Chapter XX: Appendix (3)

In _Table Talk_ Coleridge tells another story of Boyer. "The discipline at Christ's Hospital in my time," he says, "was ultra-Spartan; all domestic ties were to be put aside. 'Boy!' I remember Bowyer saying to me once when I was crying the first day of my return after the holidays, 'Boy! the school is your father! Boy! the school is your mother! Boy! the school is your brother! the school is your sister! the school is your first cousin, and your second cousin, and all the rest of your relations! Let's have no more crying!'"

Leigh Hunt in his autobiography also has reminiscences of Boyer and Feilde.

James Boyer or Bowyer was born in 1736, was admitted to the school in 1744, and passed to Balliol. He resigned his Upper Grammar Mastership in 1799, and probably retired to the rectory of Gainscolne to which he had been appointed by the school committee six years earlier. They also gave him £500 and a staff.

Page 23, line 6 from foot. _Author of the Country Spectator_. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton (1769-1822), afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, who was at school with Lamb and Coleridge. In the little statuette group which is called the Coleridge Memorial, subscribed for in 1872, on the centenary of Coleridge's birth, and held in rotation by the ward in which most prizes have been gained in the year, Middleton is the tallest figure. It is reproduced in my large edition. The story which it celebrates is to the effect that Middleton found Coleridge reading Virgil in the playground and asked him if he were learning a lesson. Coleridge replied that he was "reading for pleasure," an answer which Middleton reported to Boyer, and which led to Boyer taking special notice of him. The _Country Spectator_ was a magazine conducted by Middleton in 1792-1793.

Page 23, line 3 from foot. _C----_. Coleridge again.

Page 24, line 4. _Lancelot Pepys Stevens_. Rightly spelled Stephens, afterwards Under Grammar Master at the school.

Page 24, line 6. _Dr. T----e_. Arthur William Trollope (1768-1827), who succeeded Boyer as Upper Grammar Master. He resigned in 1826.

Page 24, line 21. _Th----_. Sir Edward Thornton (1766-1852), diplomatist, who was sent as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Lower Saxony, to Sweden, to Denmark and other courts, afterwards becoming minister to Portugal.

Page 24, line 23. _Middleton_. See note above. The treatise was _The Doctrine of the Greek Article as applied to the Criticism and the Illustration of the New Testament_, 1808. It was directed chiefly against Granville Sharpe. Middleton was the first Bishop of Calcutta.

Page 24, line 8 from foot. _Richards_. This was George Richards (1767-1837). His poem on "Aboriginal Britons," which won a prize given in 1791 by Earl Harcourt, is mentioned favourably in Byron's _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. Richards became vicar of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields and a Governor of Christ's Hospital. He founded a gold medal for Latin hexameters.

Page 24, foot. _S---- ... M----_. According to the Key "Scott, died in Bedlam," and "Maunde, dismiss'd school."

Page 24, foot. "_Finding some of Edward's race._" From Prior's Carmen Seculare for 1700:--

Finding some of Stuart's race
Unhappy, pass their annals by.

Lamb alters Stuart to Edward because Edward VI. founded Christ's Hospital.

Page 25, line 12. _C.V. Le G----_. Charles Valentine Le Grice (1773-1858), whom we meet also in the essay on "Grace Before Meat." Le Grice, in his description of Lamb as a schoolboy in Talfourd's _Memorials_, remarked: "I never heard his name mentioned without the addition of Charles, although, as there was no other boy of the name of Lamb, the addition was unnecessary; but there was an implied kindness in it, and it was a proof that his gentle manners excited that kindness."

Page 25, line 20. _Allen_. Robert Allen, whom we meet again in the essay on "Newspapers." After a varied and not fortunate career he died of apoplexy in 1805.

Page 25, line 8 from foot. _The junior Le G----_. Samuel Le Grice became a soldier and died in the West Indies. Lamb wrote of him to Coleridge in 1796, after the tragedy at his home, at a time when friends were badly needed, "Sam Le Grice who was then in town was with me the first 3 or 4 days, and was as a brother to me, gave up every hour of his time to the very hurting of his health and spirits, in constant attendance and humouring my poor father."

Page 25, line 8 from foot. _F----_. Joseph Favell, afterwards Captain, who had a commission from the Duke of York--as had Sam Le Grice--and was killed in the Peninsula, at Salamanca, 1812. Lamb states in the essay on "Poor Relations," where Favell figures as "W.," that he met his death at St. Sebastian. Both Sam Le Grice and Favell were to have accompanied Coleridge and Southey to the Susquehanna as Pantisocrats.

Page 26, line 1. _Fr----_. Frederick William Franklin, master of the Hertford branch of the school from 1801 to 1827. He died in 1836.

Page 26, line 2. _Marmaduke T----_. Marmaduke Thompson, to whom Lamb dedicated _Rosamund Gray_ in 1798.

Page 26, line 3. _Catalogue of Grecians_. Lamb was at Christ's Hospital from 1782 to 1789, and his list is not quite complete. He himself never was a Grecian; that is to say, one of the picked scholars on the grammar side of the school, two of whom were sent up to Cambridge with a hospital exhibition every year, on the understanding that they should take orders. Lamb was one of the Deputy-Grecians from whom the Grecians were chosen, but his stammer standing in his way and a Church career being out of the question, he never became a full Grecian. Writing to George Dyer, who had been a Grecian, in 1831, Lamb says: "I don't know how it is, but I keep my rank in fancy still since school days. I can never forget I was a deputy Grecian!... Alas! what am I now? What is a Leadenhall clerk, or India pensioner, to a deputy Grecian? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer!"

