Chapter XXXVII: Part II: , were published in 1697. The passage quoted is from that "On (4)

It has been held that the inference that Mary Lamb also contributed to Vol. I. of the _Every-Day Book_ is a fair one to draw from these words. But beyond her recollections in the paper on "Starkey" nothing from her pen has been identified. Her brother's certain contributions to Vol. I. are, the "Remarkable Correspondent," "Captain Starkey," the "Twelfth of August," "The Ass," and "Squirrels." To Vol. II. he sent "An Appearance of the Season," "The Months," and "Reminiscences of Jeffery Dunstan."

My impression is that Lamb's hand is to be seen far oftener than this: but we have no definite proof. I feel convinced that many of Hone's quotations from old plays and old books were supplied to him by his more leisured friend.

In column 857 of _The Table Book_, 1827, Vol. II., for example, is the following letter to Hone, which is very likely to be from Lamb's pen. Waltham Abbey was a favourite objective of his in his long Essex and Hertfordshire rambles:--

WALTHAM, ESSEX

_To the Editor_

SIR,--The following epitaph is upon a plain gravestone in the
churchyard of Waltham Abbey. Having some point, it may perhaps be
acceptable for the _Table Book_. I was told that the memory of the
worthy curate is still held in great esteem by the inhabitants of
that place.

REV. ISAAC COLNETT,

Fifteen years curate of this Parish,
Died March 1, 1801--Aged 43 years.

Shall pride a heap of sculptured marble raise,
Some worthless, unmourn'd, titled fool to praise,
And shall we not by one poor gravestone show
Where pious, worthy Colnett sleeps below?

Surely common decency, if they are deficient in antiquarian
feeling, should induce the inhabitants of Waltham Cross to take
some measures, if not to restore, at least to preserve from further
decay and dilapidation the remains of that beautiful monument of
conjugal affection, the cross erected by Edward I. It is now in a
sad disgraceful state.

I am, &c.,

Z.

Lamb's first contribution to the _Table Book_, always excepting his regular supply of Garrick Play extracts was "A Death-Bed," an account of the last moments of his friend, Randal Norris, which he included in the _Last Essays of Elia_. His other original prose was the letter about Mrs. Gilpin at Edmonton, and "The Defeat of Time." A few pages after "A Death-Bed," there is an extract from an article from _Blackwood's Magazine_ for April, 1827, entitled "Le Revenant"--the story of a man who survived hanging. Lamb suggested to Hone that he should print this.--"There is in _Blackwood_ this month [he wrote in a private letter] an article MOST AFFECTING indeed, called _Le Revenant_, and would do more towards abolishing capital punishment, than 40,000 Romillies or Montagues. I beg you to read it and see if you can extract any of it--the trial scene in particular." This is another instance of the fascination that resuscitation after hanging exerted upon Lamb.

We know also, as is stated in the note to "The Good Clerk" (page 455), that Lamb supplied Hone with the extracts from Defoe and Mandeville in columns 567-569 and 626-628 of the _Table Book_, Vol. I. He probably sent many others.

In columns 773-774 of the _Table Book_, Vol. I., are Lamb's verses "Going or Gone."

In column 55 of the _Table Book_, Vol. II., is Lamb's sonnet to Miss Kelly, and in column 68 his explanation that Moxon probably sent it.

To Hone's _Year Book_, 1831, Lamb contributed no original prose that is identifiable. On April 30, however, was printed Sir T. Overbury's character of a "Free and Happy Milkmaid," of which we know Lamb to have been fond--he copied it into one of his Extract Books--together with two passages from Jeremy Taylor, all probably sent to Hone by Lamb. It was on this day that FitzGerald's "Meadows in Spring" was printed in the _Year Book_, and afterwards copied in _The Athenæum_, where it was attributed by suggestion to Lamb.

* * * * *

Page 349. I.--REMARKABLE CORRESPONDENT.

Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., May 1, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Hone's _Every-Day Book_, which purported to take account of every day in the year, had passed without a word from February 28 to March 1. Hence this protest.

Page 350, line 13. _An antique scroll_. On February 28 Hone printed these lines:--

FOR THE MEMORY

_Old Memorandum of the Months_

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
All the rest have thirty and one,
Except February, which hath twenty-eight alone.

The omitted couplet runs:--

Except in Leap Year, at which time
February's days are twenty-nine.

To Lamb's protests Hone replied as follows, on May 1:--

To this correspondent it may be demurred and given in proof, that
neither in February, nor at any other time in the year 1825, had
he, or could he, have had existence; and that whenever he is seen,
he is only an impertinence and an interpolation upon his betters.
To his "floral honours" he is welcome; in the year 992, he slew St.
Oswald, archbishop of York, in the midst of his monks, to whom the
greater periwinkle, _Vinca Major_, is dedicated. For this honour
our correspondent should have waited till his turn arrived for
distinction. His ignorant impatience of notoriety is a mark of
weakness, and indeed it is only in compassion to his infirmity that
he has been condescended to; his brothers have seen more of the
world, and he should have been satisfied by having been allowed to
be in their company at stated times, and like all little ones, he
ought to have kept respectful silence. Besides, he forgets his
origin; he is illegitimate; and as a burthen to "the family," and
an upstart, it has been long in contemplation to disown him, and
then what will become of him? If he has done any good in the world
he may have some claim upon it, but whenever he appears, he seems
to throw things into confusion. His desire to alter the title of
this work excites a smile--however, when he calls upon the editor
he shall have justice, and be compelled to own that it is calumny
to call this the _Every-Day--but--one--Book_.

In Vol. II. of the _Every-Day Book_ February 29 was again omitted. He did not come to his own until the _Year Book_ in 1831.

Page 351. II.--CAPTAIN STARKEY.

Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., July 21, 1825. Signed "C. L." Not reprinted by Lamb.

