Chapter XIII: , for the passage in question. Smollett continued the (3)

"Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) admire, while
with uplifted toe retributive you inflict vengeance incorporeal
upon the shadowy rear of obnoxious author, just arrived:--

"'what _seem'd_ his tail
The likeness of a kingly kick had on.
* * * * *
"'Yet soon he heals: for spirits, that live throughout
Vital in every part, not as frail man
In entrails, head, or heart, liver or veins,
Can in the liquid texture mortal wound
Receive no more, than can the liquid air,
All heart they live, all head, all eye.'"

Page 189, line 11 from foot. _À la Foppington_. In Vanbrugh's "Relapse."

In the _Englishman's Magazine_ the article ended, after "Plaudito, et Valeto," with: "Thy friend upon Earth, though thou did'st connive at his d----n."

The article was signed Mr. H., the point being that Elliston had played Mr. H. at Drury Lane in Lamb's unlucky farce of that name in 1806.

* * * * *

Page 190. ELLISTONIANA.

See note at the head of "To the Shade of Elliston," above.

Page 190, line 3 of essay. _My first introduction._ This paragraph was a footnote in the _Englishman's Magazine_. Elliston, according to the _Memoirs_ of him by George Raymond, which have Lamb's phrase, "Joyousest of once embodied spirits," for motto, opened a circulating library at Leamington in the name of his sons William and Henry, and served there himself at times.

Possibly Lamb was visiting Charles Chambers at Leamington when he saw Elliston. That he did see him there we know from Raymond's book, where an amusing occurrence is described, illustrating Munden's frugality. It seems that Lamb, Elliston and Munden drove together to Warwick Castle. On returning Munden stopped the carriage just outside Leamington, on the pretext that he had to make a call on an old friend--a regular device, as Elliston explained, to avoid being present at the inn when the hire of the carriage was paid.

Page 191, line 11. _Wrench_. See notes to "The Old Actors." Wrench succeeded Elliston at Bath, and played in the same parts, and with something of the same manner.

Page 191, line 11 from foot. _Appelles ... G.D._ Apelles, painter to Alexander the Great, was said to let no day pass without experimenting with his pencil. G.D. was George Dyer, whom we first met in "Oxford in the Vacation."

Page 192, line 6. _Ranger_. In Hoadley's "Suspicious Husband," one of Elliston's great parts.

Page 192, line 17 from foot. _Cibber_. Colley Cibber (1671-1757), the actor, who was a very vain man, created the part of Foppington in 1697--his first great success.

Page 192, last line. _St. Dunstan's ... punctual giants._ Old St. Dunstan Church, in Fleet Street, had huge figures which struck the hours, and which disappeared with the church, pulled down to make room for the present one some time before 1831. They are mentioned in Emily Barton's story in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see Vol. III.). Moxon records that Lamb shed tears when the figures were taken away.

Page 193, line 6. _Drury Lane_. Drury Lane opened, under Elliston's management, on October 4, 1819, with "Wild Oats," in which he played Rover. He left the theatre, a bankrupt, in 1826.

Page 193, line 19. _The ... Olympic._ Lamb is wrong in his dates. Elliston's tenancy of the Olympic preceded his reign at Drury Lane. It was to the Surrey that he retired after the Drury Lane period, producing there Jerrold's "Black-Eyed Susan" in 1829.

Page 193, line 12 from foot. _Sir A---- C----_. Sir Anthony Carlisle (see note to "A Quakers' Meeting").

Page 194, line 7. _A Vestris_. Madame Vestris (1797-1856), the great comédienne, who was one of Elliston's stars at Drury Lane.

Page 195, line 6. _Latinity_. Elliston was buried in St. John's Church, Waterloo Road, and a marble slab with a Latin inscription by Nicholas Torre, his son-in-law, is on the wall. Elliston was the nephew of Dr. Elliston, Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, who sent him to St. Paul's School--not, however, that founded by Colet--but to St. Paul's School, Covent Garden. He was intended for the Church.