Lamb's memory is preserved at Christ's Hospital by a medal which is given for the best English essays. It was first struck in 1875, the centenary of his birth.

* * * * *

Page 26. THE TWO RACES OF MEN.

_London Magazine_, December, 1820.

Writing to Wordsworth in April of 1816, Lamb says:--"I have not bound the poems yet. I wait till people have done borrowing them. I think I shall get a chain and chain them to my shelves, _more Bodleiano_, and people may come and read them at chain's length. For of those who borrow, some read slow; some mean to read but don't read; and some neither read nor meant to read, but borrow to leave you an opinion of their sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing friends the justice to say that there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation in them. When they borrow my money they never fail to make use of it."

Probably the germ of the essay is to be found in this passage, as Lamb never forgot his thoughts.

Page 26, line 17 of essay. _Brinsley_. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the dramatist and a great spendthrift. He died in 1816. Lamb knew him slightly.

Page 26, line 9 from foot. _Beyond Tooke_. That is, beyond the philological theories of _The Diversions of Purley_ by John Home Tooke (1736-1812).

Page 27, line 22. _Ralph Bigod_. John Fenwick, an unlucky friend of the Lambs, an anticipatory Micawber, of whom we know too little, and seem likely to find out little more. Lamb mentions him again in the essay on "Chimney Sweepers," and in that on "Newspapers," in his capacity as editor of _The Albion_, for which Lamb wrote its extinguishing epigram in the summer of 1801. There are references to the Fenwicks in Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart and in Lamb's letters; but nothing very informing. After financial embarrassments in England they emigrated to America.

Page 29, line 12. _Comberbatch_. Coleridge, who had enlisted as a young man in the 15th Light Dragoons as Silas Titus Comberback.

Page 29, line 16. _Bloomsbury_. Lamb was then in rooms at 20 Great Russell Street (now Russell Street), Covent Garden, which is not in Bloomsbury.

Page 29, line 27. _Should he go on acting_. The _Letters_ contain references to this habit of Coleridge's. Writing to him in 1809 Lamb says, referring among other loans to the volume of Dodsley with Vittoria Corombona ("The White Devil," by John Webster) in it:--"While I think on it, Coleridge, I fetch'd away my books which you had at the _Courier_ Office, and found all but a third volume of the old plays, containing the 'White Devil, 'Green's 'Tu Quoque,' and the 'Honest Whore,' perhaps the most valuable volume of them all--_that_ I could not find. Pray, if you can, remember what you did with it, or where you took it out with you a walking perhaps; send me word, for, to use the old plea, it spoils a set. I found two other volumes (you had three), the _Arcadia_ and _Daniel_, enriched with manuscript notes. I wish every book I have were so noted. They have thoroughly converted me to relish _Daniel_, or to say I relish him, for after all, I believe I did relish him."

And several years later (probably in 1820) we find him addressing Coleridge with reference to Luther's _Table Talk:_--"Why will you make your visits, which should give pleasure, matter of regret to your friends? You never come but you take away some folio, that is part of my existence. With a great deal of difficulty I was made to comprehend the extent of my loss. My maid, Becky, brought me a dirty bit of paper, which contained her description of some book which Mr. Coleridge had taken away. It was _Luster's Tables_, which, for some time, I could not make out. 'What! has he carried away any of the _tables_, Becky?' 'No, it wasn't any tables, but it was a book that he called _Luster's Tables_.' I was obliged to search personally among my shelves, and a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the true nature of the damage I had sustained."

Allsop tells us that Lamb once said of Coleridge: "He sets his mark upon whatever he reads; it is henceforth sacred. His spirit seems to have breathed upon it; and, if not for its author, yet for his sake, we admire it."

Page 30, line 1. _John Buncle_. Most of Lamb's books are in America; Lamb's copy of _John Buncle_, with an introductory note written in by Coleridge, was sold, with other books from his library, in New York in 1848. _The Life of John Buncle, Esq_., a book highly praised by Hazlitt, was by Thomas Amory (1691?-1788), published, Part I. in 1756 and Part II. in 1766. A condensed reprint was issued in 1823 entitled _The Spirit of Buncle_, in which, Mr. W.C. Hazlitt suggests, Lamb may have had a hand with William Hazlitt.

Page 30, line 19. _Spiteful K._ James Kenney (1780-1849), the dramatist, then resident at Versailles, where Lamb and his sister visited him in 1822. He married Louisa Mercier, daughter of Louis Sebastian Mercier, the French critic, and widow of Lamb's earlier friend, Thomas Holcroft. One of their two sons was named Charles Lamb Kenney (1821-1881). Lamb recovered Margaret of Newcastle's _Letters_ (folio, 1664), which is among the books in America, as is also the Fulke Greville (small folio, 1633).