On July 9 Hone gave extracts from a small pamphlet entitled _Memoirs of the Life of Benj. Starkey, late of London, but now an inmate of the Freemen's Hospital, in Newcastle. Written by himself. With a portrait of the Author and a Facsimile of his handwriting_. William Hall, Newcastle, 1818. This pamphlet is not interesting, except in calling forth Lamb's reminiscences.

Page 351, line 9. _My sister._ Mary Lamb, who was born in 1764, would probably have been at Bird's school at the time of her brother's birth. Her period there may have been 1774-1778.

Page 351, line 25. _Fetter Lane._ In a directory for 1773 I find William Bird, Academy, 3 Bond Stables, Fetter Lane. Bond Stables have now disappeared, although there is still the passage joining Fetter Lane and Bartlett's Buildings.

Page 354. III.--TWELFTH OF AUGUST.

Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., August 12, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

While George IV., who was born on August 12, 1762, was Prince of Wales, a very long period, his birthday was kept on its true date. But after his accession to the throne in 1820 his birthday was kept on April 23, St. George's Day. Hence Lamb's protest. This is probably the only kind reference to George IV. in all Lamb's writings.

Lamb already (_Morning Post_, 1802, see page 44, and _London Magazine_, 1823) had rehearsed the theme both of this letter and of that on the "Twenty-ninth of February." In his "Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age" the forlorn condition of February 29 is more than once mentioned, while the grievance of August 12 against April 23 is thus described:--

"The King's health being called for after this, a notable dispute
arose between the _Twelfth of August_ (a jealous old Whig
gentlewoman) and the _Twenty-Third of April_ (a new-fangled lady of
the Tory stamp) as to which of them should have the honour to
propose it. _August_ grew hot upon the matter, affirming time out of
mind the prescriptive right to have lain with her, till her rival
had basely supplanted her; whom she represented as little better
than a _kept_ mistress, who went about in _fine clothes_, while she
(the legitimate BIRTHDAY) had scarcely a rag, &c."

Page 354, line 4 of letter. _Poor relative of ours._ February 29 (see page 349).

Page 355, line 11. _George of Cappadocia, etc._ George of Cappadocia was a Bishop of Alexandria in the fourth century, murdered by the populace. There was once a tendency to confuse him with St. George of England. George of Leyden was probably a slip of the pen for John of Leyden, the Anabaptist of Münster. George-a-Green, the hero of the _History of George-a-Green, the Pindar of Wakefield_, the stoutest opponent that Robin Hood ever met. The story was dramatised in a play attributed to Robert Green. George Dyer was Lamb's friend.

Page 355, line 15. _Dismission of a set of men._ Referring to the King's overthrow of the Whigs in the Caroline of Brunswick ferment.

To Lamb's letter Hone printed a clever reply.

Page 356. IV.--THE ASS.

Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., October 5, 1825. Signed "C. L." Not reprinted by Lamb.

The germ of this paper is found in a letter from Lamb to John Payne Collier in 1821 thanking him for the gift of his _Poetical Decameron_. After quoting the three lines also quoted in this essay, Lamb remarks, in the letter, "Cervantes, Sterne, and Coleridge, have said positively nothing for asses compared with this."

The immediate cause of the communication to the _Every-Day Book_ was a previous article in praise of asses. Hone prefixed to Lamb's paper the following remarks: "The cantering of TIM TIMS [who had written of asses on September 19] startles him who told of his 'youthful days,' at the school wherein poor 'Starkey' cyphered part of his little life. C. L., 'getting well, but weak' from painful and severe indisposition, is 'off and away' for a short discursion. Better health to him, and good be to him all his life. Here he is."

Lamb wrote to Hone in humorous protest against the implication of the phrase "Here he is," immediately above the title "The Ass." "My friends are fairly surprised [he said] that you should set me down so unequivocally for an ass.... Call you that friendship?"

Page 356, foot. "_Between the years 1790 and 1800._" This passage refers to an article in a previous issue of the _Every-Day Book_ (see Vol. I., September 19) on cruelty to animals, where we read:--

Legislative discussion and interference have raised a feeling of
kindness towards the brute creation which slumbered and slept in
our forefathers. Formerly, the costermonger was accustomed to make
wounds for the express purpose of producing torture. He prepared to
drive an ass, that had not been driven, with his knife. On each
side of the back bone, at the lower end, just above the tail, he
made an incision of two or three inches in length through the skin,
and beat into these incisions with his stick till they became open
wounds, and so remained, while the ass lived to be driven to and
from market, or through the streets of the metropolis. A
costermonger, now, would shrink from this, which was a common
practice between the years 1790 and 1800.

Page 357, line 9. "_Lay on," etc._ Anaxarchus, the philosopher, having offended Alexander the Great, was pounded in a stone mortar. During the process he exclaimed: "Pound the body of Anaxarchus; thou dost not pound the soul." Lamb proposed to use the phrase "You beat but on the case of Elia" in the preface to the _Essays of Elia_ as a monition to adverse critics, but he changed his mind.

Page 358, foot. _Jem Boyer._ See the Elia essay on "Christ's Hospital" in Vol. II. (page 22), and notes to same. "_As_ in præsenti perfectum format in _avi_"--"as in the present tense makes _avi_ in the perfect"--was the first of the mnemonic rules for the formation of verbs in the old Latin primer (see the old Eton _Latin Grammar_). Lamb himself makes the pun in a letter to Mrs. Shelley in 1827.

Page 359. V.--IN RE SQUIRRELS.

Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., October 18, 1825. Signed "C. L." Not reprinted by Lamb.

On October 7 Hone had reprinted a letter on squirrels from the _Gentleman's Magazine_. Lamb's postscript to that letter, as this little communication may be called, was thus introduced:--

"_Be it remembered_, that C. L. comes here and represents his
relations, that is to say, on behalf of the recollections, being the
next of kin, of him, the said C. L., and of sundry persons who are
'aye treading' in the manner of squirrels aforesaid; and thus he
saith:--"

Page 359, line 12. _Mr. Urban's correspondent._ Mr. Urban--Sylvanus Urban--the dynastic name of the editor of the _Gentleman's Magazine_. "I know not," says the correspondent, "whether any naturalist has observed that their [squirrels'] teeth are of a deep orange colour."

