
inscription--"James Pulham Esq. from his friend Chas Lamb." On the
reverse of the leaf inscribed with these names in the first volume
begins the commentary afterwards republished, with slight
alterations and transpositions, as an essay "on the poetical works
of George Wither...."

After the quotation from Drayton, with which the printed essay
concludes, the manuscript proceeds thus:--

"The whole poem, for the delicacy of the thoughts, and height of
the passion, is equal to the best of Spenser's, Daniel's or
Drayton's love verses; with the advantage of comprising in a whole
all the fine things which lie scatter'd in their works, in sonnets,
and smaller addresses--The happy chearful spirit of the author goes
with it all the way; that _sanguine temperament_, which gives to
all Wither's lines (in his most loved metre especially, where
chiefly he is a Poet) an elasticity, like a dancing measure; it
[is] as full of joy, and confidence, and high and happy thoughts,
as if it were his own Epithalamium which, like Spenser, he were
singing, and not a piece of perambulary, probationary
flattery...."[67]

[67] Lamb subsequently altered the conclusion of this paragraph to:
"as if, like Spenser, he were singing his own Epithalamium, and not
a strain of probationary courtship."

On page 70 Lamb has proposed a new reading which speaks for
itself--"Jove's endeared Ganimed," for the meaningless "endured" of
the text before him. Against a couplet now made famous by his
enthusiastic citation of it--

"Thoughts too deep to be expressed
And too strong to be suppressed--"

he has written--"Two eminently beautiful lines." Opposite the
couplet in which Wither mentions the poets

"whose verse set forth
Rosalind and Stella's worth"

Gutch (as I suppose) has written the names of Lodge and Sidney;
under which Lamb has pencilled the words "Qu. Spenser and Sidney;"
perhaps the more plausible conjecture, as the date of Lodge's
popularity was out, or nearly so, before Wither began to write.

The next verses [_The Shepherd's Hunting_] are worth transcription
on their own account no less than on account of Lamb's annotation.

"It is known what thou canst do,
For it is not long ago
When that Cuddy, thou, and I,
Each the other's skill to try,
At St. Dunstan's charmèd well,
(As some present there can tell)
Sang upon a sudden theme,
Sitting by the crimson stream;
Where if thou didst well or no
Yet remains the song to show."

To the fifth of these verses the following note is appended:--

"The Devil Tavern, Fleet Street, where Child's Place now stands,
and where a sign hung in my memory within 18" (substituted for 16)
"years, of the Devil and St. Dunstan--Ben Jonson made this a famous
place of resort for poets by drawing up a set of Leges Convivales
which were engraven in marble on the chimney piece in the room
called Apollo. One of Drayton's poems is called The Sacrifice to
Apollo; it is addrest to the priests or Wits of Apollo, and is a
kind of poetical paraphrase upon the Leges Convivales--This tavern
to the very last kept up a room with that name. C. L."--who might
have added point and freshness to this brief account by citing the
splendid description of a revel held there under the jovial old
Master's auspices, given by Careless to Aurelia [Carlesse to
Æmilia] in Shakerley Marmion's admirable comedy, _A Fine
Companion_. But it is remarkable that Lamb--if I mistake not--has
never quoted or mentioned that brilliant young dramatist and poet
who divided with Randolph the best part of Jonson's mantle....

At the close of Wither's high-spirited and manly postscript to the
poem on which, as he tells us, his publisher had bestowed the name
of _The Shepherd's Hunting_, a passage occurs which has provoked
one of the most characteristic outbreaks of wrath and mirth to be
found among all Lamb's notes on Nott's notes on Lamb's notes on the
text of Wither. "Neither am I so _cynical_ but that I think a
modest expression of such amorous conceits as suit with reason,
will yet very well become my years; in which not to have feeling of
the power of _love_, were as great an argument of much stupidity,
as an over-sottish affection were of extreme folly." In
illustration of this simple and dignified sentence Lamb cites the
following most apt and admirable parallel.