Page 31, line 4. _S.T.C.... annotations_. Lamb's copy of Daniel's _Poetical Works_, two volumes, 1718, and of Browne's _Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors_, folio, 1658, both with marginalia by himself and Coleridge, are in existence, but I cannot say where: probably in America. Lamb's copy of Beaumont and Fletcher, with Coleridge's notes (see "Old China"), is, however, safe in the British Museum. His Fulke Greville, as I have said, is in America, but I fancy it has nothing of Coleridge in it, nor has his Burton--quarto, 1621--which still exists.

Coleridge's notes in the Beaumont and Fletcher folio are not numerous, but usually ample and seriously critical. At the foot of a page of the "Siege of Corinth," on which he had written two notes (one, "O flat! flat! flat! Sole! Flounder! Place! all stinking! stinkingly flat!"), he added:--

_N.B._--I shall not be long here, Charles!--I gone, you will not
mind my having spoiled a book in order to leave a Relic.

S.T.C.

Octr. 1811.

Underneath the initials S.T.C. are the initials W.W. which suggest that Wordsworth was present.

The Museum also has Lamb's Milton, with annotations by himself and Coleridge.

In the _Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Charles Lamb_, privately issued by the New York Dibdin Club in 1897, is a list of five of Lamb's books now in America containing valuable and unpublished marginalia by Coleridge: _The Life of John Buncle_, Donne's _Poems_ ("I shall die soon, my dear Charles Lamb, and then you will not be vexed that I have scribbled your book. S.T.C., 2d May, 1811"), Reynolds' _God's Revenge against ... Murder_, 1651 ("O what a beautiful _concordia discordantium_ is an unthinking good man's soul!"), _The History of Philip de Commines_ in English, and Petwin's _Letters Concerning the Mind_.

* * * * *

Page 31. NEW YEAR'S EVE.

_London Magazine_, January, 1821.

The melancholy pessimism of this essay led to some remonstrance from robuster readers of the _London Magazine_. In addition to the letter from "A Father" referred to below, the essay produced, seven months later, in the August number of the _London Magazine_, a long poetical "Epistle to Elia," signed "Olen," in which very simply and touchingly Lamb was reminded that the grave is not the end, was asked to consider the promises of the Christian faith, and finally was offered a glimpse of some of the friends he would meet in heaven--among them Ulysses, Shakespeare and Alice W----n. Taylor, the publisher and editor of the magazine, sent Lamb a copy. He replied, acknowledging the kindness of the author, and adding:--"Poor Elia ... does not pretend to so very clear revelations of a future state of being as 'Olen' seems gifted with. He stumbles about dark mountains at best; but he knows at least how to be thankful for this life, and is too thankful, indeed, for certain relationships lent him here, not to tremble for a possible resumption of the gift. He is too apt to express himself lightly, and cannot be sorry for the present occasion, as it has called forth a reproof so Christian-like."

Lamb thought the poet to be James Montgomery, but it was in reality Charles Abraham Elton. The poem was reprinted in a volume entitled _Boyhood and other Poems_, in 1835.

It is conceivable that Lamb was reasoned with privately upon the sentiments expressed in this essay; and perhaps we may take the following sonnet which he contributed over his own name to, the _London Magazine_ for April, 1821, as a kind of defiant postscript thereto, a further challenge to those who reproached him for his remarks concerning death, and who suggested that he did not really mean them:--

They talk of time, and of time's galling yoke,
That like a millstone on man's mind doth press,
Which only works and business can redress:
Of divine Leisure such foul lies are spoke,
Wounding her fair gifts with calumnious stroke.
But might I, fed with silent meditation,
Assoiled live from that fiend Occupation--
_Improbus labor_, which my spirits hath broke--
I'd drink of time's rich cup, and never surfeit--
Fling in more days than went to make the gem
That crowned the white top of Methusalem--
Yea on my weak neck take, and never forfeit,
Like Atlas bearing up the dainty sky,
The heaven-sweet burthen of eternity.

It was also probably the present essay which led to Lamb's difference with Southey and the famous letter of remonstrance. Southey accused _Elia_ of wanting "a sounder religious feeling," and Lamb suggests in his reply that "New Year's Eve" was the chief offender. See Vol. I. for Lamb's amplification of one of its passages.

It may be interesting here to quote Coleridge's description of Lamb as "one hovering between heaven and earth, neither hoping much nor fearing anything."

Page 31, line 10 from foot. _Bells_. The music of bells seems always to have exerted fascination over Lamb. See the reference in the story of the "First Going to Church," in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, Vol. III.; in his poem "Sabbath Bells," Vol. IV.; and his "John Woodvil," Vol. IV.

Page 31, foot. "_I saw the skirts of the departing Year_." From Coleridge's "Ode to the Departing Year," as printed in 1796 and 1797. Lamb was greatly taken by this line. He wrote to Coleridge on January 2, 1797, in a letter of which only a small portion has been printed:--"The opening [of the Ode] is in the spirit of the sublimest allegory. The idea of the 'skirts of the departing year, seen far onwards, waving in the wind,' is one of those noble Hints at which the Reader's imagination is apt to kindle into grand conceptions." Afterwards Coleridge altered "skirts" to "train."

Page 32, line 21. _Seven.... years_. See note to "Dream-Children." Alice W--n is identified with Ann Simmons, who lived near Blakesware when Lamb was a youth, and of whom he wrote his love sonnets. According to the Key the name is "feigned."