Page 359, line 22. _The author of the "Task" somewhere ..._

The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play,
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,
Ascends the neighb'ring beech; there whisks his brush,
And perks his ears, and stamps and scolds aloud,
With all the prettiness of feigned alarm,
And anger insignificantly fierce.

Cowper, _The Task_, Book VI., "The Winter's Walk at
Noon," lines 315-320.

Page 359, foot. _As for their "six quavers," etc._ The writer in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ describes his squirrels as dancing in their cages to exact time.

Page 359, foot. _Along with the "melodious," etc._ Referring to the preceding essay, "The Ass."

Page 360. VI.--AN APPEARANCE OF THE SEASON.

_Every-Day Book_, Vol. II., January 28, 1826. Not reprinted by Lamb.

We know this to be Lamb's because the original copy was preserved at Rowfant, together with that of many other of Lamb's contributions to Hone's books.

The article in the _London Magazine_ for December, 1822, to which Lamb refers, is entitled "A Few Words about Christmas." It is one of the best of the imitations of Lamb, of which there are many in that periodical, and was possibly from Hood's pen. A full description of Hood's "Progress of Cant" follows Lamb's little paper in the _Every-Day Book_, probably written by Hone. See page 431.

The motto under the Beadle's picture is from "Lear," Act IV., Scene 6, line 162.

Page 360, line 6 of essay. _Within the bills._ Within the bills of mortality. Geographically speaking, the phrase "within the bills" was the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth century counterpart of our phrase "within the radius." But the associations of the two terms are very different. The bills were the Bills of Mortality, or lists of deaths (also births) drawn up by the Parish Clerks of London and published by them on Thursdays. Devised as a means of publishing the increase or decrease of the ever-recurrent Plague, the bills were begun in 1592, were resumed during a visitation in 1603, and from that year, except for some interruption at the time of the Great Fire, they appeared week by week, until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Page 361. VII.--THE MONTHS.

Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. II., April 16, 1826. Signed "C. L." Not reprinted by Lamb. I have collated the extracts with Lamb's edition of _The Queene-like Closet_.

Hone's prefixed note runs: "C. L., whose papers under these initials on 'Captain Starkey,' 'The Ass, No. 2,' and 'Squirrels,' besides other communications, are in the first volume, drops the following pleasant article 'in an hour of need.'"

Mrs. Hannah Woolley, afterwards Mrs. Challinor, was born about 1623. The first edition of _The Queene-like Closet_ was 1672; she wrote also, or is supposed to have written, _The Ladies' Directory, or Choice Experiments of Preserving and Candying_, 1661; _The Cook's Guide_, 1664; _The Ladies' Delight_, 1672; _The Gentlewoman's Companion_, 1675.

Page 365, line 3. _I remember Bacon ..._ This possibly is the passage referred to:--

Neither let us be thought to sacrifice to our mother the earth,
though we advise, that in digging or ploughing the earth for
health, a quantity of claret wine be poured thereon (_History of
Life and Death_, Operation 5, No. 33).

Page 365, last line of essay. _Surely Swift must have seen ..._ Swift's _Directions to Servants_ was published in 1745, after the author's death.

Page 366. VIII.--REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN.

Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. II., June 22, 1826. Signed "C. L." Not reprinted by Lamb.

The following account of the Garrat election was given in Sir Richard Phillips' _A Morning's Walk from London to Kew_, 1817, quoted by Hone:--

Southward of Wandsworth, a road extends nearly two miles to the
village of Lower Tooting, and nearly midway are a few houses, or
hamlet, by the side of a small common, called _Garrat_, from which
the road itself is called _Garrat Lane_. Various encroachments on
this common led to an association of the neighbours about
three-score years since, when they chose a president, or _mayor_,
to protect their rights; and the time of their first election being
the period of a new parliament, it was agreed that the mayor should
be re-chosen after every general election. Some facetious members
of the club gave, in a few years, local notoriety to this election;
and, when party spirit ran high in the days of _Wilkes and
Liberty_, it was easy to create an appetite for a burlesque
election among the lower orders of the Metropolis. The publicans at
Wandsworth, Tooting, Battersea, Clapham, and Vauxhall, made a purse
to give it character; and Mr. Foote rendered its interest
universal, by calling one of his inimitable farces "The Mayor of
Garrat."

In 1826, the year of Hone's literary outburst on the subject, which should be referred to by any one curious in the matter, an attempt was made to revive the Garrat humours; but it was too late for success; the joke was dead.

Dunstan was a stunted, quick-witted and quick-tongued dealer in old wigs--a well-known street and tavern figure in his day. He contested Garrat in 1781 against "Sir" John Harper ("who made an oath against work in his youth and was never known to break it"). Sir John then won. Dunstan's speech is quoted in full by Hone from an old broadside. "Gentlemen," he said, "as I am not an orator or personable man, be assured I am an honest member." When Harper died in 1785 Sir Jeffery was returned, as many as 50,000 people attending the election. Dunstan used to recite his speeches in public-houses, where collections were made for him; but this means of livelihood was impaired by the loss of his teeth, which he sold one night for ten shillings and a sufficiency of liquor to some merry London Hospital students. He died in 1797 when Lamb was twenty-two.

Page 366, line 5 of essay. _About 1790 or 1791._ Lamb was at the South-Sea House.

Page 367, line 27. _Dr. Last._ In Samuel Foote's play, "The Devil on Two Sticks," 1778.

Page 367, foot. _My Lord Foppington._ Lord Foppington in "The Relapse," by Congreve. Foppington remarks: "To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product 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." Lamb uses the same speech for the motto of his "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading."

Page 368. IX.--MRS. GILPIN RIDING TO EDMONTON.

