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

Page 178,last line. What could Pope mean?

What made (say Montaigne, or more sage Charron)

Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon?

Pope's Moral Essays , Ep. I., 87–88.

It has been held that Pope called Charron more sage because he somewhat mitigated the excessive fatalism (Pyrrhonism) of Montaigne.

Page 179.IV.—[A Sylvan Surprise.]

The Examiner , September 12, 1813. Reprinted in The Indicator , January 3, 1821. We know it to be Lamb's by the signature ‡; also from a sentence in Leigh Hunt's essay on the "Suburbs of Genoa," in The Literary Examiner , August 23, 1823, where, speaking of an expected sight, he says: "C. L. could not have been more startled when he saw the chimney-sweeper reclining in Richmond meadows."

Page 179.V.—[Street Conversation.]

The Examiner , September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.

Page 180.VI.—[A Town Residence.]

The Examiner , September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.

This note is another contribution to Lamb's many remarks on London. Allsop, in his reminiscences of Lamb in his Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge , 1836, remarks:—

Somerset House, Whitehall Chapel (the old Banqueting Hall), the church at Limehouse and the new church at Chelsea, with the Bell house at Chelsea College, which always reminded him of Trinity College, Cambridge, were the objects most interesting to him [Lamb] in London.

Page 181.VII.—[Gray's "Bard."]

The Examiner , September 12, 1813. Signed ‡. Reprinted by Leigh Hunt under the above title in The Indicator , December 13, 1820. In the Appendix ( pages 425–6) will be found other critical comments upon Gray, which I conjecture to be Lamb's.

Page 181,line 1 of essay. The beard of Gray's bard.

Loose his beard, and hoary hair

Stream'd like a meteor, to the troubled air.

The Bard.

Gray himself noted the Miltonic anticipation of this line (see Gosse's edition, 1884). The lines Lamb quotes are from Paradise Lost , I., lines 536–537.

Page 181,line 6 of essay. Heywood's old play. "The Four 'Prentices of London," by Thomas Heywood. The speech is that of Turnus respecting the Persian Sophy. It is copied in one of Lamb's Commonplace Books.

Page 182.VIII.—[An American War for Helen.]

The Examiner , September 26, 1813. Signed ‡. Reprinted under the above title by Leigh Hunt in The Indicator , January 3, 1821.

Page 182,

line 1 of essay. A curious volume. Hazlitt's Handbook to the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain , 1867, gives the title as Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Epigrammatum Libri Quimque . Perth, 1679. 8vo.

Page 182,line 9. " The master of a seminary … at Islington. " This was the Rev. John Evans, a Baptist minister, whose school was in Pullin's Row, Islington. Gray's Elegy was published as Lamb indicates in 1806. The headline covering the first three stanzas is "Interesting Silence."

Page 183.IX.—[Dryden and Collier.]

The Examiner , September 26, 1813. Signed ‡.

Page 183,line 3. Jeremy Collier. Jeremy Collier (1650–1726), the nonjuror and controversialist. His Essays upon Several Moral Subjects , Part II., were published in 1697. The passage quoted is from that "On Musick," the second essay in Part II. I have restored his italics and capitals.

Page 183,at foot. " His genius. … " Collier's words are: "His genius was jocular, but when disposed he could be very serious."

Page 184.X.—[Playhouse Memoranda.]

The Examiner , December 19, 1813. Signed ‡. Leigh Hunt reprinted it in The Indicator , December 13, 1820.

The paper, towards the end, becomes a first sketch for the Elia essay "My First Play," 1821. As a whole it is hardly less charming than that essay, while its analysis of the Theatre audience gives it an independent interest and value.

Page 185,line 3. They had come to see Mr. C——. It was George Frederick Cooke, of whom Lamb writes in the criticism on page 41, that they had come to see. Possibly the Cooke they saw was T. P. Cooke (1786–1864), afterwards famous for his sailor parts; but more probably an obscure Cooke who never rose to fame. A Mr. Cook played a small part in Lamb's "Mr. H." in 1806.

Page 186,line 6. The system of Lucretius. Lucretius, in De Rerum Natura , imagined the gods to be above passion or emotion, heedless of this world's concerns, figures of absolute peace.

