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

Page 122,line 8 from foot. Mr. C. G. F. Cooke. See above.

Page 123,line 25. Glenalvon. In Home's "Douglas." Lamb wrote an early poem on this tragedy, which seems to have so dominated his youthful imagination that when in 1795–1796 he was for a while in confinement he believed himself at times to be young Norval.

Page 127,line 12. A ghost by chandelier light … It should perhaps be borne in mind that in 1811, and for many years after, the stage was still lighted by candles, so that the regulation of light, which can be effected with such nicety on the modern stage, was then impossible. This is especially to be remembered with regard to such details as the presentation of the Witches in "Macbeth." It would be simple enough, with our electric switchboard, to frighten a nervous child in that scene to-day.

Page 129,line 3. Webb. Webb was a theatrical robemaker at 98 Chancery Lane.

Page 130.Specimens from the Writings of Fuller.

The Reflector , No. IV., 1812. Works , 1818. In The Reflector the signature Y was appended to the introductory paragraphs.

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661), the divine and historian. The passages selected by Lamb are identified in the notes to my large edition, the references being to The Holy State , 1642; The History of the Worthies of England , 1662; A Pisgah-sight of Palestine and the Confines thereof, with the Histories of the Old and New Testaments acted thereon , 1650; and The Church History of Britain from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the year MDCXLVIII. , 1655. Lamb's transcriptions are, of course, not exact.

Page 135. Footnote. Fuller's bird. Lamb's friend Procter (Barry Cornwall) was also greatly impressed by this legend. His English Songs , 1832, contains a poem on the subject.

Page 137. Footnote. Wickliffe's ashes. Landor has a passage on this subject in his poem "On Swift joining Avon near Rugby." Wordsworth's fine sonnet, in the Ecclesiastical Sketches , Part II., may have been suggested by this very quotation in Lamb's essay:—

Once more the Church is seized with sudden fear,

And at her call is Wicliffe disinhumed;

Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed,

And flung into the brook that travels near;

Forthwith that ancient Voice which streams can hear,

Thus speaks (that Voice which walks upon the wind,

Though seldom heard by busy human kind)—

"As thou these ashes, little Brook! wilt bear

Into the Avon, Avon to the tide

Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,

Into main Ocean they, this deed accurst

An emblem yields to friends and enemies

How the bold Teacher's Doctrine, sanctified

By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed."

When printed in The Reflector , in 1812, Lamb's footnote continued thus:—

"We are too apt to indemnify ourselves for some characteristic excellence we are kind enough to concede to a great author, by denying him every thing else. Thus Donne and Cowley, by happening to possess more wit and faculty of illustration than other men, are supposed to have been incapable of nature or feeling; they are usually opposed to such writers as Shenstone and Parnel; whereas in the very thickest of their conceits—in the bewildering maze of their tropes and figures, a warmth of soul and generous feeling shines through, the 'sum' of which 'forty thousand' of those natural poets, as they are called, 'with all their quantity, could not make up.'—Without any intention of setting Fuller on a level with Donne or Cowley, I think the injustice which has been done him in the denial that he possesses any other qualities than those of a quaint and conceited writer, is of the same kind as that with which those two great Poets have been treated."

Page 138.Edax on Appetite.

The Reflector , No. IV., 1811. Works , 1818.

Page 138,line 14 from foot. The best of parents . Lamb, of course, is not here autobiographical. His father was no clergyman.

Page 139,line 21. Ventri natus , etc . These nicknames may be roughly translated: Ventri natus , glutton-born; ventri deditus , gluttony-dedicated; vesana gula , greedy gullet; escarum gurges , sink of eatables; dapibus indulgens , feast-lover; non dans fræna gulæ , not curbing the gullet; sectans lautæ fercula mensæ , dainty-hunting.

Page 141,line 15. Mandeville . Bernard Mandeville (1670?-1733), whose Fable of the Bees , 1714, was one of Lamb's favourite books.

Page 145. Hospita on the Immoderate Indulgence of the Palate .

The Reflector , No. IV., 1811. Works , 1818. In The Reflector this letter followed immediately upon that of Edax ( see page 138). In his Works Lamb reversed this order. In The Reflector the following footnote was appended, signed Ref. :—

To all appearance, the obnoxious visitor of Hospita can be no other than my inordinate friend Edax, whose misfortunes are detailed, ore rotundo, in the preceding article. He will of course see the complaint that is made against him; but it can hardly be any benefit either to himself or his entertainers. The man's appetite is not a bad habit but a disease; and if he had not thought proper to relate his own story, I do not know whether it would have been altogether justifiable to be so amusing upon such a subject.

Page 147,second paragraph. Mr. Malthus . Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), author of the Essay on Population , 1798. He wrote On the High Price of Provisions in 1800.

Page 148.The Good Clerk, a Character.

The Reflector , No. IV., 1811. Signed L. B., possibly as the first and last letters of Lamb. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Page 153,line 12. As Solomon says . Defoe seems to be remembering Proverbs XXII. 7, and possibly Isaiah XXIV. 2.

Sixteen years later, in 1827, William Hone reprinted "The Good Clerk" in his Table Book , I., columns 562–567. The first half was given under its own title; the second half under this title, "Defoeana, No. I., The Tradesman;" followed by a kindred passage from The Fable of the Bees , to which the following note was appended, signed L.:—

"We have copied the above from Mandeville's Fable of the Bees , Edition 1725. How far, and in what way, the practice between the same parties differs at this day, we respectfully leave to our fair shopping friends, of this present year 1827, to determine."

Page 153.Memoir of Robert Lloyd.

Gentleman's Magazine , November, 1811. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Robert Lloyd (1778–1811) was a younger brother of Charles Lloyd, for a while Coleridge's pupil and Lamb's friend of the later nineties, with whom he collaborated in Blank Verse, 1798. They were sons of Charles Lloyd, of Birmingham (1748–1828), the Quaker banker, philanthropist, and, in a quiet private way, a writer of verse (see Charles Lamb and the Lloyds ).

Robert Lloyd first met Lamb in 1797; he was then nineteen years old, an apprentice at Saffron Walden. He was inclined to morbidness, though not to the same extent as his brother Charles, and Lamb did what he could to get more health and contentment into him. In 1799 Robert Lloyd seems to have left his father's roof in a state of revolt, and to have settled with Lamb for a while. He returned home, however, and met Manning (who was then teaching Charles Lloyd mathematics at Cambridge), and, after drawing from Lamb several fine letters—notably upon Jeremy Taylor, and that upon Cooke from which I have quoted in the notes above—he passed out of his life until 1809, when, paying a short visit to London, he saw the Lambs again several times.