Page 32, line 25. _Old Dorrell_. See the poem "Going or Gone," Vol. IV. There seems really to have been such an enemy of the Lamb fortunes. He was one of the witnesses to the will of John Lamb, the father--William Dorrell.

Page 33, line 5. _Small-pox at five_. There is no other evidence than this casual mention that Lamb ever suffered from this complaint. Possibly he did not. He went to Christ's Hospital at the age of seven.

Page 33, line 13. _From what have I not fallen_. Lamb had had this idea many years before. In 1796 he wrote this sonnet (text of 1818):--

We were two pretty babes, the youngest she,
The youngest, and the loveliest far, I ween,
And Innocence her name. The time has been
We two did love each other's company;
Time was, we two had wept to have been apart:
But when by show of seeming good beguil'd,
I left the garb and manners of a child,
And my first love for man's society,
Defiling with the world my virgin heart--
My loved companion dropp'd a tear, and fled,
And hid in deepest shades her awful head.
Beloved, who shall tell me where thou art--
In what delicious Eden to be found--
That I may seek thee the wide world around?

Page 33, line 27. _Phantom cloud of Elia_. The speculations in the paragraph that ends with these words were fantastical at any rate to one reader, who, under the signature "A Father," contributed to the March number of the _London Magazine_ a eulogy of paternity, in which Elia was reasoned with and rebuked. "Ah! Elia! hadst thou possessed 'offspring of thine own to dally with,' thou wouldst never have made the melancholy avowal that thou hast 'almost ceased to hope!'" Lamb did not reply.

Page 33, line 7 from foot. _Not childhood alone ..._ The passage between these words and "freezing days of December" was taken by Charles Lloyd, Lamb's early friend, as the motto of a poem, in his _Poems_, 1823, entitled "Stanzas on the Difficulty with which, in Youth, we Bring Home to our Habitual Consciousness the Idea of Death."

Page 34, line 15 from foot. _Midnight darlings_. Leigh Hunt records, in his essay "My Books," that he once saw Lamb kiss an old folio--Chapman's _Homer_.

Page 34, line 8 from foot. "_Sweet assurance of a look_." A favourite quotation of Lamb's (here adapted) from Matthew Roydon's elegy on Sir Philip Sidney:--

A sweet attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks.

A portion of the poem is quoted in the Elia essay on "Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney."

* * * * *

Page 37. MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST.

_London Magazine_, February, 1821.

Mrs. Battle was probably, in real life, to a large extent Sarah Burney, the wife of Rear-Admiral James Burney, Lamb's friend, and the centre of the whist-playing set to which he belonged. The theory that Lamb's grandmother, Mrs. Field, was the original Mrs. Battle, does not, I think, commend itself, although that lady may have lent a trait or two. It has possibly arisen from the relation of the passage in the essay on Blakesware, where Mrs. Battle is said to have died in the haunted room, to that in "Dream-Children," where Lamb says that Mrs. Field occupied this room.

The fact that Mrs. Battle and Mrs. Burney were both Sarahs is a small piece of evidence towards their fusion, but there is something more conclusive in the correspondence. Writing in March, 1830, concerning the old whist days, to William Ayrton, one of the old whist-playing company, and the neighbour of the Burneys in Little James Street, Pimlico, Lamb makes use of an elision which, I think, may be taken as more than support of the theory that Mrs. Battle and Mrs. Burney were largely the same--practically proof. "Your letter, which was only not so pleasant as your appearance would have been, has revived some old images; Phillips (not the Colonel), with his few hairs bristling up at the charge of a revoke, which he declares impossible; the old Captain's significant nod over the right shoulder (was it not?); Mrs. B----'s determined questioning of the score, after the game was absolutely gone to the d----l." Lamb, I think, would have written out Mrs. Burney in full had he not wished to suggest Mrs. Battle too.

This conjecture is borne out by the testimony of the late Mrs. Lefroy, in her youth a friend of the Burneys and the Lambs, who told Canon Ainger that though Mrs. Battle had many differing points she was undoubtedly Mrs. Burney. But of course there are the usual cross-trails--the reference to the pictures at Sandham; to Walter Plumer; to the legacy to Lamb; and so forth. Perhaps among the Blakesware portraits was one which Lamb chose as Mrs. Battle's presentment; perhaps Mrs. Field had told him of an ancient dame who had certain of Mrs. Battle's characteristics, and he superimposed Mrs. Burney upon this foundation.

For further particulars concerning the Burney whist parties see the notes to the "Letter to Southey," Vol. I.

Admiral Burney (1750-1821), a son of Dr. Burney, the historian of music, and friend of Johnson and Reynolds, was the brother of Fanny Burney, afterwards Madame d'Arblay. See also "The Wedding," page 275 of this volume, for another glimpse of Lamb's old friend. Admiral Burney wrote _An Essay on the Game of Whist_, which was published in 1821. As he lived until November, 1821, he probably read the present essay. Writing to Wordsworth, March 20, 1822, Lamb says: "There's Capt. Burney gone!--what fun has whist now; what matters it what you lead, if you can no longer fancy him looking over you?"

Page 37, line 1 of essay. "_A clean hearth_." To this, in the _London Magazine_, Lamb put the footnote:--

"This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You must remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your foot and the marble."

Page 37, line 8 of essay. _Win one game, and lose another_. To this, in the _London Magazine_, Lamb put the note:--

"As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day,
and lose him the next."

