Chapter XXVI: Act II: SCENE.--At Flint's (3)

The poem was reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.

* * * * *

Page 29. _Ballad from the German_.

This poem was written for Coleridge's translation of "The Piccolimini," the first part of Schiller's "Wallenstein," in 1800--Coleridge supplying a prose paraphrase (for Lamb knew no German) for the purpose. The original is Thekla's song in Act II., Scene 6:--

Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn,
Das Mägdlein wandelt an Ufers Grün,
Es bricht sich die Welle mit Macht, mit Macht,
Und sie singt hinaus in die finstre Nacht,
Das Auge von Weinen getrübet.
Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer,
Und welter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr.
Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück,
Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,
Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.

Coleridge's own translation of Thekla's song, which was printed alone in later editions of the play, ran thus:--

The cloud doth gather, the greenwood roar,
The damsel paces along the shore;
The billows they tumble with might, with might;
And she flings out her voice to the darksome night;
Her bosom is swelling with sorrow;
The world it is empty, the heart will die,
There's nothing to wish for beneath the sky:
Thou Holy One, call thy child away!
I've lived and loved, and that was to-day--
Make ready my grave-clothes to-morrow.

Barry Cornwall, in his memoir of Lamb, says: "Lamb used to boast that he supplied one line to his friend in the fourth scene [Act IV., Scene i] of that tragedy, where the description of the Pagan deities occurs. In speaking of Saturn, he is figured as 'an old man melancholy.' 'That was my line,' Lamb would say, exultingly." The line did not reach print in this form.

Lamb printed his translation twice--in 1802 and 1818.

Page 29. _Hypochondriacus_.

* * * * *

Page 30. _A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor_.

These two poems formed, in the _John Woodvil_ volume, 1802, portions of the "Fragments of Burton," which will be found in Vol. I. Lamb afterwards took out these poems and printed them separately in the Works, 1818, in the form here given. Originally "Hypochondriacus" formed Extract III. of the "Fragments," under the title "A Conceipt of Diabolical Possession." The body of the verses differed very slightly from the present state; but at the end the prayer ran: "_Jesu Mariae! libera nos ab his tentationibus, oral, implorat, R.B. Peccator_"--R.B. standing for Robert Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, the professed author of the poem.

"The Old and Young Courtier" may be found in the _Percy Reliques_. Lamb copied it into one of his Commonplace Books.

* * * * *

Page 32. THE _WORKS_ OF CHARLES LAMB, 1818.

This book, in two volumes, was published by C. & J. Ollier in 1818: the first volume containing the dedication to Coleridge that is here printed on page 1, all of Lamb's poetry that he then wished to preserve, "John Woodvil," "The Witch," the "Fragments of Burton," "Rosamund Gray" and "Recollections of Christ's Hospital;" the second volume, dedicated to Martin Charles Burney in the sonnet on page 45, containing criticisms, essays and "Mr. H."

The scheme of the present volume makes it impossible to keep together the poetical portion of Lamb's _Works_. In order, however, to present clearly to the reader Lamb's mature selection, in 1818, of the poetry by which he wished to be known, I have indicated the position in his _Works_ of those poems that have already been printed on earlier pages.

Page 32. _Hester_.

Lamb sent this poem to Manning in March, 1803--"I send you some verses I have made on the death of a young Quaker you may have heard me speak of as being in love with for some years while I lived at Pentonville, though I had never spoken to her in my life. She died about a month since."

Hester Savory was the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith in the Strand. She was born in 1777 and was thus by two years Lamb's junior. She married, in July, 1802, Charles Stoke Dudley, a merchant, and she died in February of the following year, and was buried at Bunhill Fields. Lamb was living in Pentonville from the end of 1796 until 1799.

* * * * *

Page 33. _Dialogue between a Mother and Child._ By Mary Lamb.

Charles Lamb, writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 2, 1804, says: "I send you two little copies of verses by Mary L--b." Then follow this "Dialogue" and the "Lady Blanch" verses on page 41. Lamb adds at the end: "I wish they may please you: we in these parts are not a little proud of them."

* * * * *

Page 34. _A Farewell to Tobacco._

First printed in _The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811.

Lamb had begun to think poetically of tobacco as early as 1803. Writing to Coleridge in April 13 of that year, he says:--"What do you think of smoking? I want your sober, _average, noon opinion_ of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. Morning is a girl, and can't smoke--she's no evidence one way or the other; and Night is so [? evidently] _bought over_, that he can't be a very upright judge. May be the truth is, that _one_ pipe is wholesome; _two_ pipes toothsome; _three_ pipes noisome; _four_ pipes fulsome; _five_ pipes quarrelsome; and that's the _sum_ on't. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason."

Writing to William and Dorothy Wordsworth on September 28, 1805, Lamb remarked regarding his literary plans:--"Sometimes I think of a farce--but hitherto all schemes have gone off,--an idle brag or two of an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and going off in the morning--but now I have bid farewell to my 'Sweet Enemy' Tobacco, as you will see in my next page, I perhaps shall set soberly to work. Hang work!"

On the next page Lamb copied the "Farewell to Tobacco," adding:--"I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to my 'Friendly Traitress.' Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my morning curse for these five years: and you know how difficult it is from refraining to pick one's lips even when it has become a habit. This Poem is the only one which I have finished since so long as when I wrote 'Hester Savory' [in March, 1803].... The 'Tobacco,' being a little in the way of Withers (whom Southey so much likes), perhaps you will somehow convey it to him with my kind remembrances."

Mr. Bertram Dobell has a MS. copy of the poem, in Lamb's hand, inscribed thus: "To his _quondam_ Brethren of the Pipe, Capt. B[urney], and J[ohn] R[ickman], Esq., the Author dedicates this his last Farewell to Tobacco." At the end is a rude drawing of a pipe broken--"My Emblem."