"'Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves
such a reward, as the noblest dispositions above other things in
this life have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible,
when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and
shallow judgment, and withall an ungentle and swainish breast.'

"_Milton_--Apology for Smectymn[u]us."

"Why is this quoted?" demands the too inquisitive Nott; "I see
little similarity." "It was quoted for those who _can_ see,"
rejoins Lamb, with three thick strokes of his contemptuous pencil
under the luckless Doctor's poor personal pronoun; on which this
special note of indignation is added beneath.

"I. I. I. I. I. in Capitals!--
for shame, write _your_ Ego thus
little i with a dot
stupid Nott!"

At the opening of the second we find the notes on _Abuses stript
and whipt_ which in their revised condition as part of the essay on
Wither are familiar to all lovers of English letters. They begin
with the second paragraph of that essay, in which sundry slight and
delicate touches of improvement have fortified or simplified the
original form of expression. After the sentence which describes the
vehemence of Wither's love for goodness and hatred of baseness, the
manuscript proceeds thus: "His moral feeling is work'd up into a
sort of passion, something as Milton describes himself at a like
early age, that night and day he laboured to attain to a certain
idea which he had of perfection." Another cancelled passage is one
which originally followed on the reflection that "perhaps his
premature defiance often exposed him" (altered in the published
essay to "sometimes made him obnoxious") "to censures, which he
would otherwise have slipped by." The manuscript continues: "But in
this he is as faulty as some of the primitive Christians are
described to have been, who were ever ready to outrun the
executioner...."

This not immoderate satire on clerical ambition seems to have
ruffled the spiritual plumage of Dr. Nott, who brands it as a "very
dull essay indeed." To whom, in place of exculpation or apology,
Lamb returns this question by way of answer:--"Why double-dull it
with thy dull commentary? have you nothing to cry out but 'very
dull,' 'a little better,' 'this has some spirit,' 'this is
prosaic,' foh!

"If the sun of Wither withdraw a while, Clamour not for joy, Owl,
it will out again, and blear thy envious Eyes!..."

The commentary on 'Wither's Motto' will be remembered by all
students of the most exquisite critical essays in any language.
They will not be surprised to learn that neither the style nor the
matter of it found any favour in the judicial eye of Nott. "There
is some tautology in this, and some of the sentences are
harsh--These repetitions are very awkward; but the whole sentence
is obscure and far-fetched in sentiment;" such is the fashion in
which this unlucky particle of a pedant has bescribbled the margin
of Lamb's beautiful manuscript. But those for whom alone I write
will share my pleasure in reading the original paragraph as it came
fresh from the spontaneous hand of the writer, not as yet adapted
or accommodated by any process of revision to the eye of the
general reader.

"Wither's Motto.

"The poem which Wither calls his _Motto_ is a continued
self-eulogy" (originally written "self-eulogium") "of two thousand
lines: yet one reads it to the end without feeling any distaste, or
being hardly conscious of having listen'd so long to a man praising
himself. There are none of the cold particles of vanity in it; no
hardness or self-ends" (altered to "no want of feeling, no
selfishness;" but restored in the published text), "which are the
qualities that make Egotism hateful--The writer's mind was
continually glowing with images of virtue, and a noble scorn of
vice: what it felt, it honestly believed it possessed, and as
honestly avowed it; yet so little is this consciousness mixed up
with any alloy of selfishness, that the writer seems to be praising
qualities in another person rather than in himself; or, to speak
more properly, we feel that it was indifferent to him, where he
found the virtues; but that being best acquainted with himself, he
chose to celebrate himself as their best known receptacle. We feel
that he would give to goodness its praise, wherever found; that it
is not a quality which he loves for his own low self which
possesses it; but himself that he respects for the qualities which
he imagines he finds in himself. With these feelings, and without
them, it is impossible to read it, it is as beautiful a piece of
_self_-confession as the _Religio Medici_ of Browne.