Page 38, line 26. _Mr. Bowles_. The Rev. William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), whose sonnets had so influenced Coleridge's early poetical career. His edition of Pope was published in 1806. I have tried in vain to discover if Mr. Bowles' MS. and notes for this edition are still in existence. If so, they might contain Lamb's contribution. But it is rather more likely, I fear, that Lamb invented the story. The game of ombre is in Canto III. of _The Rape of the Lock_.

The only writing on cards which we know Lamb to have done, apart from this essay, is the elementary rules of whist which he made out for Mrs. Badams quite late in his life as a kind of introduction to the reading of Admiral Burney's treatise. This letter is in America and has never been printed except privately; nor, if its owner can help it, will it.

Page 40, line 26. _Old Walter Plumer_. See the essay on "The South-Sea House."

Page 42, line 18 from foot. _Bad passions_. Here came in the _London Magazine_, in parenthesis, "(dropping for a while the speaking mask of old Sarah Battle)."

Page 43, line 2. _Bridget Elia_. This is Lamb's first reference in the essays to Mary Lamb under this name. See "Mackery End" and "Old China."

A little essay on card playing in the _Every-Day Book_, the authorship of which is unknown, but which may be Hone's, ends with the following pleasant passage:--

Cousin Bridget and the gentle Elia seem beings of that age wherein
lived Pamela, whom, with "old Sarah Battle," we may imagine
entering their room, and sitting down with them to a _square_
game. Yet Bridget and Elia live in our own times: she, full of
kindness to all, and of soothings to Elia especially;--he, no less
kind and consoling to Bridget, in all simplicity holding converse
with the world, and, ever and anon, giving us scenes that Metzu
and De Foe would admire, and portraits that Deuner and Hogarth
would rise from their graves to paint.

* * * * *

Page 43. A CHAPTER ON EARS.

_London Magazine_, March, 1821.

Lamb was not so utterly without ear as he states. Crabb Robinson in his diary records more than once that Lamb hummed tunes, and Barron Field, in the memoir of Lamb contributed by him to the _Annual Biography and Obituary_ for 1836, mentions his love for certain beautiful airs, among them Kent's "O that I had wings like a dove" (mentioned in this essay), and Handel's "From mighty kings." Lamb says that it was Braham who awakened a love of music in him. Compare Lamb's lines to Clara Novello, Vol. IV., page 101, and also Mary Lamb's postscript to his "Free Thoughts on Eminent Composers," same volume.

Page 43, foot. _I was never ... in the pillory_. This sentence led to an amusing article in the _London Magazine_ for the next month, April, 1821, entitled "The Confessions of H.F.V.H. Delamore, Esq.," unmistakably, I think, by Lamb, which will be found in Vol. I. of this edition, wherein Lamb confesses to a brief sojourn in the stocks at Barnet for brawling on Sunday, an incident for the broad truth of which we have the testimony of his friend Brook Pulham.

Page 44, lines 6 and 7. "_Water parted from the sea_," "_In Infancy_." Songs by Arne in "Artaxerxes," Lamb's "First Play" (see page 113).

Page 44, line 11. _Mrs. S----_. The Key gives "Mrs. Spinkes." We meet a Will Weatherall in "Distant Correspondents," page 120; but I have not been able to discover more concerning either.

Page 44, line 17. _Alice W----n_. See note to "Dream Children."

Page 44, line 26. _My friend A._ Probably William Ayrton (1777-1818), the musical critic, one of the Burneys' whist-playing set, and a friend and correspondent of Lamb's. See the musical rhyming letter to him from Lamb, May 17, 1817.

Page 47, line 5. _My friend, Nov----_. Vincent Novello (1781-1861), the organist, the father of Mrs. Cowden Clarke, and a great friend of Lamb.

Page 47, footnote. Another friend of Vincent Novello's uses the same couplet (from Watt's _Divine Songs for Children_, Song XXVIII., "For the Lord's Day, Evening") in the description of glees by the old cricketers at the Bat and Ball on Broad Halfpenny Down, near Hambledon--I refer to John Nyren, author of _The Young Cricketer's Tutor_, 1833. There is no evidence that Lamb and Nyren ever met, but one feels that they ought to have done so, in Novello's hospitable rooms.

Page 48, line 3. _Lutheran beer_. Edmund Ollier, the son of Charles Ollier, the publisher of Lamb's _Works_, 1818, in his reminiscences of Lamb, prefixed to one edition of _Elia_, tells this story: "Once at a musical party at Leigh Hunt's, being oppressed with what to him was nothing but a prolonged noise ... he said--'If one only had a pot of porter, one might get through this.' It was procured for him and he weathered the Mozartian storm."

In the _London Magazine_ this essay had the following postscript:--

"P.S.--A writer, whose real name, it seems, is _Boldero_, but who
has been entertaining the town for the last twelve months, with
some very pleasant lucubrations, under the assumed signature of
_Leigh Hunt_[1], in his Indicator, of the 31st January last, has
thought fit to insinuate, that I _Elia_ do not write the little
sketches which bear my signature, in this Magazine; but that the
true author of them is a Mr. L----b. Observe the critical period
at which he has chosen to impute the calumny!--on the very
eve of the publication of our last number--affording no scope
for explanation for a full month--during which time, I must
needs lie writhing and tossing, under the cruel imputation of
nonentity.--Good heavens! that a plain man must not be allowed
_to be_--

"They call this an age of personality: but surely this spirit of
anti-personality (if I may so express it) is something worse.