Hone's _Table Book_, Vol. II., columns 79-81, 1827. Not reprinted by Lamb.

We know Lamb to have written this, from the evidence of an unpublished letter and the original "copy" and picture, once preserved at Rowfant. Lamb's letter to Hone, enclosing Hood's drawing, runs thus:--

[No date: early July, 1827.]

"DEAR H.,

"This is Hood's, done from the life, of Mary getting over a style
here. Mary, out of a pleasant revenge, wants you to get it
_engrav'd_ in Table Book to surprise H., who I know will be amus'd
with you so doing.

"Append some observations about the awkwardness of country styles
about Edmonton, and the difficulty of elderly Ladies getting over
'em.----

"That is to say, if you think the sketch good enough.

"I take on myself the warranty.

"Can you slip down here some day and go a Green-dragoning?

"C. L.

"Enfield (Mrs. Leishman's, Chase).

"If you do, send Hood the number, No. 2 Robert St., Adelphi, and
keep the sketch for me."

Lamb subsequently appended the observations himself. The text of his little article, changing Mary Lamb into Mrs. Gilpin, followed in Mr. Locker-Lampson's album. The postmark is July 17, 1827.

Lamb was fond of jokes about styles. Writing to Dodwell, of the India House, from Calne, in the summer of 1816, he said, after dating his letter old style: "No new style here, all the styles are old, and some of the gates too for that matter."

Page 369. X.--THE DEFEAT OF TIME.

Hone's _Table Book_, Vol. II., columns 335-340, 1827. Not reprinted by Lamb.

In 1827 was published Thomas Hood's poem, _The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_, with the following dedication to Lamb:--

TO CHARLES LAMB

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I thank my literary fortune that I am not reduced, like many better
wits, to barter dedications, for the hope or promise of patronage,
with some nominally great man; but that where true affection
points, and honest respect, I am free to gratify my head and heart
by a sincere inscription. An intimacy and dearness, worthy of a
much earlier date than our acquaintance can refer to, direct me at
once to your name: and with this acknowledgment of your ever kind
feeling towards me, I desire to record a respect and admiration for
you as a writer, which no one acquainted with our literature, save
Elia himself, will think disproportionate or misplaced. If I had
not these better reasons to govern me, I should be guided to the
same selection by your intense yet critical relish for the works of
our great Dramatist, and for that favourite play in particular
which has furnished the subject of my verses.

It is my design, in the following Poem, to celebrate an allegory,
that immortality which Shakespeare has conferred on the Fairy
mythology by his Midsummer Night's Dream. But for him, those pretty
children of our childhood would leave barely their names to our
maturer years; they belong, as the mites upon the plum, to the
bloom of fancy, a thing generally too frail and beautiful to
withstand the rude handling of Time: but the Poet has made this
most perishable part of the mind's creation equal to the most
enduring; he has so intertwined the Elfins with human sympathies,
and linked them by so many delightful associations with the
productions of nature, that they are as real to the mind's eye, as
their green magical circles to the outer sense.

It would have been a pity for such a race to go extinct, even
though they were but as the butterflies that hover about the leaves
and blossoms of the visible world.

I am,
My dear Friend,
Yours most truly,
T. HOOD.

Lamb's "Defeat of Time" is a paraphrase of the first part of Hood's poem.

Page 371, line 10. _"In the flowery spring," etc._ From Chapman's Translation of Homer's "Hymn to Pan," 31-33.

Page 373, line 15 from foot. _Sir Thomas Gresham._ It is told of Sir Thomas Gresham (1519?-1579), the founder of the Royal Exchange, that as a baby his life was saved by the chirping of a grasshopper, as related here. But cold veracity says not. The legend seems to have had its origin in the grasshopper crest of the Greshams, but it has been found that this crest was worn by an ancestor of Sir Thomas's who lived a hundred years earlier.

* * * * *

Page 375. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Lamb wrote this little sketch for William Upcott (1779-1845), the autograph collector and assistant librarian of the London Institution. Upcott permitted John Forster to quote it in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for April, 1835, shortly after Lamb's death. It is here printed from the original MS. in the possession of Mr. B. B. MacGeorge, of Glasgow, contained in a MS. volume entitled "Reliques of my Contemporaries. William Upcott." Whether or no Lamb ever caught a swallow flying is not known; but everything else in the autobiography is true. The reference to Mr. Upcott's book may be to the album in which this sketch was written, or to a new edition of the _Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors_, published in 1816, in which Upcott is supposed to have had a hand. I cannot discover whether a second edition of this work was published. There is none at the British Museum, nor at the London Institution, of which Upcott was librarian. In the first edition, _A Biographical Dictionary of the Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland ..._ 1816, Lamb figures thus:--

"LAMB, CHARLES, was born in London, in 1775, and educated at Christ's Hospital. He is at present a clerk in the India House, and has published [a list of six books follows] ..."

"LAMB, MISS, sister of the preceding, has published _Mrs. Leicester's School_, 12mo, 1808; _Poetry for Children_, 2 vs., 12mo, 1809."

Upcott is not considered to have done more than to collect some of the materials for the _Dictionary_, which was the work of John Watkins and Frederick Shoberl.

Lamb's sense of time was never good: the _Elia_ essays were published in 1823 and the _Specimens_ in 1808, fully four years and nineteen years before the date of this autobiography. The joke about the _Works_ will be found also in the original version of the "Character of the Late Elia."

* * * * *

Page 376. SHAKESPEARE'S IMPROVERS.

_The Spectator_, November 22, 1828. Not reprinted by Lamb.

This letter was drawn forth by some remarks on the spurious version of "King Lear," which was then being played; or, as _The Spectator_ phrased it, "Shakespeare murdered by Nahum Tate--Covent Garden aiding and abetting." See page 383 for another letter to the same paper. See also the essay on "Shakespeare's Tragedies," 1810, for a first idea of the indictment now more fully drawn up.