It is perhaps hardly needful to say that Lamb's farewell was not final. He did not give up smoking for many years. When asked (Talfourd's version of the story says by Dr. Parr) how he was able to emit such volumes of smoke, he replied, "I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue;" and Macready records having heard Lamb express the wish to draw his last breath through a pipe and exhale it in a pun. Talfourd says that in late life Lamb ceased to smoke except very occasionally. But the late Mrs. Coe, who knew Lamb at Widford when she was a child, told me that she remembered Lamb's black pipe and his devotion to it, about 1830.

In his character sketch of the late Elia (see Vol. II.), written in 1822, Lamb describes the effect of tobacco upon himself. "He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry--as the friendly vapour ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments, which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist!"

* * * * *

Page 38. _To T.L.H_.

First printed in _The Examiner_, January 1, 1815.

The lines are to Thornton Leigh Hunt, Leigh Hunt's little boy, who was born in 1810, and, during his father's imprisonment for a libel on the Regent from February, 1813, to February, 1815, was much in the Surrey gaol. Lamb, who was among Hunt's constant visitors, probably first saw him there. Lamb mentions him again in his _Elia_ essay "Witches and other Night Fears." See also note to the "Letter to Southey," Vol. I. Thornton Leigh Hunt became a journalist, and held an important post on the _Daily Telegraph_. He died in 1873.

When printed in Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_, signed C.L., the poem had these prefatory words by the editor:--

The following piece perhaps we had some personal reasons for not
admitting, but we found more for the contrary; and could not resist
the pleasure of contemplating together the author and the object of his
address,--to one of whom the Editor is owing for some of the lightest
hours of his captivity, and to the other for a main part of its continual
solace.

* * * * *

Page 41. _Lines Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by Lionardo da Vinci_. By Mary Lamb.

This was the "Lady Blanch" poem which Lamb sent to Dorothy Wordsworth in the letter of June 2, 1804 (see page 325). There it was entitled "Suggested by a Print of 2 Females, after Lionardo da Vinci, called Prudence and Beauty, which hangs up in our room." The usual title is "Modesty and Vanity."

Page 41. _Lines on the Same Picture being Removed to make Place for a Portrait of a Lady by Titian_. By Mary Lamb.

Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 14, 1805, Lamb says: "You had her [Mary's] Lines about the 'Lady Blanch.' You have not had some which she wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung up where that print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully interpreted two female figures from L. da Vinci) had hung, in our room. 'Tis light and pretty."

* * * * *

Page 42. _Lines on the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, called The Virgin of the Rocks_.

This was the picture, one version of which hangs in the National Gallery, that was known to Lamb's friends as his "Beauty," and which led to the Scotchman's mistake in the _Elia_ essay "Imperfect Sympathies."

Page 42. _On the Same_. By Mary Lamb.

In the letter to Dorothy Wordsworth of June 14, 1805, quoted just above, Lamb says: "I cannot resist transcribing three or four Lines which poor Mary [she was at this time away from home in one of her enforced absences] made upon a Picture (a Holy Family) which we saw at an Auction only one week before she left home.... They are sweet Lines, and upon a sweet Picture."

Mary Lamb wrote little verse besides the _Poetry for Children_ (see Vol. III. of this edition). To the pieces that are printed in the present volume I would add the lines suggested by the death of Captain John Wordsworth, the poet's brother, in the foundering of the _Abergavenny_ in February, 1805, when Coleridge was in Malta, which were sent by Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth, May 7, 1805:--

Why is he wandering on the sea?
Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be.
By slow degrees he'd steal away
Their woe, and gently bring a ray
(So happily he'd time relief)
Of comfort from their very grief.
He'd tell them that their brother dead,
When years have passed o'er their head,
Will be remember'd with such holy,
True, and perfect melancholy,
That ever this lost brother John
Will be their hearts' companion.
His voice they'll always hear, his face they'll always see;
There's nought in life so sweet as such a memory.

* * * * *

SONNETS

Page 43. _To Miss Kelly_.

Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882)--or Fanny Kelly, as she was usually called--was Lamb's favourite actress of his middle and later life and a personal friend of himself and his sister: so close that Lamb proposed marriage to her. See Lamb's criticisms of Miss Kelly's acting in Vol. I., and notes. Another sonnet addressed by Lamb to Miss Kelly will be found on page 59 of the present volume.

Page 43. _On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden_. This is, I think, Lamb's only poem the inspiration of which was drawn from nature.

* * * * *

Page 44. _The Family Name_.

John Lamb, Charles's father, came from Lincoln. A recollection of his boyhood there is given in the _Elia_ essay "Poor Relations." The "stream" seems completely to have ended with Charles Lamb and his sister Mary: at least, research has yielded no descendants.

Crabb Robinson visited Goethe in the summer of 1829. The _Diary_ has this entry: "I inquired whether he knew the name of Lamb. 'Oh, yes! Did he not write a pretty sonnet on his own name?' Charles Lamb, though he always affected contempt for Goethe, yet was manifestly pleased that his name was known to him."

In the little memoir of Lamb prefixed by M. Amédée Pichot to a French edition of the _Tales from Shakespeare_ in 1842 the following translation of this sonnet is given:--

MON NOM DE FAMILLE

Dis-moi, d'où nous viens-tu, nom pacifique et doux,
Nom transmis sans reproche?... A qui te devons-nous,
Nom qui meurs avec moi? mon glason de poëte
A l'aïeul de mon père obscurément s'arrête.
--Peut-être nous viens-tu d'un timide pasteur,
Doux comme ses agneaux, raillé pour sa douceur.
Mais peut-être qu'aussi, moins commune origine,
Nous viens-tu d'un héros, d'un pieux paladin,
Qui croyant honorer ainsi l'Agneau divin,
Te prit en revenant des champs de Palestine.
Mais qu'importe après tout ... qu'il soit illustre ou non,
Je ne ferai jamais une tache à ce nom.