"Take away my moral reputation: I may live to discredit that
calumny.

"Injure my literary fame,--I may write that up again--

"But when a gentleman is robbed of his identity, where is he?

"Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail and perishing
trifle at the best. But here is an assassin who aims at our very
essence; who not only forbids us _to be_ any longer, but _to have
been_ at all. Let our ancestors look to it--

"Is the parish register nothing? Is the house in Princes-street,
Cavendish-square, where we saw the light six-and-forty years
ago, nothing? Were our progenitors from stately Genoa, where we
flourished four centuries back, before the barbarous name of
Boldero[2] was known to a European mouth, nothing? Was the goodly
scion of our name, transplanted into England, in the reign of the
seventh Henry, nothing? Are the archives of the steel yard, in
succeeding reigns (if haply they survive the fury of our envious
enemies) showing that we flourished in prime repute, as merchants,
down to the period of the commonwealth, nothing?

"Why then the world, and all that's in't is nothing--
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia is nothing.--

"I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have power to move
me so."

Leigh Hunt, in _The Indicator_, January 31 and February 7, 1821, had reprinted from _The Examiner_ a review of Lamb's _Works_, with a few prefatory remarks in which it was stated: "We believe we are taking no greater liberty with him [Charles Lamb] than our motives will warrant, when we add that he sometimes writes in the _London Magazine_ under the signature of Elia."

In _The Indicator_ of March 7, 1821, Leigh Hunt replied to Elia. Leigh Hunt was no match for Lamb in this kind of raillery, and the first portion of the reply is rather cumbersome. At the end, however, he says: "There _was_, by the bye, a family of the name of Elia who came from Italy,--Jews; which may account for this boast about Genoa. See also in his last article in the London Magazine [the essay on "Ears"] some remarkable fancies of conscience in reference to the Papal religion. They further corroborate what we have heard; _viz._ that the family were obliged to fly from Genoa for saying that the Pope was the author of Rabelais; and that Elia is not an anagram, as some have thought it, but the Judaico-Christian name of the writer before us, whose surname, we find, is not Lamb, but Lomb;--Elia Lomb! What a name! He told a friend of ours so in company, and would have palmed himself upon him for a Scotchman, but that his countenance betrayed him."

It is amusing to note that Maginn, writing the text to accompany the Maclise portrait of Lamb in _Fraser's Magazine_ in 1835, gravely states that Lamb's name was really Lomb, and that he was of Jewish extraction.

The subject of Lamb's birth reopened a little while later. In the "Lion's Head," which was the title of the pages given to correspondence in the _London Magazine_, in the number for November, 1821, was the following short article from Lamb's pen:--

"ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS.--A Correspondent, who writes himself
Peter Ball, or Bell,--for his hand-writing is as ragged as his
manners--admonishes me of the old saying, that some people (under
a courteous periphrasis I slur his less ceremonious epithet) had
need have good memories. In my 'Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,'
I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours
upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that
in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler who had
called my good identity in question, (see P.S. to my 'Chapter on
Ears,') I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish
Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not
see, except this tinkling cymbal, that in that idle fiction
of Genoese ancestry I was answering a fool according to his
folly--that Elia there expresseth himself ironically, as to an
approved slanderer, who hath no right to the truth, and can be
no fit recipient of it? Such a one it is usual to leave to his
delusions; or, leading him from error still to contradictory
error, to plunge him (as we say) deeper in the mire, and give
him line till he suspend himself. No understanding reader could
be imposed upon by such obvious rhodomontade to suspect me
for an alien, or believe me other than English.--To a second
Correspondent, who signs himself 'a Wiltshire man,' and claims me
for a countryman upon the strength of an equivocal phrase in my
'Christ's Hospital,' a more mannerly reply is due. Passing over
the Genoese fable, which Bell makes such a ring about, he nicely
detects a more subtle discrepancy, which Bell was too obtuse to
strike upon. Referring to the passage (in page 484 of our second
volume[3]), I must confess, that the term 'native town,' applied
to Calne, _primâ facie_ seems to bear out the construction which
my friendly Correspondent is willing to put upon it. The context
too, I am afraid, a little favours it. But where the words of
an author, taken literally, compared with some other passage
in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable
contradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenuous
commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition, that
in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was chiefly
intended. So by the word 'native,' I may be supposed to mean a
town where I might have been born; or where it might be desirable
that I should have been born, as being situate in wholesome air,
upon a dry chalky soil, in which I delight; or a town, with the
inhabitants of which I passed some weeks, a summer or two ago,
so agreeably, that they and it became in a manner native to me.
Without some such latitude of interpretation in the present case,
I see not how we can avoid falling into a gross error in physics,
as to conceive that a gentleman may be born in two places, from
which all modern and ancient testimony is alike abhorrent. Bacchus
cometh the nearest to it, whom I remember Ovid to have honoured
with the epithet 'Twice born.'[4] But not to mention that he is so
called (we conceive) in reference to the places _whence_ rather
than the places _where_ he was delivered,--for by either birth
he may probably be challenged for a Theban--in a strict way of
speaking, he was a _filius femoris_ by no means in the same sense
as he had been before a _filius alvi_, for that latter was but
a secondary and tralatitious way of being born, and he but a
denizen of the second house of his geniture. Thus much by way of
explanation was thought due to the courteous 'Wiltshire man.'--To
'Indagator,' 'Investigator,' 'Incertus,' and the rest of the pack,
that are so importunate about the true localities of his birth--as
if, forsooth, Elia were presently about to be passed to his
parish--to all such churchwarden critics he answereth, that, any
explanation here given notwithstanding, he hath not so fixed his
nativity (like a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but that, if he
seeth occasion, or the argument shall demand it, he will be born
again, in future papers, in whatever place, and at whatever
period, shall seem good unto him.