Page 376, line 2 of letter. _Tate's "King Lear."_ Nahum Tate (1652-1715), Poet Laureate, was the author, with Nicholas Brady (1659-1726), of the rhymed version of the Psalms which bears their names, 1696, a rival of the version of 1549 by Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins. He also wrote verses and plays, original and doctored. His version of "King Lear"--"The History of King Lear"--was produced in 1681. Therein Cordelia and Edgar are at the outset shown to be in love. After the usual frustrations they are united at the close, and Lear, who does not die, pronounces his blessing over them. Cordelia thus addresses Edgar in the first act:--

When, Edgar, I permitted your addresses,
I was the darling daughter of a king,
Nor can I now forget my royal birth,
And live dependent on my lover's fortune.
I cannot to so low a fate submit,
And therefore study to forget your passions,
And trouble me upon this theme no more.

Tate also rewrote "Richard II." and Webster's "White Devil."

Page 376, foot. "_Coriolanus._" Lamb refers to Tate's play, "The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth," produced in 1682. Aufidius threatens to violate only Virgilia:--

For soon as I've secur'd my rival's life,
All stain'd i' th' husband's blood, I'll force the wife.--

She stabs herself rather than be dishonoured; and it is Nigridius who mangles, gashes, racks and distorts the little son of Coriolanus.

Page 377, line 3. _Shadwell._ The version of "Timon of Athens," by Thomas Shadwell (1642?-1692), Poet Laureate, is "The History of Timon of Athens, the Man Hater," produced at the Dorset Garden Theatre in 1678. Timon's last words are:--

_Timon._ I charge thee live, Evandra.
Thou lov'st me not if thou wilt not obey me;
Thou only! Dearest! Kind! Constant thing on earth,
Farewell.
_Dies._

_Evandra._ He's gone! he's gone! would all the world were so.
I must make haste, or I shall not o'ertake
Him in his flight. Timon, I come, stay for me,
Farewell, base world.

_Stabs herself. Dies._

Evandra was played not only by Mrs. Betterton, but also by Mrs. Bracegirdle.

Page 377, foot. "_Macbeth._" The new version of "Macbeth" was probably by Sir William Davenant (1606-1668). There is an edition as early as 1673.

Macduff's chariot is greatly insisted upon. His servant remarks in the same scene:--

This is the entrance o' th' Heath; and here
He order'd me to attend him with the chariot,

and a little later, to Macduff's question, "Where are our children?" Lady Macduff replies:--

They are securely sleeping in the chariot.

Lady Macbeth's final repentance leads her to address her husband thus:--

You may in peace resign the ill-gain'd crown.
Why should you labour still to be unjust?
There has been too much blood already spilt.
Make not the subjects victims to your guilt.

* * * * *

resign your kingdom now,
And with your crown put off your guilt.

* * * * *

Page 379. SATURDAY NIGHT.

_The Gem_, 1830. Signed "Nepos." Not reprinted by Lamb.

This little essay was written to accompany an engraving of Wilkie's picture with the same title. Whether Lamb's grandmother was as he has recorded we cannot know; his reminiscences of her in "Dream Children" and "The Grandam" are very different. That was Mrs. Field; Lamb, I think, never knew a paternal grandmother. The recollection of the fly in the eye seems to have an authentic air.

Page 380, line 9. _Burking._ After Burke and Hare, who suffocated their victims and sold them to the hospitals for dissection. Burke was executed in January, 1829.

* * * * *

Page 381. ESTIMATE OF DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS.

This criticism was written for Wilson's _Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel de Foe_, 1830. It will be found on page 636 of the third of Wilson's volumes. Lamb never reprinted it.

Walter Wilson (1781-1847) had been a bookseller, and a fellow-clerk of Lamb's at the India House. Later he entered at the Inner Temple. In addition to his work on De Foe, he wrote _The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches in London, Westminster and Southwark, including the Lives of their Ministers_, a work in four volumes. Lamb, as his _Letters_ tell us, helped Wilson with advice concerning De Foe. He also seems to have wished the "Ode to the Treadmill" to be included; but it was not.

This criticism of the Secondary Novels is usually preceded in the editions of Lamb's works by the following remarks contained in Lamb's letter to Wilson of December 16, 1822, which Wilson printed as page 428 of Vol. III., but they do not rightly form part of the article, which Lamb wrote seven years later, in 1829. I quote from the original MS. in the Bodleian:--

"In the appearance of _truth_, in all the incidents and conversations that occur in them, they exceed any works of fiction I am acquainted with. It is perfect illusion. The _Author_ never appears in these self-narratives (for so they ought to be called, or rather Autobiographies) but the _Narrator_ chains us down to an implicit belief in every thing he says. There is all the minute detail of a log-book in it. Dates are painfully pressed upon the memory. Facts are repeated over and over in varying phrases, till you cannot chuse but believe them. It is like reading Evidence given in a Court of Justice. So anxious the storyteller seems that the truth should be clearly comprehended, that when he has told us a matter of fact, or a motive, in a line or two farther down he _repeats_ it, with his favourite figure of speech, 'I say,' so and so--though he had made it abundantly plain before. This is in imitation of the common people's way of speaking, or rather of the way in which they are addressed by a master or mistress, who wishes to impress something upon their memories, and has a wonderful effect upon matter-of-fact readers. Indeed it is to such principally that he writes. His style is elsewhere beautiful, but plain and _homely_. Robinson Crusoe is delightful to all ranks and classes, but it is easy to see that it is written in phraseology peculiarly adapted to the lower conditions of readers; hence it is an especial favourite with sea-faring men, poor boys, servant-maids, &c. His novels are capital kitchen-reading, while they are worthy from their deep interest to find a shelf in the Libraries of the wealthiest, and the most learned. His passion for _matter-of-fact narrative_, sometimes betrayed him into a long relation of common incidents which might happen to any man, and have no interest but the intense appearance of truth in them, to recommend them. The whole latter half, or two thirds, of Colonel Jack is of this description. The beginning of Colonel Jack is the most affecting natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn. His losing the stolen money in the hollow of a tree, and finding it again when in despair, and then being in equal distress at not knowing how to dispose of it, and several similar touches in the early history of the Colonel, evince a deep knowledge of human nature; and, putting out of question the superior _romantic_ interest of the latter, in my mind very much exceed Crusoe. Roxana (1st edition) is the next in Interest, though he left out the best part of it [in] subsequent Editions, from a foolish hyper criticism of his friend Southerne. But Moll Flanders, the account of the Plague, &c. &c. are all of one family, and have the same stamp of character."