* * * * *

Page 195. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING.

_London Magazine_, July, 1822, where, at the end, were the words, "To be continued;" but Lamb did not return to the topic.

For some curious reason Lamb passed over this essay when collecting _Elia_ for the press. It was not republished till 1833, in the _Last Essays_.

Page 195, motto. _The Relapse_. The comedy by Sir John Vanbrugh. Lamb liked this quotation. He uses it in his letter about William Wordsworth, junior, to Dorothy Wordsworth, November 25, 1819; and again in his "Reminiscence of Sir Jeffery Dunstan" (see Vol. I.).

Page 195, foot. _I can read any thing which I call a book_. Writing to Wordsworth in August, 1815, Lamb says: "What any man can write, surely I may read."

Page 195, last line. _Pocket Books_. In the _London Magazine_ Lamb added in parenthesis "the literary excepted," the reference being to the _Literary Pocket Book_ which Leigh Hunt brought out annually from 1819 to 1822.

Page 196, line 2. _Hume ... Jenyns_. Hume would be David Hume (1711-1776), the philosopher and historian of England; Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), historian of Rome; William Robertson, D.D. (1721-1793), historian of America, Charles V., Scotland and India; James Beattie (1735-1803), author of "The Minstrel" and a number of essays, who had, however, one recommendation to Lamb, of which Lamb may have been unaware--he loved Vincent Bourne's poems and was one of the first to praise them; and Soame Jenyns (1704-1787), author of _The Art of Dancing_, and the _Inquiry into Evil_ which Johnson reviewed so mercilessly. It is stated in Moore's _Diary_, according to Procter, that Lamb "excluded from his library Robertson, Gibbon and Hume, and made instead a collection of the works of the heroes of _The Dunciad_."

Page 196, line 14. _Population Essay_. That was the day of population essays. Malthus's _Essay on Population_, 1798, had led to a number of replies.

Page 196, line 22. _My ragged veterans_. Crabb Robinson recorded in his diary that Lamb had the "finest collection of shabby books" he ever saw; "such a number of first-rate works in very bad condition is, I think, nowhere to be found." Leigh Hunt stated in his essay on "My Books" in _The Literary Examiner_, July 5, 1823, that Lamb's library had

an handsome contempt for appearance. It looks like what it is, a
selection made at precious intervals from the book-stalls;--now
a Chaucer at nine and twopence; now a Montaigne or a Sir Thomas
Browne at two shillings; now a Jeremy Taylor, a Spinoza; an old
English Dramatist, Prior, and Sir Philip Sidney; and the books are
"neat as imported." The very perusal of the backs is a "discipline
of humanity." There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old
Radical friend: there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden:
there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb,
Sewel: there Guzman d'Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir
Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted. Even the "high
fantastical" Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head,
is received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to
trouble herself with the constitutions of her maids.

It is in the same essay that Leigh Hunt mentions that he once saw Lamb kiss an old folio--Chapman's Homer--the work he paraphrased for children under the title _The Adventures of Ulysses_.

Page 197, line 15. _Life of the Duke of Newcastle_. Lamb's copy, a folio containing also the "Philosophical Letters," is in America.

Page 197, line 20. _Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton_... I cannot say where are Lamb's copies of Sidney and Fuller; but the British Museum has his Milton, rich in MS. notes, a two-volume edition, 1751. The Taylor, which Lamb acquired in 1798, is the 1678 folio _Sermons_. I cannot say where it now is.

Page 197, line 26. _Shakspeare_. Lamb's Shakespeare was not sold at the sale of his library; only a copy of the _Poems_, 12mo, 1714. His annotated copy of the _Poems_, 1640, is in America. There is a reference to one of Rowe's plates in the essay "My First Play." The Shakespeare gallery engravings were the costly series of illustrations to Shakespeare commissioned by John Boydell (1719-1804), Lord Mayor of London in 1790. The pictures were exhibited in the Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, and the engravings were published in 1802.

After the word "Shakespeare," in the _London Magazine_, came the sentence: "You cannot make a _pet_ book of an author whom everybody reads."