"Modò me Thebis--modò Athenis.

"ELIA."

[Footnote 1: "Clearly a fictitious appellation; for if we admit the latter of these names to be in a manner English, what is _Leigh_? Christian nomenclature knows no such."]

[Footnote 2: "It is clearly of transatlantic origin."]

[Footnote 3: See page 15 of this volume.]

[Footnote 4:
"Imperfectus adhuc infans genetricis ab alvo
Eripitur, patrioque tener (si credere dignum est)
Insuitur femori--
Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi.

"_Metamorph._ lib. iii., 310."]

* * * * *

Page 48. ALL FOOLS' DAY.

_London Magazine_, April, 1821.

Page 49, line 1. _Empedocles_. Lamb appended this footnote in the _London Magazine_:--

He who, to be deem'd
A god, leap'd fondly into Etna's flames.

_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 470-471 [should be 469-470].

Page 49, line 5. _Cleombrotus_. Lamb's _London Magazine_ footnote:--

He who, to enjoy
Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea.

_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 471-472.

Page 49, line 8. _Plasterers at Babel_. Lamb's _London Magazine_ note:--

The builders next of Babel on the plain
Of Sennaar.

_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 466-467.

Page 49, line 10. _My right hand_. Lamb, it is probably unnecessary to remind the reader, stammered too.

Page 49, line 13 from foot. _Duns_, Duns Scotus (1265?-1308?), metaphysician, author of _De modis significandi sive Grammatica Speculativa_ and other philosophic works. Known as Doctor Subtilis. There was nothing of Duns in the _London Magazine_; the sentence ran: "Mr. Hazlitt, I cannot indulge you in your definitions." This was at a time when Lamb and Hazlitt were not on good terms.

Page 49, last line. _Honest R----_. Lamb's Key gives "Ramsay, London Library, Ludgate Street; now extinct." I have tried in vain to find out more about Ramsay. The London Library was established at 5 Ludgate Street in 1785. Later, the books were lodged at Charles Taylor's house in Hatton Garden, and were finally removed to the present London Institute in Finsbury Circus.

Page 50, line 6. _Good Granville S----_. Lamb's Key gives Granville Sharp. This was the eccentric Granville Sharp, the Quaker abolitionist (1735-1813).

* * * * *

Page 51. A QUAKER'S MEETING.

_London Magazine_, April, 1821.

Lamb's connection with Quakers was somewhat intimate throughout his life. In early days he was friendly with the Birmingham Lloyds--Charles, Robert and Priscilla, of the younger generation, and their father, Charles Lloyd, the banker and translator of Horace and Homer (see _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_, 1898); and later with Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet of Woodbridge. Also he had loved from afar Hester Savory, the subject of his poem "Hester" (see Vol. IV.). A passage from a letter written in February, 1797, to Coleridge, bears upon this essay:--"Tell Lloyd I have had thoughts of turning Quaker, and have been reading, or am rather just beginning to read, a most capital book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn's 'No Cross, No Crown,' I like it immensely. Unluckily I went to one of his meetings, tell him, in St. John Street [Clerkenwell] yesterday, and saw a man under all the agitations and workings of a fanatic, who believed himself under the influence of some 'inevitable presence.' This cured me of Quakerism; I love it in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit...."

Both Forster and Hood tell us that Lamb in outward appearance resembled a Quaker.

Page 52, line 13. _The uncommunicating muteness of fishes_. Lamb had in mind this thought on the silence of fishes when he was at work on _John Woodvil_. Simon remarks, in the exquisite passage (Vol. IV.) in reply to the question, "What is it you love?"

The fish in th' other element
That knows no touch of eloquence.

Page 53, second quotation. "_How reverend ..._" An adaptation of Congreve's description of York Minster in "The Mourning Bride" (Mary Lamb's "first play"), Act I., Scene 1:--

How reverend is the face of this tall pile ...
Looking tranquillity!

Page 53, middle. _Fox and Dewesbury_. George Fox (1624-1691) founded the Society of Friends. William Dewesbury was one of Fox's first colleagues, and a famous preacher. William Penn (1644-1718), the founder of Pennsylvania, was the most illustrious of the early converts to Quakerism. Lamb refers to him again, before his judges, in the essay on "Imperfect Sympathies," page 73. George Fox's _Journal_ was lent to Lamb by a friend of Bernard Barton's in 1823. On returning it, Lamb remarked (February 17, 1823):--"I have quoted G.F. in my 'Quaker's Meeting' as having said he was 'lifted up in spirit' (which I felt at the time to be not a Quaker phrase),' and the Judge and Jury were as dead men under his feet.' I find no such words in his Journal, and I did not get them from Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to invent. I must have put some other Quaker's words into his mouth."