"It will lose nothing also if we contrast it" (or, as previously
written, "It may be worth while also to contrast it") "with the
Confessions of Rousseau." ("How is Rousseau analogous?" queries the
interrogatory Nott: on whom Lamb retorts--"analogous?!! why, this
note was written to show the _difference_ not the _analogy_ between
them. C. L.") "In every page of the latter we are disgusted with
the vanity, which brings forth faults, and begs us to take them (or
at least the acknowledgment of them) for virtue. But in Wither we
listen to a downright confession of unambiguous virtues; and love
the heart which has the confidence to pour itself out." Here, at a
later period, Lamb has written--"C. L. thus far." On the phrase
"confession of unambiguous virtues" Dr. Nott has obliged us with
the remark--"this seems an odd association:" and has received this
answer:--"It was _meant_ to be an odd one, to puzzle a certain sort
of people. C. L."--whose words should be borne in mind by every
reader of his essays or letters who may chance to take exception to
some passing turn of speech intended, or at least not wholly
undesigned, to give occasion for that same "certain sort of people"
to stumble or to trip.

So far Mr. Swinburne. After his death the Wither was sold to America by Mr. Watts-Dunton and is now in the library of Mr. John A. Spoor of Chicago. Mr. Swinburne's description was supplemented by the American bibliophile Mr. Luther S. Livingston in the _New York Evening Post_, April 30, 1910.

Gutch, it seems, was sufficiently interested in Wither to undertake a really representative edition, the editorship of which was entrusted to Nott. The work was issued in 1820, without either date or publisher's name. There is a copy in the British Museum which is in four volumes, the fourth incomplete. On the fly-leaf is written: "This selection of the Poems of Wither was printed by Gutch, of Bristol, about twenty years since, and was edited by Dr. Nott. The work remained unfinished, and was sold for waste-paper; a few copies only were preserved. 1839."

Mr. Livingston says that there is another copy of this work, in New York. "It is in four volumes, with the title, 'Selections from the Juvenilia and Other Poems of George Wither, with a prefatory Essay by John Matthew Gutch, F.S.A., and His Life, by Robert Aris Wilmott, Esq., Vol. I. [etc.] Typ. Felix Farley: Bristol.' In addition, the first volume has another title-page, 'Poems by George Wither, in four volumes. Vol. I. London: 1839.' On the verso of this is the following Preface:--

"These Poems were many years ago edited and printed at Bristol by
Mr. Gutch: Proof sheets being submitted to Dr. Nott, and the
celebrated Charles Lamb, who wrote some very pithy comments on the
Notes of the Doctor, which have not been printed. The work was
never completed, and the whole impression was consigned to the
'Tomb of the Capulets' and supposed to be effectually destroyed.
Now, however, by the resuscitating powers of sundry Bristol Book
Chapmen, 'Monsieur Tonson's come again!' etc.

Signed 'J. R. S.' and dated 'London, 1839'."

Gutch himself prepared a life of Wither, but it was not printed in this edition and is still unpublished. The amusing feature of the edition is that Nott, sometimes with slight and deteriorating changes, and sometimes without alteration, uses, in addition to his own comments, many of Lamb's notes also as his own; which, if 1820 is really the date, is the more curious, since a comparison with Lamb's essay in the _Works_, 1818, would expose the conveyance. Probably the edition was in type some time before it was issued. We know at any rate that it was prepared before 1818, because Lamb had his notes back again in time to use them in writing his essay published early in that year, and finished probably some time earlier. If Lamb ever saw Nott's edition--which is more than probable--it is a pity that in his correspondence is preserved no letter containing his opinion on the matter.

Nott, for example, lifted the whole of the passage in praise of "Fair Virtue or the Mistress of Philarete," beginning "There is a singular beauty," and ending with "probationary courtship," as described above by Mr. Swinburne, and signed it "Editor." He also annexed the reminiscence of the Devil Tavern, making it "within the memory of the Editor," and adapted the criticisms beginning "Wither's prison notes" (fifth paragraph of the present essay) and "Wither's motto" (first paragraph) to his own uses. As a specimen of Nott's treatment of his predecessor's notes we may take that on long lines, which stands as a note at the end of the essay. This is Nott's version:--

_If thy verse do bravely tower._ A _long_ line is a line _we are
long in repeating_. Mark the time which it takes to repeat these
lines properly! What slow movements could Alexandrines express more
than these? "_As she makes wing, she gets power._" One makes a foot
of every syllable. Wither was certainly a perfect master of this
species of verse.

