Charles Lamb - The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

[62]Seven Dials.

In the same style of familiar painting, and replete with the same images of town life, picturesque as it was comparatively in the days of Gay, and of Hogarth, are the various Poematia—to the "Bellman"—"Billinsgate"—the "Law Courts"—the "Licensed Victualler"—the "Quack"—the "Quaker's Meeting" cum multis aliis —of this most classical of Cockney Poets. In a different strain is the following piece of tenderness:—

Infans venuste, qui sacros dulces agens

In hoc sopores marmore,

Placidissimâ quiete compôstus jaces,

Et inscius culpæ et metûs, Somno fruaris, docta quem dedit manus Sculptoris; et somno simul, Quem nescit artifex vel Ars effingere Fruaris Innocentiæ.

Beautiful Infant, who dost keep

Thy posture here, and sleep'st a marble sleep,

May the repose unbroken be,

Which the fine Artist's hand hath lent to thee!

While thou enjoy'st along with it

That which no Art or Craft could ever hit,

Or counterfeit to moral sense,

The Heav'n-infused sleep of Innocence.

We have selected these two versions from a little volume lately published by Mr. Lamb, to which he has strangely given the misnomer of "Album Verses."

Album Verses! why, in the whole collection there are not twenty pages out of one hundred and fifty (and cast the acrostics in, to swell the amount) that have the smallest title to come under this denomination. There is a Tragic Drama, filling up more than a third of the book. The rest is composed of—Translations from V. Bourne, nine in number—just so many Verses, and no more, expressly written for Albums—and the rest might have been written any where. But Mr. L. will be wiser another time, than to stand Godfather to his own poetry. A sensible Publisher is always the best names-man on these occasions.

But if to write in Albums be a sin, Lord help Wordsworth—Coleridge—Southey—Sir Walter himself—who have not been always able to resist the solicitations of the fair owners of these modern nuisances. Southey has owned to some score, and Mr. L.'s offences in this kind, we have said, do not exceed the number of the Muses. This may be said even of them, that they are not vague verses—to the Moon, or to the Nightingale—that will fit any place—but strictly appropriate to the person that they were intended to gratify; or to the species of chronicle which they were destined to be recorded in. The Verses to a "Clergyman's Lady"—to the "Wife of a learned Serjeant"—to a "Young Quaker"—could have appeared only in an Album, and only in that particular person's Album they were composed for.

We are no friend to Albums. We early set our face against them in a short copy of verses, which we publish only for our own justification. To the question:—

'Tis a Book kept by modern young Ladies for show,

Of which their plain Grandmothers nothing did know;

A Medley of Scraps, half verse, and half prose,

And some things not very like either, God knows;

Where wise folk and simple alike do combine,

And you write your nonsense, that I may write mine . Throw in a fine Landscape, to make it complete— A Flower-piece—a Foreground—all tinted so neat, As Nature herself, could she see it, would strike With envy to think that she ne'er did the like. Next forget not to stuff it with Autographs plenty, All writ in a style so genteel, and so dainty, They no more resemble folk's ord'nary writing, Than lines, penn'd with pains, do extemp'ral enditing; Or our every day countenance (pardon the stricture) The faces we make when we sit for our picture. Thus you have, dearest—, an Album complete—

We forget the rest—but seriously we deprecate with all our powers the unfeminine practice of this novel species of importunity. We have known Young Ladies—ay, and of those who have been modest and retiring enough upon other occasions—in quest of these delicacies, to besiege, and storm by violence, the closets and privatest retirements of a literary man, to whom they have had an imperfect, or, perhaps, no introduction at all. But the disease has gone forth. Like the daughters of the horseleech in the Proverbs, the requisition of every female now is, Contribute, Contribute . "From the Land's End to the Farthest Thule the cry has gone out, and who shall resist it? Assuming then, that Album Verses will be written, where was the harm, if Mr. L. first taught us how they might be best, and most characteristically written?"

Amid the vague, dreamy, wordy, matterless Poetry of this empty age, the verses of such a writer as Bourne (who was a Latin Prior ) are invaluable. They fix upon something ; they ally themselves to common life and objects; their good nature is a Catholicon, sanative of coxcombry, of heartlessness, and of fastidiousness. Vale, Lepidissimum Caput. [63]

[63]Of this writer we only know, that he was an usher some seventy years since at Westminster School; and that Dr. Johnson (who knew him) speaks of him always affectionately as "poor Vinny Bourne."

Table of Contents

(1832)

To the Editor of The Athenæum

Dear Sir—Your communication to me of the death of Munden made me weep. Now, Sir, I am not of the melting mood. But, in these serious times, the loss of half the world's fun is no trivial deprivation. It was my loss (or gain shall I call it?) in the early time of my play-going, to have missed all Munden's acting. There was only he, and Lewis at Covent Garden, while Drury Lane was exuberant with Parsons, Dodd, &c., such a comic company as, I suppose, the stage never showed. Thence, in the evening of my life, I had Munden all to myself, more mellowed, richer perhaps than ever. I cannot say what his change of faces produced in me. It was not acting. He was not one of my "old actors." It might be [he was] better. His power was extravagant. I saw him one evening in three drunken characters. Three Farces were played. One part was Dosey —I forget the rest:—but they were so discriminated, that a stranger might have seen them all, and not have dreamed that he was seeing the same actor. I am jealous for the actors who pleased my youth. He was not a Parsons or a Dodd, but he was more wonderful. He seemed as if he could do anything. He was not an actor, but something better , if you please. Shall I instance Old Foresight , in "Love for Love," in which Parsons was at once the old man, the astrologer, &c. Munden dropped the old man, the doater—which makes the character—but he substituted for it a moon-struck character, a perfect abstraction from this earth, that looked as if he had newly come down from the planets. Now, that is not what I call acting . It might be better. He was imaginative; he could impress upon an audience an idea —the low one perhaps of a leg of mutton and turnips; but such was the grandeur and singleness of his expressions, that that single expression would convey to all his auditory a notion of all the pleasures they had all received from all the legs of mutton and turnips they had ever eaten in their lives. Now, this is not acting , nor do I set down Munden amongst my old actors. He was only a wonderful man, exerting his vivid impressions through the agency of the stage. In one only thing did I see him act —that is, support a character; it was in a wretched farce, called "Johnny Gilpin," for Dowton's benefit, in which he did a cockney; the thing ran but one night; but when I say that Liston's Lubin Log was nothing to it, I say little; it was transcendant. And here, let me say of actors— envious actors—that of Munden , Liston was used to speak, almost with the enthusiasm due to the dead, in terms of such allowed superiority to every actor on the stage, and this at a time when Munden was gone by in the world's estimation, that it convinced me that artists (in which term I include poets, painters, &c.), are not so envious as the world think. I have little time, and therefore enclose a criticism on Munden's Old Dosey and his general acting, by a gentleman, who attends less to these things than formerly, but whose criticism I think masterly.