Sewel was a Dutchman--William Sewel (1654-1720). His title runs: _History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers, written originally in Low Dutch by W. Sewel, and by himself translated into English_, 1722. James Naylor (1617-1660) was one of the early Quaker martyrs--"my favourite" Lamb calls him in a letter. John Woolman (1720-1772) was an American Friend. His principal writings are to be found in _A Journal of the Life, Gospel Labours, and Christian Experiences of that faithful minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman, late of Mount Holly in the Province of Jersey, North America_, 1795. Modern editions are obtainable.

* * * * *

Page 56. THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.

_London Magazine_, May, 1821.

Page 56, line 9. _Ortelius ... Arrowsmith_. Abraham Ortellius (1527-1598), the Dutch geographer and the author of _Theatrum Orbis Terræ_, 1570. Aaron Arrowsmith (1750-1823) was a well-known cartographer at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Lamb would perhaps have known something of his _Atlas of Southern India_, a very useful work at the East India House.

Page 56, line 13. _A very dear friend_. Barren Field (see the essay on "Distant Correspondents").

Page 56, line 10 from foot. _My friend M_. Thomas Manning (1772-1840), the mathematician and traveller, and Lamb's correspondent.

Page 56, last line. "_On Devon's leafy shores_." From Wordsworth's _Excursion_, III.

Page 57, line 16. _Daily jaunts_. Though Lamb was then (1821) living at 20 Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, he rented rooms at 14 Kingsland Row, Dalston, in which to take holidays and do his literary work undisturbed. At that time Dalston, which adjoins Shackleton, was the country and Kingsland Green an open space opposite Lamb's lodging.

Page 58, line 23. _The North Pole Expedition_. This would probably be Sir John Franklin's expedition which set out in 1819 and ended in disaster, the subject of Franklin's book, _Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the years 1819, 20, 21, 22_ (1823). Sir John Ross made an expedition in 1818, and Sir William Edward Parry in 1819, and again in 1821-1823 with Lyon. The panorama was possibly at Burford's Panorama in the Strand, afterwards moved to Leicester Square.

Page 60, line 17. _Tractate on Education_. Milton's _Tractate on Education_, addressed to his friend, Samuel Hartlib, was published in 1644. The quotation above is from that work. This paragraph of Lamb's essay was afterwards humorously expanded in his "Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has been Neglected" (see Vol. I.).

Page 60, last line. _Mr. Bartley's Orrery._ George Bartley (1782?-1858), the comedian, lectured on astronomy and poetry at the Lyceum during Lent at this time. An orrery is a working model of the solar system. The Panopticon was, I assume, a forerunner of the famous Panopticon in Leicester Square.

Page 61, line 8. "_Plaything for an hour_." A quotation, from Charles and Mary Lamb's _Poetry for Children_--"Parental Recollections":--

A child's a plaything for an hour.

Page 63, end of essay. "_Can I reproach her for it_." After these words, in the _London Magazine_, came:--

"These kind of complaints are not often drawn from me. I am aware
that I am a fortunate, I mean a prosperous man. My feelings
prevent me from transcribing any further."

* * * * *

Page 63. VALENTINE'S DAY.

This essay first appeared in _The Examiner_, February 14 and 15, 1819, and again in _The Indicator_, February 14, 1821. Signed ***

Page 64, line 18. _Twopenny postman._ Hone computed, in his _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., 1825, that "two hundred thousand letters beyond the usual daily average annually pass through the two-penny post-office in London on Valentine's Day." The Bishop's vogue is now (1911) almost over.

Page 65, line 15 from foot. E.B. Lamb's Key gives "Edward Burney, half brother of Miss Burney." This was Edward Francis Burney (1760-1848), who illustrated many old authors, among them Richardson.

* * * * *

Page 66. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.

_London Magazine_, August, 1821, where the title ran: "Jews, Quakers, Scotchmen, and other Imperfect Sympathies."

Page 69, line 18 from foot. _A print ... after Leonardo._ The Virgin of the Rocks. See Vol. IV. for Lamb's and his sister's verses on this picture. Crabb Robinson's MS. diary tells us that the Scotchman was one Smith, a friend of Godwin. His exact reply to Lamb's remark about "my beauty" was: "Why, sir, from all I have heard of you, as well as from what I have myself seen, I certainly entertain a very high opinion of your abilities, but I confess that I have not formed any opinion concerning your personal pretensions."

Page 70, line 10. _The poetry of Burns._ "Burns was the god of my idolatry," Lamb wrote to Coleridge in 1796. Coleridge's lines on Burns, "To a Friend who had declared his intention of writing no more poetry," were addressed to Lamb. Barry Cornwall records seeing Lamb kiss his copy of the poet.

Page 70, line 17. _You can admire him_. In the _London Magazine_ Lamb added:--

"I have a great mind to give up Burns. There is certainly
a bragging spirit of generosity, a swaggering assertion of
independence, and _all that_, in his writings."

Page 70, line 18. _Smollett_. Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771), the novelist, came of a Dumbartonshire family. Rory was Roderick Random's schoolboy name. His companion was Strap. See _Roderick Random_,