There is, however, enough genuine un-negatived Lamb (as he would say) remaining to make this edition of Wither a very desirable possession of all collectors of Lamb.

What is even more surprising than Lamb's silence on the subject--which may easily be accounted for by the incomplete state of his correspondence--is the silence of Gutch himself. In 1847, when he told the story of Wither, he made no reference whatever to any use of Lamb's notes beyond Lamb's own, nor even mentioned the fact that a fuller edition of Wither was published by himself, although he refers his readers to two other editions, one earlier and one later, and remarks on the poet's growing popularity. He quotes, however, a long passage from Lamb's 1818 essay, remarking that it was based upon the notes made in the original copy of Wither.

Gutch was wrong in stating that it was through him that Lamb became acquainted with Wither. It was only to _Philarete_ that Gutch introduced him. Lamb was first drawn to Wither by Coleridge, as he admits in the letter of July 1, 1796. In 1798 he wrote to Southey on the subject: "Quarles is a wittier writer, but Wither lays more hold of the heart.... I always love Wither ... the extract from _Shepherd's Hunting_ places him in a starry height far above Quarles."

This note is already so long that I hesitate to add to it by quoting from Wither the passages referred to by Lamb. They are, moreover, easily identifiable.

George Wither, or Withers, was born in 1588. His _Abuses Stript and Whipt_ was published in 1613; his _Shepherd's Hunting_, written in part while its author was in the Marshalsea prison for his plain speaking in _Abuses_, was published in 1615; Wither's _Motto_ in 1621, and _Fair Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete_, in 1622, but it may have been composed long before. Wither died in 1667. His light remained under a bushel for many years. The _Percy Reliques_, 1765, began the revival of Wither's fame; George Ellis's _Specimens_, 1805, continued it; and then came Lamb, and Gutch, and Southey, and it was assured.

Page 211, line 10. _No Shaftesbury, no Villiers, no Wharton._ Referring to the victims of Dryden and Pope's satires--the first Earl of Shaftesbury in Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel," "Albion and Albanius" and "The Medal;" Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, in "Absalom and Achitophel" and in Pope's third "Moral Essay;" Philip, Duke of Wharton in Pope's "Epistle to Sir Richard Temple."

Page 211, line 23. _Where Faithful is arraigned._ Faithful was accused of railing also upon Lord Desire of Vain Glory, my old Lord Lechery and Sir Having Greedy.

* * * * *

Page 215. FIVE DRAMATIC CRITICISMS.

None of these were reprinted by Lamb.

During the year 1819 Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_ gave Lamb his first encouragement to indulge in those raptures upon comedians which no one has expressed so well as he. The notices that follow preceded his _Elia_ essays on the "Old Actors" by some three years, although, as is pointed out in the notes to that work, the essay on the "Acting of Munden" first saw the light in _The Examiner_ of November 7 and 8, 1819, as one of the present series. The central figure, however, of the five pieces here collected together is Miss Kelly, Lamb's friend and favourite actress of his middle and later life, whom he began to praise in 1813 (see "The New Acting," page 177), and in praising whom he never tired.

Lamb's sweet allusion to Miss Kelly's "divine plain face" is well known. It may be interesting, to add Oxberry's description: "Her face is round and pleasing, though not handsome; her eyes are light blue; her forehead is peculiarly low ... her smile is peculiarly beautiful and may be said to completely _sun_ her countenance."