Page 44. _To John Lamb, Esq._

John Lamb, Charles's brother, was born in 1763 and was thus by twelve years his senior. At the time this poem appeared, in 1818, he was accountant of the South-Sea House. He died on October 26, 1821 (see the _Elia_ essays "My Relations" and "Dream Children").

* * * * *

Page 45. _To Martin Charles Burney, Esq._

Lamb prefixed this sonnet to Vol. II. of his _Works_, 1818. In Vol. I. he had placed the dedication to Coleridge which we have already seen. Martin Charles Burney was the son of Rear-Admiral James Burney, Lamb's old friend, and nephew of Madame d'Arblay. He was a barrister by profession; dabbled a little in authorship; was very quaint in some of his ways and given to curiously intense and sudden enthusiasms; and was devoted to Mary Lamb and her brother. When these two were at work on their _Tales from Shakespear_ Martin Burney would sit with them and attempt to write for children too. Lamb's letter of May 24, 1830, to Sarah Hazlitt has some amusing stories of his friend, at whom (like George Dyer) he could laugh as well as love. Lamb speaks of him on one occasion as on the top round of his ladder of friendship. Writing to Sarah Hazlitt, Lamb says:--"Martin Burney is as good, and as odd as ever. We had a dispute about the word 'heir,' which I contended was pronounced like 'air'; he said that might be in common parlance; or that we might so use it, speaking of the 'Heir at Law,' a comedy; but that in the law courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say _hayer_; he thought it might even vitiate a cause, if a counsel pronounced it otherwise. In conclusion, he 'would consult Serjeant Wilde,' who gave it against him. Sometimes he falleth into the water; sometimes into the fire. He came down here, and insisted on reading Virgil's 'Eneid' all through with me (which he did), because a Counsel must know Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of Justice. A third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favouredly, because 'we did not know how indispensable it was for a barrister to do all those sort of things well? Those little things were of more consequence than we supposed.' So he goes on, harassing about the way to prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat a wrong one----harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He deserves one: may be, he has tired him out."

Martin Burney, of whom another glimpse is caught in the _Elia_ essay "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," died in 1860. At Mary Lamb's funeral he was inconsolable.

* * * * *

Page 46. CHARLES LAMB'S _ALBUM VERSES_, 1830.

The publication of this volume, in 1830, was due more to Lamb's kindness of heart than to any desire to come before the world again as a poet. But Edward Moxon, Lamb's young friend, was just starting his publishing business, with Samuel Rogers as a financial patron; and Lamb, who had long been his chief literary adviser, could not well refuse the request to help him with a new book. _Album Verses_ became thus the first of the many notable books of poetry which Moxon was to issue between 1830 and 1858, the year of his death. Among them Tennyson's _Poems_, 1833 and 1842; _The Princess_, 1847; _In Memoriam_, 1850; _Maud_, 1855; and Browning's _Sordello_, 1840, and _Bells and Pomegranates_, 1843-1846.

The dedication of _Album Verses_ tells the story of its being:--

"DEDICATION

"TO THE PUBLISHER

"DEAR MOXON,

"I do not know to whom a Dedication of these Trifles is more properly due than to yourself. You suggested the printing of them. You were desirous of exhibiting a specimen of the _manner_ in which Publications, entrusted to your future care, would appear. With more propriety, perhaps, the 'Christmas,' or some other of your own simple, unpretending Compositions, might have served this purpose. But I forget--you have bid a long adieu to the Muses. I had on my hands sundry Copies of Verses written for _Albums_--

"Those Books kept by modern young Ladies for show,
Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know--

"or otherwise floating about in Periodicals; which you have chosen in this manner to embody. I feel little interest in their publication. They are simply--_Advertisement Verses_.

"It is not for me, nor you, to allude in public to the kindness of our honoured Friend, under whose auspices you are become a Bookseller. May that fine-minded Veteran in Verse enjoy life long enough to see his patronage justified! I venture to predict that your habits of industry, and your cheerful spirit, will carry you through the world.

"I am, Dear Moxon,

"Your Friend and sincere Well-wisher, CHARLES LAMB.

"ENFIELD, _1st June, 1830_."

The reference to "Christmas" is to Moxon's poem of that name, published in 1829, and dedicated to Lamb.--The couplet concerning Albums is from one of Lamb's own pieces (see page 104).--The Veteran in Verse was Samuel Rogers, who, then sixty-seven, lived yet another twenty-five years. Moxon published the superb editions of his _Italy_ and his _Poems_ illustrated by Turner and Stothard.

Lamb's motives in issuing _Album Verses_ were cruelly misunderstood by the _Literary Gazette_ (edited by William Jerdan). In the number for July 10, 1830, was printed a contemptuous review beginning with this passage:--

If any thing could prevent our laughing at the present collection of
absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and
engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original
composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved,
and the conceit which has published.

Lamb himself probably was not much disturbed by Jerdan's venom, but Southey took it much to heart, and a few weeks later sent to _The Times_ (of August 6, 1830) the following lines in praise of his friend:--

TO CHARLES LAMB

On the Reviewal of his _Album Verses_ in the _Literary Gazette_.

Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear,
For rarest genius, and for sterling worth,
Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere,
And wit that never gave an ill thought birth,
Nor ever in its sport infix'd a sting;
To us who have admired and loved thee long,
It is a proud as well as pleasant thing
To hear thy good report, now borne along
Upon the honest breath of public praise:
We know that with the elder sons of song,
In honouring whom thou hast delighted still,
Thy name shall keep its course to after days.
The empty pertness, and the vulgar wrong,
The flippant folly, the malicious will,
Which have assailed thee, now, or heretofore,
Find, soon or late, their proper meed of shame;
The more thy triumph, and our pride the more,
When witling critics to the world proclaim,
In lead, their own dolt incapacity.
Matter it is of mirthful memory
To think, when thou wert early in the field,
How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee
A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield.
And now, a veteran in the lists of fame,
I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested
When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim,
Dulness hath thrown a _jerdan_ at thy head.

SOUTHEY.

This was, I think, Southey's first public utterance concerning Lamb since Lamb's famous open letter to him of October, 1823 (see Vol. I.).

Lamb wrote to Bernard Barton in the same month: "How noble ... in R.S. to come forward for an old friend who had treated him so unworthily," For the critics, Lamb said in the same letter, he did not care the "five hundred thousandth part of a half-farthing;" and we can believe him. On page 123 will be found, however, an epigram on the _Literary Gazette_.

* * * * *

ALBUM VERSES

Page 46. _In the Album of a Clergyman's Lady._

This lady was probably Mrs. Williams, of Fornham, in Suffolk, in whose house Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma Isola, lived as a governess in 1829-1830. The epitaph on page 65 and the acrostic on page 107 were written for the same lady.

Page 46. _In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W----._

Mrs. Sergeant Wilde, _née_ Wileman, was the first wife of Thomas Wilde, afterwards Lord Truro (1782-1855), for whose election at Newark in 1831 Lamb is said to have written facetious verses (see my large edition). The Wildes were Lamb's neighbours at Enfield.

* * * * *

Page 47. _In the Album of Lucy Barton._

These lines were sent by Lamb to Lucy Barton's father, Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, in the letter of September 30, 1824. Lucy Barton, who afterwards became the wife of Edward FitzGerald, the translator of Omar Khayyam, lived until November 27, 1898. She retained her faculties almost to the end, and in 1892 kindly wrote out for me her memory of a visit paid with her father to the Lambs at Colebrook Row about 1825--a little reminiscence first printed in _Bernard Barton and His Friends,_ 1893.

* * * * *

Page 48. _In the Album of Miss----._

This poem was first printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, May, 1829, entitled "For a Young Lady's Album." The identity of the young lady is not now discoverable: probably a school friend of Emma Isola's.

Page 48. _In the Album of a very young Lady._

Josepha was a daughter of Mrs. Williams, of Fornham.

* * * * *

Page 49. _In the Album of a French Teacher._

First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine,_ June, 1829, entitled "For the Album of: Miss----, French Teacher at Mrs. Gisborn's School, Enfield." Page 49. _In the Album of Miss Daubeny._

Miss Daubeny was a schoolfellow of Emma Isola's, at Dulwich.

* * * * *

Page 50. _In the Album of Mrs. Jane Towers._

Charles Clarke--in line 7--was Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877), a friend of the Lambs not only for his own sake, but for that of his wife, Mary Victoria Novello, whom he married in 1828 and who died as recently as 1898. Their _Recollections of Writers,_ 1878, have many interesting reminiscences of Charles and Mary Lamb. Writing to Cowden Clarke on February 25, 1828, Lamb says:--"I had a pleasant letter from your sister, greatly over acknowledging my poor sonnet.... Alas for sonnetting,'tis as the nerves are; all the summer I was dawdling among green lanes, and verses came as thick as fancies. I am sunk winterly below prose and zero."

Mrs. Towers lived at Standerwick, in Somersetshire, and was fairly well known in her day as a writer of books for children, _The Children's Fireside,_ etc.

* * * * *

Page 50. _In my own Album._

This poem was first printed in _The Bijou,_ 1828, edited by William Fraser, under the title "Verses for an Album."

* * * * *

MISCELLANEOUS

Page 51. _Angel Help._

This poem was first printed in the _New Monthly Magazine,_ 1827, with trifling differences, and the addition, at the end, of this couplet:--

Virtuous Poor Ones, sleep, sleep on,
And, waking, find your labours done.

I am afraid that the "Nonsense Verses" on page 123 represent an attempt to make fun of this beautiful poem.

Aders' house in Euston Square was hung with engravings principally of the German school (see the poem on page 94 addressed to him).

* * * * *

Page 52. _The Christening._

These lines were first printed in _Blackwood's Magazine,_ May, 1829.

* * * * *

Page 53. _On an Infant Dying as soon as Born._

This poem was first printed in _The Gem,_ 1829. _The Gem_ was then edited by Thomas Hood, whose child--his firstborn--it was thatinspired the poem. Lamb sent the verses to Hood in May, 1827.

This is, I think, in many ways Lamb's most remarkable poem.

Hood's own poem on the same event, printed in _Memorials of Thomas Hood_, by his daughter, 1860, has some of the grace and tenderness of the Greek Anthology:--

Little eyes that scarce did see,
Little lips that never smiled;
Alas! my little dear dead child,
Death is thy father, and not me,
I but embraced thee, soon as he!

* * * * *

Page 55. _To Bernard Barton._

These lines were sent to Barton in 1827, together with the picture. On June 11, Lamb wrote again:--

"DEAR B.B.,

"One word more of the picture verses, and that for good and all; pray, with a neat pen alter one line--

"His learning seems to lay small stress on--

"to

"His learning lays no mighty stress on,

"to avoid the unseemly recurrence (ungrammatical also) of 'seems' in the next line, besides the nonsense of 'but' there, as it now stands. And I request you, as a personal favor to me, to erase the last line of all, which I should never have written from myself. The fact is, it was a silly joke of Hood's, who gave me the frame, (you judg'd rightly it was not its own,) with the remark that you would like it because it was b-----d b-----d [the last line in question was 'And broad brimmed, as the owner's calling'] and I lugg'd it in: but I shall be quite hurt if it stands, because tho' you and yours have too good sense to object to it, I would not have a sentence of mine seen that to any foolish ear might sound unrespectful to thee. Let it end at 'appalling.'"