One point in this 1822 criticism requires notice--that touching the first edition of _Roxana_. According to a letter from Lamb to Wilson, Lamb considered the curiosity of Roxana's daughter to be the best part of _Roxana_. But the episode of the daughter does not come into the first edition of the book (1724) at all, and is thought by some critics not to be De Foe's. Mr. Aitken, De Foe's latest editor, doubts the Southerne story altogether. In any case, Lamb was wrong in recommending the first edition for its completeness, for the later ones are fuller. It was upon the episode of Susannah that Godwin based his play, "Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote a prologue in praise of De Foe. Godwin's preface stated that the only edition of _Roxana_ then available--in 1807--in which to find the full story of Roxana's daughter, was that of 1745. Godwin turned the avenging daughter into a son.

Writing to Wilson on the publication of his _Memoirs of De Foe_, Lamb says: "The two papers of mine will puzzle the reader, being so akin. Odd, that never keeping a scrap of my own letters, with some fifteen years' interval I should have nearly said the same things." (According to the dating of the letters the interval was not fifteen years, but seven.) Lamb also remarks, "De Foe was always my darling."

For a further criticism of De Foe see "The Good Clerk," page 148 of the present volume, and the notes to the same.

In introducing the criticism of the Secondary Novels, Wilson wrote:--

It may call for some surprise that De Foe should be so little known
as a novelist, beyond the range of "Robinson Crusoe." To recall the
attention of the public to his other fictions, the present writer
is happy to enrich his work with some original remarks upon his
secondary novels by his early friend, Charles Lamb, whose
competency to form an accurate judgment upon the subject, no one
will doubt who is acquainted with his genius.

Page 382, foot. _Mr. Coleridge has anticipated us...._ Referring to Coleridge's remarks, see the _Biographia Literaria_, Vol. II., chapter iv.

Page 383, line 8. _An ingenious critic._ Lamb himself, in the 1822 criticism quoted above.

* * * * *

Page 383. CLARENCE SONGS.

_The Spectator_, July 24, 1830.

Concerning Lamb's theory that "Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill" was written upon Prince William, the editor of _The Spectator_ remarks that it had reference to George IV.--a monarch upon whom Lamb himself had done his share of rhyming. Lamb was at Christ's Hospital from 1782-1789. Prince William, who was born in 1765, became a midshipman in 1779. His promotion to lieutenant came in 1785, and to captain in the following year. The ballad to which Lamb refers is called "Duke William's Frolic." It relates how Duke William and a nobleman, dressing themselves like sailors, repaired to an inn to drink. While there the Press gang came; the Duke was said to have been impudent to the lieutenant and was condemned to be flogged. The ballad (as given in Mr. John Ashton's _Modern Street Ballads_, 1888) ends:--

Then instantly the boatswain's mate began for to undress him,
But, presently, he did espy the star upon his breast, sir;
Then on their knees they straight did fall, and for mercy soon did
call,
He replied, You're base villains, thus using us poor sailors.

No wonder that my royal father cannot man his shipping,
'Tis by using them so barbarously, and always them a-whipping.
But for the future, sailors all, shall have good usage, great and
small,
To hear the news, together all cried, May God bless Duke William.

He ordered them fresh officers that stood in need of wealth,
And with the crew he left some gold, that they might drink his
health,
And when that they did go away, the sailors loud huzzaèd,
Crying, Blessed be that happy day whereon was born Duke William.

Tom Sheridan, the dramatist's son, was born in 1775, and died in 1817, so that in 1783 he was only eight years old.

* * * * *

Page 385. RECOLLECTIONS OF A LATE ROYAL ACADEMICIAN.

_The Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831. Not reprinted by Lamb.

In the magazine the title ran:--

"PETER'S NET

"'_All is fish that comes to my net_'

"_No. 1.--Recollections of a Late Royal Academician_"

Moxon had taken over _The Englishman's Magazine_, started in April, 1831, in time to control the August number, in which had appeared a notice stating, of Elia, that "in succeeding months he promiseth to grace" the pages of the magazine "with a series of essays, under the quaint appellation of 'PETER'S NET.'" The magazine, however, lived only until the October number. Writing to Moxon at the time that he sent the MS. of this essay, Lamb remarked:--

"The R. A. here memorised was George Dawe, whom I knew well, and heard many anecdotes of, from Daniels and Westall, at H. Rogers's; to each of them it will be well to send a magazine in my name. It will fly like wildfire among the Royal Academicians and artists.... The 'Peter's Net' does not intend funny things only. All is fish. And leave out the sickening 'Elia' at the end. Then it may comprise letters and characters addressed to Peter; but a signature forces it to be all characteristic of the one man, Elia, or the one man, Peter, which cramped me formerly."

George Dawe was born in 1781, the son of Philip Dawe, a mezzotint engraver. At first he engraved too, but after a course of study in the Royal Academy schools he took to portrait-painting, among his early sitters being William Godwin. Throughout his career he painted portraits, varied at first with figure subjects of the kind described by Lamb. He was made an Associate in 1809 and an R.A. in 1814. His introduction to royal circles came with the marriage of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold in 1816. After her death he went to Brussels in the suite of the Duke of Kent, and painted the Duke of Wellington. It was in 1819 that he visited St. Petersburg, remaining nine years, and painting nearly four hundred portraits, first of the officers who fought against Napoleon, and afterwards of other personages. He left in 1828, but returned in 1829 after a visit to England, and a short but profitable sojourn in Berlin. He died in 1829, and was buried in the crypt of St. Paul's. A passage in his will shows Dawe to have been a rather more interesting character than Lamb suggests, and his _Life of George Morland_, 1807, has considerable merit.