In _The Examiner_ for December 20, 1818, after Leigh Hunt's criticism of Kenney's comedy "A Word for the Ladies" is the following paragraph. Leigh Hunt's criticism is signed: this is not, nor is it joined to the article. There is, I think, good reason to believe it to be Lamb's:--

"It was not without a feeling of pain, that we observed Miss KELLY among the _spectators_ on the first night of the new comedy. What does she do before the curtain? She should have been on the stage. With such youth, such talents,--

Those powers of pleasing, with that will to please,

it is too much that she should be forgotten, discarded, laid aside like an old fashion. It really is not yet the season for her 'among the wastes of time to go.' Is it Mr. STEPHEN KEMBLE, or the Sub-Committee; or what _heavy body_ is it, which interposes itself between us and this light of the stage?"

With these Eulogies of Miss Kelly is associated one of the most interesting days in Lamb's life, as the note on page 487 tells.

Page 215. I.--MRS. GOULD (MISS BURRELL) IN "DON GIOVANNI IN LONDON."

_The Examiner_, November 22, 1818. Signed †.

This criticism we know to be Lamb's upon Talfourd's testimony. He writes:--

Miss Burrell, a lady of more limited powers, but with a frank and
noble style, was discovered by Lamb on one of the visits which he
paid, on the invitation of his old friend Elliston, to the Olympic,
where the lady performed the hero of that happy parody of
Moncrieff's, "Giovanni in London." To her Lamb devoted a little
article, which he sent to _The Examiner_ [a portion of the article
is quoted]. Miss Burrell soon married a person named Gold, and
disappeared from the stage.

Lamb pasted the article in his Album or Commonplace Book accompanied by a portrait of the actress. Writing to Mrs. Wordsworth in February, 1818, he speaks of his power, during business, of reserving "in some corner of my mind 'some darling thoughts, all my own,'--faint memory of some passage in a book, or the tone of an absent friend's voice--a snatch of Miss Burrell's singing, or a gleam of Fanny Kelly's divine plain face."

Page 215, line 2 of essay. _A burletta founded, etc._ This was "Rochester; or, King Charles the Second's Merry Days," by William Thomas Moncrieff (1794-1857).

Page 215, line 8 of essay. _Elliston and Mrs. Edwin._ Robert William Elliston (1774-1831), a famous comedian, and the lessee of the Olympic at that date, of whom Lamb wrote with enthusiasm in his _Elia_ essays, "To the Shade of Elliston," and "Ellistoniana." Elizabeth Rebecca Edwin (1771?-1854) was the wife of John Edwin the younger, a favourite actress in Mrs. Jordan's parts.

Page 215, line 11 of essay. "_Don Giovanni._" "Giovanni in London; or, The Libertine Reclaimed," 1817, also by Moncrieff--the play in which Madame Vestris made so great a hit a year or so later.

Page 216, line 14 from foot. _We have seen Mrs. Jordan._ Mrs. Jordan had left the London stage in 1815.

Page 216, line 10 from foot. _Great house in the Haymarket._ This was the King's Theatre (afterwards His Majesty's) where Mozart's "Don Giovanni" was produced in 1817, with Ambrogetti, the buffo, in the caste. Lamb's friend, William Ayrton, was the moving spirit in this representation.

* * * * *

Page 217. II.--MISS KELLY AT BATH.

_Felix Farley's Bristol Journal_, January 30, 1819. The present article has been set up from that paper. Usually, however, it has been set up from Leigh Hunt's copy in _The Examiner_, February 7 and 8, 1819, where it was quoted with the following introduction:--

The Reader, we are sure, will thank us for extracting the following
observations on a favourite Actress, from a Provincial Paper, the
_Bristol Journal_. We should have guessed the masterly and cordial
hand that wrote them had we met with it in the East Indies. There
is but one praise belonging to Miss KELLY which it has omitted, and
which it could not supply;--and that is, that she has had finer
criticism written upon her, than any performer that ever trod the
stage.

The letter was written to John Mathew Gutch (see notes to Lamb's essay on "George Wither"), who in 1803 became proprietor of _Felix Farley's Bristol Journal_. Miss Kelly was at Bath in 1819 at the end of January and first half of February.