Page 186,line 22. It was "Artaxerxes." An opera by Thomas Augustine Arne, produced in 1762, founded upon Metastasio's "Artaserse." From the other particulars of Lamb's early play-going, given in the Elia essay "My First Play," we know the date of this performance to be December 1, 1780, that being the only occasion in that or the next season when "Artaxerxes" was followed by "Harlequin's Invasion." But none of the singers named by Lamb were in the caste on that occasion. "Who played, or who sang in it, I know not," he says; merely setting down likely and well-known names at random. As a matter of fact Artaxerxes was played by Mrs. Baddeley, Arbaces by Miss Pruden, and Mandane by "a young lady." Mr. Beard was John Beard (1716?-1791), the tenor. Leoni was the discoverer and instructor of Braham. He made his début in "Artaxerxes" in 1775. Mrs. Kennedy, formerly Mrs. Farrell, was a contralto. She died in 1793.

Page 186,line 10 from foot. I was, with Uriel.

Th' archangel Uriel, one of the sev'n

Who in God's presence, nearest to his throne,

Stand ready at command.

Paradise Lost , III., lines 648–650.

Uriel's station was the sun. See also Paradise Lost , III. 160, IV. 577 and 589, and IX. 60.

Page 187.Wordsworth's "Excursion."

The Quarterly Review , October, 1814. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Wordsworth's Excursion was published in 1814; and it seems to have been upon his own suggestion, made, probably, to Southey, who was a power in the Quarterly office, that Lamb should review it. In his letter to Wordsworth of August 29, 1814, Lamb expressed a not too ready willingness. Writing again a little later, when the review was done, he spoke of "the circumstances of haste and peculiar bad spirits" under which it was written, viewing it without much confidence; and adding, "But it must speak for itself, if Gifford and his crew do not put words in its mouth, which I expect." As Lamb expected, so it happened. Lamb's next letter, after the publication of the October Quarterly (which does not seem to have come out until very late in the year), ran thus:—

"Dear Wordsworth—I told you my Review was a very imperfect one. But what you will see in the Quarterly is a spurious one which Mr. Baviad Gifford has palm'd upon it for mine. I never felt more vexd in my life than when I read it. I cannot give you an idea of what he has done to it out of spite at me because he once sufferd me to be called a lunatic in his Thing. The language he has alterd throughout. Whatever inadequateness it had to its subject, it was in point of composition the prettiest piece of prose I ever writ, and so my sister (to whom alone I read the MS.) said. That charm if it had any is all gone: more than a third of the substance is cut away and that not all from one place, but passim , so as to make utter nonsense. Every warm expression is changed for a nasty cold one. I have not the cursed alteration by me, I shall never look at it again, but for a specimen I remember—I had said the Poet of the Excurs n'walks thro' common forests as thro' some Dodona or enchanted wood and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher lovelays.' It is now (besides half a dozen alterations in the same half dozen lines) 'but in language more intelligent reveals to him'—that is one I remember. But that would have been little, putting his damnd Shoemaker phraseology (for he was a shoemaker) in stead of mine which has been tinctured with better authors than his ignorance can comprehend—for I reckon myself a dab at Prose —verse I leave to my betters—God help them, if they are to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter. I have read 'It won't do.' [65]But worse than altering words, he has kept a few members only of the part I had done best which was to explain all I could of your 'scheme of harmonies' as I had ventured to call it between the external universe and what within us answers to it. To do this I had accumulated a good many short passages, rising in length to the end, weaving in the Extracts as if they came in as a part of the text, naturally, not obtruding them as specimens. Of this part a little is left, but so as without conjuration no man could tell what I was driving it [? at]. A proof of it you may see (tho' not judge of the whole of the injustice) by these words—I had spoken something about 'natural methodism—' and after follows 'and therefore the tale of Margaret sh dhave been postponed' (I forget my words, or his words): now the reasons for postponing it are as deducible from what goes before, as they are from the 104th psalm. The passage whence I deduced it, has vanished, but clapping a colon before a therefore is always reason enough for Mr. Baviad Gifford to allow to a reviewer that is not himself. I assure you my complaints are founded. I know how sore a word alterd makes one, but indeed of this Review the whole complexion is gone. I regret only that I did not keep a copy. I am sure you would have been pleased with it, because I have been feeding my fancy for some months with the notion of pleasing you. Its imperfection or inadequateness in size and method I knew, but for the writing part of it, I was fully satisfied. I hoped it would make more than atonement. Ten or twelve distinct passages come to my mind which are gone, and what is left is of course the worse for their having been there, the eyes are pulld out and the bleeding sockets are left. I read it at Arch's shop with my face burning with vexation secretly, with just such a feeling as if it had been a review written against myself, making false quotations from me. But I am ashamd to say so much about a short piece. How are you served! and the labors of years turn'd into contempt by scoundrels.