Coleridge also knew Dawe well. Dawe painted a picture on a subject in "Love," drew Coleridge's portrait and took a cast of his face; and in 1812 Coleridge thus recommends him to Mrs. Coleridge's hospitality:--

He is a very modest man, his manners not over polished, and his
worst point is that he is (at least, I have found him so) a fearful
questionist, whenever he thinks he can pick up any information, or
ideas, poetical, historical, topographical, or artistical, that he
can make bear on his own profession. But he is sincere, friendly,
strictly _moral_ in every respect, I firmly believe even to
_innocence_, and in point of cheerful indefatigableness of
industry, in regularity, and temperance--in short, in a glad, yet
quiet, devotion of his whole being to the art he has made choice
of, he is the only man I ever knew who goes near to rival
Southey--gentlemanly address, person, physiognomy, knowledge,
learning and genius being of course wholly excluded from the
comparison.

Many years later, however, Coleridge endorsed Dawe's funeral card in the following terms, "The Grub" being the nickname by which Dawe was known:--

I really would have attended the Grub's Canonization in St. Paul's,
under the impression that it would gratify his sister, Mrs. Wright;
but Mr. G. interposed a conditional but sufficiently decorous
negative. "No! Unless you wish to follow his Grubship still further
_down_." So I pleaded ill health. But the very Thursday morning I
went to Town to see my daughter, for the first time, as _Mrs. Henry
Coleridge_, in Gower Street, and, odd enough, the stage was stopped
by the Pompous Funeral of the unchangeable and predestinated Grub,
and I extemporised:--

"As Grub Dawe pass'd beneath the Hearse's Lid,
On which a large RESURGAM met the eye,
_Col_, who well knew the Grub, cried, Lord forbid!
I trust, he's only telling us a lie!"
S. T. COLERIDGE.

Page 385, line 2 of essay. _To the Russian._ Among Dawe's court paintings was an equestrian portrait of Alexander I., twenty feet high. His collection of portraits painted during his residence in Russia was lodged in a gallery built for it in the Winter Palace.

Page 385, line 11 of essay. _"Timon" as it was last acted._ Referring to the performance of "Timon of Athens," given exactly as in Shakespeare's day, with no women in the cast, at Drury Lane on October 28, 1816.

Page 385, line 9 from foot. _The Haytian._ I can find no authority for Lamb's suggestion that Dawe might have gone to Hayti to paint the court of Christophe. Probably Lamb based the theory, as a joke, upon a story of Dawe which Sir Anthony Carlisle, the surgeon, and a friend of Lamb's, used to tell. The story is told in _The Library of the Fine Arts_, 1831, in the following terms:--

In a conversation with Sir A. Carlisle, that eminent surgeon told
Dawe that he had lately sent to Bartholemew's Hospital a negro of
prodigious power and fine form, such as he had never before seen,
and the sight of whom had given him better conceptions of the
beauty of Grecian sculpture than he had previously possessed.
Struck with this account Dawe went to the Hospital where he found
the man had been discharged. Any other person would here have given
up the pursuit, but Dawe was not to be baffled in a favourite
object; he accordingly commenced a strict search through all those
parts of the town where such a person was likely to be found; and
at length, after much inquiry, found him on board a ship about to
sail for the West Indies. Dawe, though his means at that time were
not so great as they afterwards became, induced the man to go home
with him, where he maintained him some time; and the Negro having
among other instances of his strength, told him of his once seizing
a buffalo by the nostrils and bearing it down to the ground, Dawe
was so struck by the fact as suited for the composition of a
powerful picture, that he placed the man in the posture he
described, and drew him in that attitude. When the picture was sent
for the premium of the British Institution, several of the
governors objected to it as being a portrait and not an historical
picture; notwithstanding this, however, the better judgment of the
majority awarded it the prize.

Page 386, line 2. _Widow H._ This was probably Mrs. Hope, wife of Thomas Hope, the famous virtuoso and patron, who had just died--in February, 1831. Dawe was one of his less capable protégés. It was Mr. and Mrs. Hope whom Dubost, the French painter, out of pique, caricatured as "Beauty and the Beast." On the exhibition of the picture in public, the incident caused some notoriety, and George Dyer's friend Jekyll was engaged in the subsequent law-suit.

Page 386, line 16 from foot. _His father._ Philip Dawe, mezzotint engraver, who flourished 1760-1780, the friend of George Morland and the pupil of that painter's father, Henry Robert Morland (1730?-1797), and engraver of many of his pictures. George Dawe wrote George Morland's life.

Page 386, line 13 from foot. _Carrington and Bowles._ Properly, Carington Bowles, of 69 St. Paul's Churchyard. The laundress washing was probably Lamb's recollection of one of the well-known pair, "Lady's-Maid Ironing" and "Lady's-Maid Soaping Linen," by Henry Morland, the originals of which are in the National Gallery. I cannot identify among the hundreds of Carington Bowles' publications in the British Museum the picture that Lamb so much admired in the Hornsey Road. But the inn would probably be that which is now The King's Head (or Yard of Pork), at the corner of Crouch End Hill (a continuation of Hornsey Lane), Crouch Hill, Coleridge Road and Broadway. The picture has gone.

Page 387, line 14 from foot. _He proceeded Academician._ Lamb wrote to Manning in 1810, "Mr. Dawe is made associate of the Royal Academy. By what law of association, I can't guess."