Line 1. _Woodbridge_. Barton lived at Woodbridge, in Suffolk, where he was a clerk in the old Quaker bank of Dykes & Alexander.

Line 15. _Ann Knight_. Ann Knight was a Quaker lady, also resident at Woodbridge, who kept a small school there, and who had visited the Lambs in London and greatly charmed them.

Line 16. _Classic Mitford_. The Rev. John Mitford (1781-1859) was rector of Benhall, in Suffolk, near Woodbridge, and a friend of Barton's, through whom Lamb's acquaintance with him was carried on. Mitford edited many poets, among them Vincent Bourne. He was editor of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ from 1834 to 1850.

Footnote. _Carrington Bowles_. Carington Bowles, 69 St. Paul's Churchyard, was the publisher of this print, which was the work of the elder Morland, and was engraved by Philip Dawe, father of Lamb's George Dawe (see the essay "Recollections of a late Royal Academician," Vol. I.).

Lines 26, 27, 28. _Obstinate ... Banyan_. It was not Obstinate, but Christian, who put his fingers in his ears (see the first pages of _The Pilgrim's Progress_). Lamb had the same slip of memory in his paper "On the Custom of Hissing at the Theatre" (Vol. I.).

* * * * *

Page 56. _The Young Catechist_. Lamb sent this poem to Barton in a letter in 1827, wherein he tells the story of its inception:--"An artist who painted me lately, had painted a Blackamoor praying, and not filling his canvas, stuff'd in his little girl aside of Blacky, gaping at him unmeaningly; and then didn't know what to call it. Now for a picture to be promoted to the Exhibition (Suffolk Street) as Historical, a subject is requisite. What does me. I but christen it the 'Young Catechist,' and furbishd it with Dialogue following, which dubb'd it an Historical Painting. Nothing to a friend at need.... When I'd done it the Artist (who had clapt in Miss merely as a fill-space) swore I exprest his full meaning, and the damsel bridled up into a Missionary's vanity. I like verses to explain Pictures: seldom Pictures to illustrate Poems."

The artist was Henry Meyer (1782?-1847), one of the foundation members of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street, to the exhibition of which in 1826 he sent his portrait of Lamb, now in the India Office. This picture was in a shop in the Charing Cross Road in 1910.

* * * * *

Page 57. _She is Going_.

These lines were written for I know not what occasion, but the artist Henry Meyer engraved a picture of G.J.L. Noble in 1837 and Lamb's lines were placed below.

Page 57. _To a Young Friend_.

The young friend was Emma Isola, who lived with the Lambs for some years as their adopted daughter. Emma Isola was the daughter of Charles Isola, Esquire Bedell of the University of Cambridge, who died in 1823, leaving her unprovided for. His father, and Emma Isola's grandfather, was Agostino Isola, who settled at Cambridge and taught Italian there. Wordsworth was among his pupils. He edited a collection of _Pieces selected from the Italian Poets_, 1778; also editions of _Gerusalemme Liberata_ and _Orlando Furioso_, and a book of _Italian Dialogues_. Emma Isola is first mentioned by Lamb in an unpublished letter written to her aunt, Miss Humphreys, in January, 1821, arranging for the little girl's return to Trumpington Street, Cambridge, from London, where she had been spending her holidays with the Lambs. The Lambs had met her at Cambridge in the summer of 1820. The exact date of her adoption by the Lambs cannot be ascertained now. Emma Isola married Edward Moxon in 1833, and lived until 1891.

* * * * *

Page 58. _To the Same_.

Writing to Procter in January, 1829, Lamb calls Miss Isola "a silent brown girl," and in his letter of November, 1833, to Mr. and Mrs. Moxon, he says: "I hope you [Moxon] and Emma will have many a quarrel and many a make-up (and she is beautiful in reconciliation!) ..." See the poem "To a Friend on His Marriage," page 80, for a further description of Emma Isola's character.

* * * * *

SONNETS

Page 58. _Harmony in Unlikeness_.

The two lovely damsels were Emma Isola and her friend Maria.

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Page 59. _Written at Cambridge_.

This sonnet was first printed in _The Examiner_, August 29 and 30, 1819, and was dated August 15. Lamb, we now know, from a letter recently discovered, was in Cambridge in August, 1819, just after being refused by Miss Kelly. Hazlitt in his essay "On the Conversation of Authors" in the _London Magazine_ for September, 1820, referred to Lamb's visit to him some years before, and his want of ease among rural surroundings, adding: "But when we cross the country to Oxford, then he spoke a little. He and the old collegers were hail-fellow-well-met: and in the quadrangle he 'walked gowned.'"

Page 59. _To a Celebrated Female Performer in the "Blind Boy."_

First printed in the _Morning Chronicle_, 1819. "The Blind Boy," "attributed," says Genest, "to Hewetson," was produced in 1807. It was revived from time to time. Miss Kelly used to play Edmond, the title _rôle_.

Page 59. _Work_.

First printed in _The Examiner_, June 20 and 21, 1819, under the title "Sonnet."

Many years earlier we see the germ of this sonnet in Lamb's mind, as indeed we see the germ of so many ideas that were not fully expressed till later, for he always kept his thoughts at call. Writing to Wordsworth in September, 1805, he says:--"Hang work! I wish that all the year were holyday. I am sure that Indolence indefeasible Indolence is the true state of man, and business the invention of the Old Teazer who persuaded Adam's Master to give him an apron and set him a-houghing. Pen and Ink and Clerks, and desks, were the refinements of this old torturer a thousand years after...."