In a letter to Wordsworth, February 1, 1806, Lamb says: "Shakespear is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book." In the same letter he says of binding: "The Law Robe I have ever thought as comely and gentlemanly a garb as a Book would wish to wear."

Page 197, line 7 from foot. _Beaumont and Fletcher._ See note to "The Two Races of Men" for an account of Lamb's copy, now in the British Museum.

Page 197, line 5 from foot. _No sympathy with them._ After these words, in the _London Magazine_, came, "nor with Mr. Gifford's Ben Jonson." This edition by Lamb's old enemy, William Gifford, editor of the _Quarterly_, was published in 1816. Lamb's copy of Ben Jonson was dated 1692, folio. It is now in America, I believe.

Page 197, foot. _The reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy_. This reprint was, I think, published in 1800, in two volumes, marked ninth edition. Lamb's copy was dated 1621, quarto. I do not know where it now is.

Page 198, line 4. _Malone_. This was Edmund Malone (1741-1812), the critic and editor of Shakespeare, who in 1793 persuaded the Vicar of Stratford-on-Avon to whitewash the coloured bust of the poet in the chancel. A _Gentleman's Magazine_ epigrammatist, sharing Lamb's view, wrote:--

Stranger, to whom this monument is shown,
Invoke the poet's curse upon Malone;
Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays,
And daubs his tombstone, as he mars his plays.

Lamb has been less than fair to Malone. To defend his action in the matter of the bust of Shakespeare is impossible, except by saying that he acted in good faith and according to the fashion of his time. But he did great service to the fame of Shakespeare and thus to English literature, and was fearless and shrewd in his denunciation of the impostor Ireland.

Page 198, line 26. _The Fairy Queen_. Lamb's copy was a folio, 1617, 12, 17, 13. Against Canto XI., Stanza 32, he has written: "Dear Venom, this is the stave I wot of. I will maintain it against any in the book."

Page 199, line 14. _Nando's_. A coffee-house in Fleet Street, at the east corner of Inner Temple Lane, and thus at one time close to Lamb's rooms.

Page 199, line 16. "_The Chronicle is in hand, Sir._" In the _London Magazine_ the following paragraph was here inserted:--

"As in these little Diurnals I generally skip the Foreign News,
the Debates--and the Politics--I find the Morning Herald by far
the most entertaining of them. It is an agreeable miscellany,
rather than a newspaper."

The _Morning Herald_, under Alexander Chalmers, had given more attention to social gossip than to affairs of State; but under Thomas Wright it suddenly, about the time of Lamb's essay, became politically serious and left aristocratic matters to the _Morning Post_.

Page 199, line 20. _Town and Country Magazine_. This magazine flourished between 1769 and 1792.

Page 199, line 26. _Poor Tobin_. Possibly John Tobin (1770-1804), the playwright, though I think not. More probably the Tobin mentioned in Lamb's letter to Wordsworth about "Mr. H." in June, 1806 (two years after John Tobin's death), to whom Lamb read the manager's letter concerning the farce. This would be James, John Tobin's brother.

Page 200, line 13. _The five points_. After these words came, in the _London Magazine_, the following paragraph:--

"I was once amused--there is a pleasure in _affecting_
affectation--at the indignation of a crowd that was justling in
with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden theatre, to have a sight
of Master Betty--then at once in his dawn and his meridian--in
Hamlet. I had been invited quite unexpectedly to join a party,
whom I met near the door of the playhouse, and I happened to have
in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare,
which, the time not admitting of my carrying it home, of course
went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure
of the doors opening--the _rush_, as they term it--I deliberately
held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which the young
Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamplight.
The clamour became universal. 'The affectation of the fellow,'
cried one. 'Look at that gentleman _reading_, papa,' squeaked a
young lady, who in her admiration of the novelty almost forgot her
fears. I read on. 'He ought to have his book knocked out of his
hand,' exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to
his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I read
on--and, till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved,
as Saint Antony at his Holy Offices, with the satyrs, apes, and
hobgoblins, mopping, and making mouths at him, in the picture,
while the good man sits undisturbed at the sight, as if he were
sole tenant of the desart.--The individual rabble (I recognised
more than one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of
mine but a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits
should not a second time put me out of countenance."

