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

Despairing of his fee to-morrow.

The foreboding soon proved correct; and, every thing considered, perhaps it ought not to excite much surprise, that when Ephraim heard from the physician that there was little or no chance of her recovery, he betrayed no symptoms of excessive emotion, but mumbling something unintelligibly, in which the doctor thought he caught the sound of the words "Christian duty of resignation," he quietly filled an additional pipe that evening. The next day Mrs. Wagstaff expired, and in due time her interment took place in the churchyard of St. Ann, Blackfriars, every thing connected therewith being conducted with the decorum becoming so melancholy an event, and which might be expected from a man of Mr. Wagstaff's gravity and experience. The funeral was a walking one from the near vicinity to the ground; and but for an untimely slanting shower of rain, no particular inconvenience would have been felt by those who were assembled on that occasion; that casualty, however, caused them to be thoroughly drenched; and, in reference to their appearance, it was feelingly observed by some of the by-standers, that they had seldom seen so many tears on the faces of mourners.—

To be continued —(perhaps).

Nemo.

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[Sonnets. By Edward Moxon. (Printed for private circulation only.)]

(1833)

A copy of this unassuming work has fallen in our way. We are critics on publications only. It is like criticising a domestic conversation, or a friendly letter, to notice a little book, professedly not meant for the public eye. But we are pleased, and pleasure will speak out when discretion whispers it to be still. The author has professional reasons to be private. With them we have nothing to do, but to say, that if unabating industry, integrity above his avocation, unparalleled success for the short time he has entered upon it, are any auguries of success, this notice of ours will not hinder his calling. We have no parallel for this mixed character—qualities united seemingly at farthest variance—except in fine old Humphrey Mosely, the stationer (so were booksellers termed in the good old times), who, for love only, not for lucre, ushered into the world the first poems of Waller, the Juvenilia of Milton, besides a lesser galaxy of the poets of his day, with Prefaces , of his own honest composing, worthy of the strains they preluded to. Turn, reader, to his introduction to the Minor Poems of Milton, and say, if that soul, which inspirits it, worked for gain. H. M. (bibliomanists will gladlier recognise him by his initials) was, in his day, what we hope E. M. will prove in his, the fosterer of poetry, not merely the sordid trader in it. We must steal a sonnet or two from this sealed book, to justify our expectations. The first shall be 'To the Nightingale:' the originality of the concluding thought, and general sweetness of the versification, make us, reluctantly almost, give it the preference.

Lone midnight-soothing melancholy bird,

That send'st such music to my sleepless soul,

Chaining her faculties in fast controul,

Few listen to thy song; yet I have heard,

When Man and Nature slept, nor aspen stirr'd,

Thy mournful voice, sweet vigil of the sleeping—

And liken'd thee to some angelic mind,

That sits and mourns for erring mortals weeping.

The genius, not of groves, but of mankind,

Watch at this solemn hour o'er millions keeping.

In Eden's bowers, as mighty poets tell,

Did'st thou repeat, as now, that wailing call—

Those sorrowing notes might seem, sad Philomel,

Prophetic to have mourn'd of man the fall .

One more, and we have done. We mistake, if a Petrarch-like delicacy is not to be found in the following:—

Methought my Love was dead. O, 'twas a night

Of dreary weeping, and of bitter woe!

Methought I saw her lovely spirit go

With lingering looks into yon star so bright,

Which then assumed such a beauteous light,

That all the fires in heaven compared with this

Were scarce perceptible to my weak sight.

There seem'd henceforth the haven of my bliss;

To that I turn'd with fervency of soul,

And pray'd that morn might never break again,

But o'er me that pure planet still remain.

Alas! o'er it my vows had no controul.

The lone star set: I woke full glad, I deem,

To find my sorrow but a lover's dream!

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The prose of Lamb's Works , 1818, was dedicated to Martin Burney in the following sonnet:—

Forgive me, Burney, if to thee these late

And hasty products of a critic pen,

Thyself no common judge of books and men,

In feeling of thy worth I dedicate.

My verse was offered to an older friend; The humbler prose has fallen to thy share: Nor could I miss the occasion to declare, What spoken in thy presence must offend— That, set aside some few caprices wild, Those humorous clouds that flit o'er brightest days, In all my threadings of this worldly maze, (And I have watched thee almost from a child), Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, I have not found a whiter soul than thine.

Martin Burney was the son of Rear-Admiral Burney, who had sailed with Cook, and was the nephew of Madame D'Arblay. He was a barrister and very nearly Lamb's contemporary. Both Charles Lamb and his sister had for him a deep affection, although they made fun of his oddities, many of which are recorded in the correspondence. Burney lived to attend, and weep distressingly at, Mary Lamb's funeral in 1847.

Lamb seems to have meditated a collected edition of his works as early as 1816, for we find him telling Wordsworth (Sept. 23, 1816), that he had offered the book to Murray through Barron Field, but that Gifford had opposed the project successfully.

Page 1. Rosamund Gray.

First printed, 1798. Reprinted in the Works , 1818.

Rosamund Gray was published in 1798 by Lee & Hurst under the title A Tale of Rosamund Gray and old Blind Margaret , by Charles Lamb. It then had this dedication:—

This Tale

is

Inscribed in Friendship

to

Marmaduke Thompson,

of

Pembroke Hall,

Cambridge.

Thompson was at Christ's Hospital with Lamb. In the essay on that school in Elia , written in 1820, he is called "mildest of Missionaries" and the writer's good friend still, but there is no evidence that the intimacy was actively continued after the early days.

At the time that Rosamund Gray was written Lamb was twenty-two to twenty-three. It was his first prose of which we know anything.

Lamb reprinted the story without the dedication, under the title Rosamund Gray, a Tale , in his Works , 1818, the text of which is followed here. The differences of punctuation are numerous, but the text is mainly the same. In Chapter VI. ( page 14, line 9) the phrase "take a cup of tea with her," ran, twenty years earlier, "drink a dish"; page 14, line 8 from foot, after "beauties of the season" old Margaret originally said, "I can still remember them with pleasure, and rejoice that younger eyes than mine can see and enjoy them. I shall be," etc.; and at the end of the same chapter ( page 16), in the 1798 edition, came the quaintly particular passage which I have thrown into italics:—

"Besides, it was Margaret's bed-time, for she kept very good hours—indeed, in the distribution of her meals, and sundry other particulars, she resembled the livers in the antique world, more than might well beseem a creature of this— none but Rosamund could get her mess of broth ready, or put her night caps on—(she wore seven, the undermost was of flannel)—