Lamb probably was as fond of this sonnet as of anything he wrote in what might be called his second poetical period. He copied it into his first letter to Bernard Barton, in September, 1822, and he drew attention to it in his _Elia_ essay "The Superannuated Man."

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Page 60. _Leisure_.

First printed in the _London Magazine_ for April, 1821, probably, I think, as a protest against the objection taken by some persons to the opinions expressed by Lamb in his essay on "New Year's Eve" in that magazine for January (see Vol. II., and notes). Lamb had therein said, speaking of death:--"I am not content to pass away 'like a weaver's shuttle.' Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends. To be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave."

Such sentiments probably called forth some private as well as public protests; and it was, as I imagine, in a whimsical wish to emphasise the sincerity of his regard for life that Lamb reiterated that devotion in the emphatic words of "Leisure" in the April number. This sonnet was a special favourite with Edward FitzGerald.

It is sad to think that Lamb, when his leisure came, had too much of it. Writing to Barton on July 25, 1829, during one of his sister's illnesses, he says: "I bragg'd formerly that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit.... I am a sanguinary murderer of time, that would kill him inchmeal just now."

Page 60. _To Samuel Rogers, Esq_.

Daniel Rogers, the poet's elder brother, died in 1829. In acknowledging Lamb's sonnet, Samuel Rogers wrote the following letter, which Lamb described to Barton (July 3, 1829) as the prettiest he ever read.

Many, many thanks. The verses are beautiful. I need not say with
what feelings they were read. Pray accept the grateful
acknowledgements
of us all, and believe me when I say that nothing could have been
a greater cordial to us in our affliction than such a testimony from such
a quarter. He was--for none knew him so well--we were born within a
year or two of each other--a man of a very high mind, and with less
disguise than perhaps any that ever lived. Whatever he was, _that_ we
saw. He stood before his fellow beings (if I may be forgiven for saying
so) almost as before his Maker: and God grant that we may all bear
as severe an examination. He was an admirable scholar. His Dante
and his Homer were as familiar to him as his Alphabets: and he had
the tenderest heart. When a flock of turkies was stolen from his farm,
the indignation of the poor far and wide was great and loud. To me he
is the greatest loss, for we were nearly of an age; and there is now no
human being alive in whose eyes I have always been young.

Yours most gratefully,

SAMUEL ROGERS.

Another sonnet to Rogers will be found on p. 100.

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Page 61. _The Gipsy's Malison_.

First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, January, 1829. Lamb had sent it to _The Gem_, but, as he told Procter in a letter on January 22, 1829: "The editors declined it, on the plea that it would _shock all mothers;_ so they published the 'Widow' [Hood's parody of Lamb] instead. I am born out of time. I have no conecture about what the present world calls delicacy. I thought _Rosamund Gray_ was a pretty modest thing. Hessey assures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Hang[27] the age, I will write for Antiquity!'"

In another letter to Procter, Lamb tells the sonnet's history:--

"_January_ 29, 1829.

"When Miss Ouldcroft (who is now Mrs. Beddam [Badams], and Bed-dam'd to her!) was at Enfield, which she was in summer-time, and owed her health to its suns and genial influences, she visited (with young lady-like impertinence) a poor man's cottage that had a pretty baby (O the yearnling!), gave it fine caps and sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the parlour our two maids uproarious. 'O ma'am, who do you think Miss Ouldcroft (they pronounce it Holcroft) has been working a cap for?' 'A child," answered Mary, in true Shandean female simplicity.' 'Tis the man's child as was taken up for sheep-stealing.' Miss Ouldcroft was staggered, and would have cut the connection; but by main force I made her go and take her leave of her protégée. I thought, if she went no more, the Abactor or the Abactor's wife (_vide_ Ainsworth) would suppose she had heard something; and I have delicacy for a sheep-stealer. The overseers actually overhauled a mutton-pie at the baker's (his first, last, and only hope of mutton pie), which he never came to eat, and thence inferred his guilt. _Per occasionem cujus_, I framed the sonnet; observe its elaborate construction. I was four days about it. [Here came the sonnet.] Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely elaborate. 'Tis a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed to the structure of it. See you? and was this a fourteener to be rejected by a trumpery annual? forsooth,'twould shock all mothers; and may all mothers, who would so be shocked, be damned! as if mothers were such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of _their_ child from the theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hanged, if the judge pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. Oh B.C.! my whole heart is faint, and my whole head is sick (how is it?) at this damned canting unmasculine age!"

[Footnote 27: Talfourd. Canon Ainger gives "Damn"]

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COMMENDATORY VERSES

Page 61. _To the Author of Poems, published under the name of Barry Cornwall_.

Printed in the _London Magazine_, September, 1820.

Barry Cornwall was the pen-name of Bryan Waller Procter, 1787-1874, whose impulse to write poetry came largely from Lamb himself. In his _Dramatic Scenes_, 1819, was the beginning of a blank-verse treatment or adaptation of Lamb's "Rosamund Gray." Procter addressed to Lamb some excellent lines "Over a Flask of Sherris," which were printed in the _London Magazine_, 1825, and again in _English Songs_, 1832. His _Martian Colonna; an Italian Tale_, was published in 1820 and his _Sicilian Story_ later in the same year. The "Dream" was printed in _Dramatic Scenes_. Procter in his old age wrote a charming memoir of Lamb.

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Page 62. _To R.S. Knowles, Esq_.

First printed in the _London Magazine_, September, 1820. By a curious oversight the error in Knowles's initials was repeated in the _Album Verses_, 1830, Knowles's first name being, of course, James. James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862) had been a doctor, a schoolmaster, an actor, and a travelling elocutionist, before he took seriously to writing for the stage. His first really successful play was "Virginius," written for Edmund Kean, transferred to Macready, and produced in 1820. His greatest triumph was "The Hunchback," 1832. Lamb, who met Knowles through William Hazlitt, of Wem, the essayist's father, wrote both the prologue and epilogue for Knowles's play "The Wife," 1833 (see pages 146-7).