Master Betty was William Henry West Betty (1791-1874), known as the "Young Roscius," whose Hamlet and Douglas sent playgoers wild in 1804-5-6. Pitt, indeed, once adjourned the House in order that his Hamlet might be witnessed. His most cried-up scenes in "Hamlet" were the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and the fencing scene before the king and his mother. The piece of Lamb's own which had been hissed was, of course, "Mr. H.," produced on December 10, 1806; but very likely he added this reference as a symmetrical afterthought, for he would probably have visited Master Betty much earlier in his career, that phenomenon's first appearance at Covent Garden being two years before the advent of the ill-fated Hogsflesh.

Page 200, line 22. _Martin B----_. Martin Charles Burney, son of Admiral Burney, and a lifelong friend of the Lambs--to whom Lamb dedicated the prose part of his _Works_ in 1818 (see Vol. IV.).

Page 200, line 28. _A quaint poetess_. Mary Lamb. The poem is in _Poetry for Children_, 1809 (see Vol. III. of this edition). In line 17 the word "then" has been inserted by Lamb. The punctuation also differs from that of the _Poetry for Children_.

* * * * *

Page 201. THE OLD _MARGATE HOY_.

_London Magazine_, July, 1823. This, like others of Lamb's essays, was translated into French and published in the _Revue Britannique_ in 1833. It was prefaced by the remark: "L'auteur de cette délicieuse esquisse est Charles Lamb, connu sous le nom d'Eliah."

Page 201, beginning. _I have said so before._ See "Oxford in the Vacation."

Page 201, line 5 of essay. _My beloved Thames._ Lamb describes a riparian holiday at and about Richmond in a letter to Robert Lloyd in 1804.

Page 201, line 8 of essay. _Worthing_... There is no record of the Lambs' sojourn at Worthing or Eastbourne. They were at Brighton in 1817, and Mary Lamb at any rate enjoyed walking on the Downs there; in a letter to Miss Wordsworth of November 21, 1817, she described them as little mountains, _almost as good as_ Westmoreland scenery. They were at Hastings--at 13 Standgate Street--in 1823 (see Lamb's letters to Bernard Barton, July 10, 1823, to Hood, August 10, 1824, and to Dibdin, June, 1826). The only evidence that we have of Lamb knowing Worthing is his "Mr. H.". That play turns upon the name Hogsflesh, afterwards changed to Bacon. The two chief innkeepers at Worthing at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of its prosperity were named Hogsflesh and Bacon, and there was a rhyme concerning them which was well known (see notes to "Mr. H." in Vol. IV.).

Page 201, line 11 of essay. _Many years ago_. A little later Lamb says he was then fifteen. This would make the year 1790. It was probably on this visit to Margate that Lamb conceived the idea of his sonnet, "O, I could laugh," which Coleridge admired so much (see Vol. IV.).

Page 201, line 17 of essay. _Thou old Margate Hoy_. This old sailing-boat gave way to a steam-boat, the _Thames_, some time after 1815. The _Thames_, launched in 1815, was the first true steam-boat the river had seen. The old hoy, or lighter, was probably sloop rigged.

Page 202, foot. _Our enemies_. Lamb refers here to the attacks of _Blackwood's Magazine_ on the Cockneys, among whom he himself had been included. In the _London Magazine_ he had written "unfledged" for "unseasoned."

Page 206, line 14. _Gebir_. _Gebir_, by Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), who was a fortnight older than Lamb, and who afterwards came to know him personally, was published in 1798.

Page 206, line 16. _This detestable Cinque Port_. A letter from Mary Lamb to Randal Norris, concerning this, or another, visit to Hastings, says: "We eat turbot, and we drink smuggled Hollands, and we walk up hill and down hill all day long." Lamb, in a letter to Barton, admitted a benefit: "I abused Hastings, but learned its value."