Page 217, first line of essay. _Our old play-going days._ The Lambs lodged with Gutch, who was then a law-stationer, at 34 Southampton Buildings, in 1800. Lamb was there alone for some time, during his sister's illness, and it is probably to this period that he refers.

Page 217, second line. _Mrs. Jordan._ See note above. Miss Kelly played many of Mrs. Jordan's parts.

Page 217, third line. _Dodd and Parsons._ See note to "The New Acting," page 465.

Page 217, fourth line. _Smith or Jack Palmer._ William Smith (1730?-1819), known as Gentleman Smith. Lamb perhaps saw him on the night of May 18, 1798, his sole appearance for ten years; otherwise his knowledge of his acting could be but small. On that occasion Smith played Charles Surface in "The School for Scandal," Joseph Surface being Jack Palmer's great part (see the _Elia_ essay on "The Artificial Comedy," for an analysis of Palmer's acting).

Page 217, sixth line. _Miss Kelly._ See note to "The New Acting," page 466. Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882) made her début at the age of seven in "Bluebeard" (the music by her uncle, Michael Kelly), at Drury Lane, in 1798. She was enrolled as a chorister of Drury Lane in 1799. She made her farewell appearance at Drury Lane in 1835.

Page 218, line 20. _Yarico._ In "Inkle and Yarico," 1787, by George Colman the younger (1762-1836).

Page 218, line 11 from foot. _A Phœbe or a Dinah Cropley._ Phœbe, in "Rosina," by Mrs. Frances Brooke (1724-1789). I do not find a Dinah Cropley among Miss Kelly's parts. She played Dinah Primrose in O'Keeffe's "Young Quaker"--Lamb may have been thinking of that.

Page 218, line 5 from foot. "_The Merry Mourners._" "Modern Antiques; or, The Merry Mourners," 1791, by John O'Keeffe. It was while playing in this farce on February 17, 1816, that Miss Kelly was fired at by a lunatic in the pit. Some of the shot is said to have fallen into the lap of Mary Lamb, who was present with her brother.

Page 218, foot. _Inebriation in Nell._ Nell, in "The Devil to Pay," 1731, originally by Charles Coffey (d. 1745), but much adapted. Nell was one of Mrs. Jordan's great parts.

Page 219, line 2. _Our friend C._ Coleridge, who was also at Christ's Hospital with Gutch. He says, in _Biographia Literaria_: "Men of Letters and literary genius are too often what is styled in trivial irony 'fine gentlemen spoilt in the making.' They care not for show and grandeur in what surrounds them, having enough within ... but they are fine gentlemen in all that concerns ease and pleasurable, or at least comfortable, sensation." In one of his lectures on "Poetry, the Drama and Shakespeare" in 1818, Coleridge says: "As it must not, so genius can not, be lawless;" which is the reverse of Lamb's recollection.

Page 219. III.--RICHARD BROME'S "JOVIAL CREW."

_Examiner_, July 4 and 5, 1819. Signed ****. Richard Brome's "Jovial Crew; or, The Merry Beggars," was first acted in 1641, and continually revived since then, although it is now no longer seen. Indeed our opportunities are few to-day of seeing most of the plays that Lamb praised. The revival criticised by Lamb began at the English Opera House (the Lyceum) on June 29, 1819.

Page 219, line 7 from foot. _Lovegrove._ William Lovegrove (1778-1816), a famous character actor. He ceased to be seen at except rare intervals after 1814.

Page 219, line 5 from foot. _Dowton._ See note to "The New Acting," page 465.

Page 220, line 3. _Wrench._ Benjamin Wrench (1778-1843), a comedian of the school of Elliston.

Page 220, line 6. _Miss Stevenson._ This actress afterwards became Mrs. Wiepperts.

Page 220, line 12. _She that played Rachel._ Miss Kelly. Lamb returned to his praise of this piece and of Miss Kelly in it in a note to the "Garrick Plays," but he there credited her with playing Meriel.