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Page 63. _Quatrains to the Editor of the "Every-Day Book_."

First printed in the _London Magazine_, May, 1825, and copied by Hone into the _Every-Day Book_ for July 9 of the same year. William Hone (see Vol. I. notes), 1780-1842, was a bookseller, pamphleteer and antiquary, who, before he took to editing his _Every-Day Book_ in 1825, had passed through a stormy career on account of his critical outspokenness and want of ordinary political caution; and Lamb did by no means a fashionable thing when he commended Hone thus publicly. The _Every-Day Book_, begun in 1825, was, when published in 1826, dedicated by Hone to Charles Lamb and his sister. "Your daring to publish me your 'friend,' with your 'proper name' annexed," Hone wrote, "I shall never forget."

Page 63. Acrostics.

In his more leisurely years, at Islington and Enfield, Lamb wrote a great number of acrostics--many more probably than have been preserved--of which these, printed in _Album Verses_, are all that he cared to see in print. Probably he found his chief impulse in Emma Isola's schoolfellows and friends, who must have been very eager to obtain in their albums a contribution from so distinguished a gentleman as Elia, and who passed on their requests through his adopted daughter. I have not been able to trace the identity of several of them. The lady who desired her epitaph was Mrs. Williams in whose house Emma Isola was governess. While there Emma was seriously ill, and Lamb travelled down to Fornham, in Suffolk, in 1830, to bring her home. On returning he wrote Mrs. Williams several letters, in one of which, dated Good Friday, he said:--"I beg you to have inserted in your county paper something like this advertisement; 'To the nobility, gentry, and others, about Bury,--C. Lamb respectfully informs his friends and the public in general, that he is leaving off business in the acrostic line, as he is going into an entirely new line. Rebuses and Charades done as usual, and upon the old terms. Also, Epitaphs to suit the memory of any person deceased.'"

Mrs. Williams probably then suggested that Lamb should write her epitaph, for in his next letter he says:--"I have ventured upon some lines, which combine my old acrostic talent (which you first found out) with my new profession of epitaphmonger. As you did not please to say, when you would die, I have left a blank space for the date. May kind heaven be a long time in filling it up."

On page 48 will be found some lines to one of Mrs. Williams' daughters. The acrostic on page 65 is to another. These would both be Emma Isola's pupils.

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TRANSLATIONS

Page 66. _Translations from Vincent Bourne_.

Vincent Bourne (1695-1747), the English Latin poet, entered Westminster School on the foundation in 1710, and, on leaving Cambridge, returned to Westminster as a master. He was so indolent a teacher and disciplinarian that Cowper, one of his pupils, says: "He seemed determined, as he was the best, so to be the last, Latin poet of the Westminster line." Bourne's _Poemata_ appeared in 1734. It is mainly owing to Cowper's translations (particularly "The Jackdaw") that he is known, except to Latinists. Lamb first read Bourne in 1815. Writing to Wordsworth in April of that year he says:--"Since I saw you I have had a treat in the reading way which comes not every day. The Latin Poems of V. Bourne which were quite new to me. What a heart that man had, all laid out upon town and scenes, a proper counterpoise to _some people's_ rural extravaganzas. Why I mention him is that your Power of Music reminded me of his poem of the ballad singer in the Seven Dials. Do you remember his epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the A B C, which after all he says he hesitates not to call Newton's _Principia_? I was lately fatiguing myself with going through a volume of fine words by L'd Thurlow, excellent words, and if the heart could live by words alone, it could desire no better regale, but what an aching vacuum of matter--I don't stick at the madness of it, for that is only a consequence of shutting his eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old Elisabeth poets--from thence I turned to V. Bourne--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. Bless him, Latin wasn't good enough for him--why wasn't he content with the language which Gay and Prior wrote in."

On the publication of _Album Verses_, wherein these nine poems from Vincent Bourne were printed, Lamb reviewed the book in Moxon's _Englishman's Magazine_ for September, 1831, under the title "The Latin Poems of Vincent Bourne" (see Vol. I.). There he quoted "The Ballad Singers," and the "Epitaph on an Infant Sleeping"--remarking of Bourne:--"He is 'so Latin,' and yet 'so English' all the while. In diction worthy of the Augustan age, he presents us with no images that are not familiar to his countrymen. His topics are even closelier drawn; they are not so properly English, as _Londonish_. From the streets, and from the alleys, of his beloved metropolis, he culled his objects, which he has invested with an Hogarthian richness of colouring. No town picture by that artist can go beyond his BALLAD-SINGERS; Gay's TRIVIA alone, in verse, comes up to the life and humour of it."

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Page 72. _Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill_.

First printed in _The New Times_, October 24, 1825. The version there given differed considerably from that preserved by Lamb. It had no divisions. At the end of what is now the first strophe qame these lines:--

Now, by Saint Hilary,
(A Saint I love to swear by,
Though I should forfeit thereby
Five ill-spared shillings to your well-warm'd seat,
Worshipful Justices of Worship-street;
Or pay my crown
At great Sir Richard's still more awful mandate down:)
They raise my gorge--
Those Ministers of Ann, or the First George,
(Which was it?
For history is silent, and my closet--
Reading affords no clue;
I have the story, Pope, alone from you;)
In such a place, &c.

Lamb offered the Ode to his friend Walter Wilson, for his work on Defoe, to which Lamb contributed prose criticisms (see Vol. I.), but Wilson did not use it. The letter making this offer, together with the poem, differing very slightly in one or two places, is preserved in the Bodleian.