Page 208, line 5. _Lothbury_. Probably in recollection of Wordsworth's "Reverie of Poor Susan," which Lamb greatly liked.

* * * * *

Page 208. THE CONVALESCENT.

_London Magazine_, July, 1825.

We learn from the _Letters_ that Lamb had a severe nervous breakdown in the early summer of 1825 after liberation from the India House. Indeed, his health was never sound for long together after he became a free man.

* * * * *

Page 212. SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS.

_New Monthly Magazine_, May, 1826, where it appeared as one of the Popular Fallacies under the title, "That great Wit is allied to Madness;" beginning: "So far from this being true, the greatest wits will ever be found to be the sanest writers..." and so forth. Compare the essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare," Vol. I. Lamb's thesis is borrowed from Dryden's couplet (in _Absalom and Achitophel_, Part I., lines 163, 164):--

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

Page 213, line 14. _Kent ... Flavius_. Lamb was always greatly impressed by the character of Kent (see his essay on "Hogarth," Vol. I.; his "Table Talk," Vol. I.; and his versions, in the _Tales from Shakespear_, of "King Lear" and "Timon," Vol. III.).

* * * * *

Page 215. CAPTAIN JACKSON.

_London Magazine_, November, 1824.

No one has yet been able to identify Captain Jackson. The suggestion has been made that Randal Norris sat for the picture; but the circumstance that Lamb, in the first edition of the _Last Essays_, included "A Death-Bed," with a differing portrait of Randal Norris therein, is, I think, good evidence against this theory. Perhaps the captain was one of the imaginary characters which Lamb sent out every now and then, as he told Bernard Barton (in the letter of March 20, 1826), "to exercise the ingenuity of his friends;" although his reality seems overpowering.

Apart from his own interest, the captain is noteworthy in constituting, with Ralph Bigod (see page 27), a sketch (possibly unknown to Dickens) for Wilkins Micawber.

Page 217, line 22. _Glover ... Leonidas_. Richard Glover (1712-1785), the poet, author of _Leonidas_, 1737. I cannot find that he ever lived at Westbourne Green.

Page 218, foot. _The old ballad_. The old ballad "Waly, Waly." This was among the poems copied by Lamb into Miss Isola's Extract Book.

Page 219, line 8. _Tibbs, and Bobadil_. Beau Tibbs in Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," and Bobadil in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His Humour."

* * * * *

Page 219. THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.

_London Magazine_, May, 1825.

Except that Lamb has disguised his real employment, this essay is practically a record of fact. After thirty-three years of service at the East India House he went home "for ever" on Tuesday, March 29, 1825, with a pension of £441, or two-thirds of his regular salary, less a small annual deduction as a provision for his sister. At a Court of Directors held on that day this minute was drawn up: "Resolved that the resignation of Mr. Charles Lamb, of the Accountant General's office, on account of certified ill health, be accepted, and it appearing that he has served the Company faithfully for 33 years, and is now in receipt of an income of £730 per annum, he be allowed a pension of £450 ... to commence from this day." Lamb's letters to Wordsworth, April 6, 1825, to Barton, the same date, and to Miss Hutchinson, a little later, all tell the story. This is how Lamb put it to Barton:--

"DEAR B.B.--My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my
recent emancipation, that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much
more mind, to compose a letter.

"I am free, B.B.--free as air.

"The little bird that wings the sky
Knows no such Liberty!

"I was set free on Tuesday in last week at 4 o'clock.

"I came home for ever!...

"I went and sat among 'em all at my old 33 years desk yester
morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at leaving all
my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them
in the Lurch, fag, fag, fag.

"I would not serve another 7 years for seven hundred thousand
pound."

To Miss Hutchinson Lamb said; "I would not go back to my prison for seven years longer for £10000 a year."

In the _London Magazine_ the essay was divided into two parts, with the two quotations now at the head apportioned each to one part.