Page 388, line 15 from foot. _Sampson ... Dalilah._ The letters contain an earlier account of the picture. Writing to Hazlitt in 1805 Lamb says: "I have seen no pictures of note since, except Mr. Dawe's gallery. It is curious to see how differently two great men treat the same subject, yet both excellent in their way: for instance, Milton and Mr. Dawe. Mr. Dawe has chosen to illustrate the story of Sampson exactly in the point of view in which Milton has been most happy: the interview between the Jewish Hero, blind and captive, and Dalilah. Milton has imagined his Locks grown again, strong as horse-hair or porcupine's bristles; doubtless shaggy and black, as being hairs 'which of a nation armed contained the strength.' I don't remember, he _says_ black: but could Milton imagine them to be yellow? Do you? Mr. Dawe with striking originality of conception has crowned him with a thin yellow wig, in colour precisely like Dyson's, in curl and quantity resembling Mrs. Professor's,[73] his Limbs rather stout, about such a man as my Brother or Rickman--but no Atlas nor Hercules, nor yet so bony as Dubois, the Clown of Sadler's Wells. This was judicious, taking the spirit of the story rather than the fact: for doubtless God could communicate national salvation to the trust of flax and tow as well as hemp and cordage, and could draw down a Temple with a golden tress as soon as with all the cables of the British navy."

[73] Mrs. Godwin.--ED.

Page 390, line 11. _Half a million._ Probably nearer £100,000. Dawe, however, lost much of this by money-lending, and died worth only £25,000.

* * * * *

Page 391. THE LATIN POEMS OF VINCENT BOURNE.

_The Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831.

This article was unsigned, but it is known to be by Lamb from internal evidence and from the following letter to Moxon, the publisher of the magazine:--

"DEAR M.,--I have ingeniously contrived to review myself.

"Tell me if this will do. Mind, for such things as these--half
quotations--I do not charge _Elia_ price. Let me hear of, if not see
you.

"PETER."

Lamb's _Album Verses_, the book reviewed, had been published by Moxon a year earlier. It contained nine translations from Vincent Bourne.

Further particulars of Vincent Bourne (1695-1747), a master at Westminster, are given in the notes to Lamb's translations in the poetical volume. His _Poemata_ appeared in 1734, the best edition being that of the Rev. John Mitford, Bernard Barton's friend, published in 1840. Lamb first read Bourne as late as 1815. Writing to Wordsworth in April of that year he says of Bourne: "What a heart that man had, all laid out upon town scenes, a proper counterpoise to _some people's_ rural extravagances." And again in the same letter: "What a sweet, unpretending, pretty-mannered, _matter-ful_ creature, sucking from every flower, making a flower of every thing--his diction all Latin, and his thoughts all English." And in the _Elia_ essay "On the Decay of Beggars" Bourne is called "most classical, and at the same time, most English, of the Latinists!"

Page 391, foot. _Cowper ... out of the four._ Cowper, who was Bourne's pupil at Westminster, translated twenty-three of the poems, but there were only four in early editions of his works. Lamb and Cowper did not clash in their translations, except in the case of the lines on the sleeping infant quoted later in this essay. Cowper's version ran thus:--

Sweet babe, whose image here expressed,
Does thy peaceful slumbers show,
Guilt or fear, to break thy rest,
Never did thy spirit know.

Softly slumber, soft repose,
Such as mock the painter's skill,
Such as innocence bestows,
Harmless infant, lull thee still!

The line quoted by Lamb from Cowper is the first of "The Jackdaw." Cowper's praise of Bourne resembles Lamb's. He writes: "I love the memory of Vinny Bourne. I think him a better Latin poet than Tibullus, Propertius, Ausonius, or any of the writers in _his_ way, except Ovid, and not at all inferior to _him_."

Page 392, line 4. _A recent writer._ Lamb himself.

Page 395, line 19. _There is a tragic Drama._ "The Wife's Trial" (see Vol. IV.). More properly a comic drama.

Page 395, line 27. _But if to write in Albums be a sin._ A reference probably to the attack on Lamb's book made a year earlier in the _Literary Gazette_, which occasioned Southey's spirited lines to _The Times_ in defence of his friend.

Page 396, middle. _But the disease has gone forth._ Four years before, in 1827, Lamb had protested to Bernard Barton against the Album exactions:--

"If I go to ---- thou art there also, O all pervading Album! All over the Leeward Islands, in Newfoundland, and the Back Settlements, I understand there is no other reading. They haunt me. I die of Albophobia!"

* * * * *

Page 397. THE DEATH OF MUNDEN.

_The Athenæum_, February 11, 1832, under the title, "Munden, the Comedian." Signed "C. Lamb." Not reprinted by Lamb.

The article was preceded by this editorial note:--

A brief Memoir in a paper like the _Athenæum_, is due to departed
genius, and would certainly have been paid to Munden, whose fame is
so interwoven with all our early and pleasant recollections, even
though we had nothing to add to the poor detail of dates and facts
already registered in the daily papers. The memory of a player, it
has been said, is limited to one generation; he

"--struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more!"

But this cannot be true, seeing that many whose fame will soon be
counted by centuries, yet live to delight us in Cibber; and that
others of our latter days, have been enbalmed, in all their vital
spirit, by Elia himself; in whose unrivalled volume _Cockletop_ is
preserved as in amber, and where Munden will live for aye, making
mouths at Time and Oblivion. We were thus apologizing to ourselves
for the unworthy epithet we were about to scratch on perishable
paper to this inimitable actor, when we received the following
letter, which our readers will agree with us is worth a whole
volume of bald biographies.

This preamble was probably written by Charles Wentworth Dilke (1789-1864), who became supreme editor of _The Athenæum_ in 1830. Joseph Shepherd Munden died on February 6, 1832. He had first made his mark in 1780, when Lamb was five. His Covent Garden career lasted, with occasional migrations, from 1790 to 1811. Munden's first appearance at Drury Lane was in 1813. It was in 1815 that he created the part of Old Dozy, in T. Dibdin's "Past Ten O'clock and a Rainy Night." His farewell of the stage was taken in 1824.