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Page 75. _Going or Gone_.

First printed in Hone's _Table Book_, 1827, signed Elia, under the title "Gone or Going." It was there longer, after stanza 6 coming the following:--

Had he mended in right time,
He need not in night time,
(That black hour, and fright-time,)
Till sexton interr'd him,
Have groan'd in his coffin,
While demons stood scoffing--
You'd ha' thought him a-coughing--
My own father[28] heard him!

Could gain so importune,
With occasion opportune,
That for a poor Fortune,
That should have been ours[29],
In soul he should venture
To pierce the dim center,
Where will-forgers enter Amid the dark Powers?--

And in the _Table Book_ the last stanza ended thus:--

And flaunting Miss Waller--
_That_ soon must befal her,
Which makes folks seem taller[30],--
Though proud, once, as Juno!

[Footnote 28: Who sat up with him.]

[Footnote 29: I have this fact from Parental tradition only.]

[Footnote 30: Death lengthens people to the eye.]

To annotate this curious tale of old friendships, dating back, as I suppose, in some cases to Lamb's earliest memories, both of London and Hertfordshire, is a task that is probably beyond completion. The day is too distant. But a search in the Widford register and churchyard reveals a little information and oral tradition a little more.

Stanza 2. _Rich Kitty Wheatley_. The Rev. Joseph Whately, vicar of Widford in the latter half of the eighteenth century, married Jane Plumer, sister of William Plumer, of Blakesware, the employer of Mrs. Field, Lamb's grandmother. Archbishop Whately was their son. Kitty Wheatley may have been a relative.

Stanza 2. _Polly Perkin_. On June 1, 1770, according to the Widford register, Samuel Perkins married Mary Lanham. This may have been Polly.

Stanza 3. _Carter ... Lily_. The late Mrs. Tween, a daughter of Randal Norris, Lamb's friend, and a resident in Widford, told Canon Ainger that Carter and Lily were servants at Blakesware. Lily had noticeably red cheeks. Lamb would have seen them often when he stayed there as a boy. In Cussan's _Hertfordshire_ is an entertaining account of William Plumer's widow's adhesion to the old custom of taking the air. She rode out always--from Gilston, only a few miles from Widford and Blakesware--in the family chariot, with outriders and postilion (a successor to Lily), and so vast was the equipage that "turn outs" had to be cut in the hedges (visible to this day), like sidings on a single-line railway, to permit others to pass. The Widford register gives John Lilley, died October 18, 1812, aged 85, and Johanna Lilley, died January 1, 1823, aged 90. It also gives Benjamin Carter's marriage, in 1781, but not his death.

Stanza 4. _Clemitson's widow_. Mrs. Tween told Canon Ainger that Clemitson was the farmer of Blakesware farm. I do not find the name in the Widford register. An Elizabeth Clemenson is there.

Stanza 4. _Good Master Clapton_. There are several Claptons in Widford churchyard. Thirty years from 1827, the date of the poem, takes us to 1797: the Clapton whose death occurred nearest that time is John Game Clapton, May 5, 1802.

Stanza 5. _Tom Dockwra_. I cannot find definite information either concerning this Dockwra or the William Dockwray, of Ware, of whom Lamb wrote in his "Table Talk" in _The Athenaeum_, 1834 (see Vol. I.). There was, however, a Joseph Docwray, of Ware, a Quaker maltster; and the late Mrs. Coe, _née_ Hunt, the daughter of the tenant of the water-mill at Widford in Lamb's day, where Lamb often spent a night, told me that a poor family named Docwray lived in the neighbourhood.

Stanza 6. _Worral ... Dorrell_. I find neither Worral nor Dorrell in the Widford archives, but Morrils and Morrells in plenty, and one Horrel. Lamb alludes to old Dorrell again in the _Elia_ essay "New Year's Eve," where he is accused of swindling the family out of money. Particulars of his fraud have perished with him, but I have no doubt it is the same William Dorrell who witnessed John Lamb's will in 1761. In the _Table Book_ this stanza ended thus:--

With cuckoldy Worral,
And wicked old Dorrel,
'Gainst whom I've a quarrel--
His end might affright us.

Stanzas 8 and 9. _Fanny Hutton ... Betsy Chambers ... Miss Wither ... Miss Waller_. Fanny Hutton, Betsy Chambers, Miss Wither and Miss Waller elude one altogether. Lamb's schoolmistress, Mrs. Reynolds, was a Miss Chambers.

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Page 78. NEW POEMS IN LAMB'S _POETICAL WORKS_, 1836.

In 1836 Moxon issued a new edition of Lamb's poems, consisting of those in the _Works_, 1818, and those in _Album Verses_--with a few exceptions and several additions--under the embracive title _The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb_. Whether Moxon himself made up this volume, or whether Mary Lamb or Talfourd assisted, I do not know. The dedication to Coleridge stood at the beginning, and that to Moxon half way through.

Page 78. _In the Album of Edith S----_.

First printed in _The Athenaeum_, March 9, 1833, under the title "Christian Names of Women." Edith S---- was Edith May Southey, the poet's daughter, who married the Rev. John Wood Warter.

Page 78. _To Dora W----_.

Dora, _i.e._, Dorothy Wordsworth, the poet's daughter, who married Edward Quillinan, and thus became stepmother of Rotha Q---- of the next sonnet.

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Page 79. _In the Album of Rotha Q----_.

Rotha Quillinan, younger daughter of Edward Quillinan (1791-1851), Wordsworth's friend and, afterwards, son-in-law. His first wife, a daughter of Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, was burned to death in 1822 under the most distressing circumstances. Rotha Quillinan, who was Wordsworth's god-daughter, was so called from the Rotha which flows through Rydal, close to Quillinan's house.

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Page 80. _To T. Stothard, Esq_.