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

"But I could not but protest against your taking that thing as mine. Every pretty expression, (I know there were many) every warm expression, there was nothing else, is vulgarised and frozen—but if they catch me in their camps again let them spitchcock me. They had a right to do it, as no name appears to it, and Mr. Shoemaker Gifford I suppose never waved a right he had since he commencd author. God confound him and all caitiffs.

"C. L."

[65]"This will never do"—the beginning of the review in the Edinburgh .—Ed.

The word "lunatic" refers to the Quarterly's review in December, 1811, of The Dramatic Works of John Ford , by Henry William Weber, Sir Walter Scott's assistant, where, alluding to the comments on Ford in Lamb's Specimens , quoted by Weber, the reviewer described them as "the blasphemies of a maniac." See page 57of this volume for Lamb's actual remarks on Ford. Southey wrote Gifford a letter of remonstrance, and Gifford explained that he had used the words without knowledge of Lamb's history—knowing of him nothing but his name—and adding that he would have lost his right arm sooner than have written what he did had he known the circumstances. The late Mr. Dykes Campbell, whose opinion in such matters was of the weightiest, declined to let Gifford escape with this apology. Reviewing in The Athenæum for August 25, 1894, a new edition of Lamb's Dramatic Specimens , Mr. Campbell wrote thus:—

Had Gifford merely called Lamb a "fool" or a "madman," the epithet would have been mere "common form" as addressed by the Quarterly of those days to a wretch who was a friend of other wretches such as Hunt and Hazlitt; but he went far beyond such common form and used language of the utmost precision. Weber, wrote Gifford, "has polluted his pages with the blasphemies of a poor maniac, who it seems once published some detached scenes from the 'Broken Heart.' For this unfortunate creature every feeling mind will find an apology in his calamitous situation." This passage has no meaning at all if it is not to be taken as a positive statement that Lamb suffered from chronic mental derangement; yet Gifford when challenged confessed that when he wrote it he had known absolutely nothing of Lamb, except his name! It seems to have struck neither Gifford nor Southey that this was no excuse at all, and something a good deal worse than no excuse—that even as an explanation it was not such as an honourable man would have cared to offer. Gifford added a strongly-worded expression of his feeling of remorse on learning that his blows had fallen with cruel effect on a sore place. Both feeling and expression may have been sincere, for, under the circumstances, only a fiend would be incapable of remorse. But the excuse or explanation is open to much suspicion, owing to the fact (revealed in the Murray "Memoirs") that Lamb's friend Barron Field had been Gifford's collaborator in the preparation of the article in which the offending passage occurs. Field was well acquainted with Lamb's personal and family history, and while the article was in progress the collaborators could hardly have avoided some exchange of ideas on a subject which stirred one of them so deeply. Gifford may have said honestly enough, according to his lights, that only a maniac could have written the note quoted by Weber, a remark which would naturally draw from Field some confidences regarding Lamb's history. This is, of course, pure assumption, but it is vastly more reasonable and much more likely to be in substantial accordance with the facts than Gifford's statement that when he called Lamb a poor maniac, whose calamitous situation offered a sufficient apology for his blasphemies, he was imaginatively describing a man of whom he knew absolutely nothing, except that he was "a thoughtless scribbler." If, as seems only too possible, Gifford deliberately poisoned his darts, it is also probable that he did not realize what he was doing. It would be unfair to accept Hazlitt's picture of him as a true portrait; but Lamb's apology for Hazlitt himself applies with at least equal force to the first editor of the Quarterly . "He does bad actions without being a bad man." Perhaps it is too lenient, for though Gifford's attack on Lamb was undoubtedly one of the bad actions of his life, it was, after all, a matter of conduct. The apology, whether truthful or the opposite, reveals deep-seated corruption of principle if not of character.

Lamb's phrase, "Mr. Shoemaker Gifford," had reason for its existence. William Gifford (1756–1826) was apprenticed to a shoemaker in 1772. Lamb later repaid some of his debt in the sonnet "St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford," which appeared in The Examiner , October 3, 1819, and was reprinted in The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion" in 1822. Gifford, who was editor of the Quarterly on its establishment in 1809, held the post until his death, in 1826.

The original copy of Lamb's review of Wordsworth, Mr. John Murray informs me, no longer exists. I have collated the extracts with the first edition of the Excursion and have also corrected the Tasso.

Page 187,line 3 of essay. To be called the Recluse. Wordsworth never completed this scheme. A fragment called The Recluse , Book I., was published in 1888.

Page 188,line 7. Which Thomson so feelingly describes. This is the passage, from Thomson's Seasons , "Winter," 799–809:—

There, through the prison of unbounded wilds,

Barr'd by the hand of Nature from escape,

Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around

Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow;

And heavy-loaded groves; and solid floods,

That stretch'd, athwart the solitary vast,

Their icy horrors to the frozen main;

And cheerless towns far-distant, never bless'd,

Save when its annual course the caravan

Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,

With news of human-kind.

Page 200.On the Melancholy of Tailors.

The Champion , December 4, 1814. Works , 1818.

The editor of The Champion was then John Scott, afterwards editor of the London Magazine , which printed Lamb's best work. From a letter written by Lamb to Scott in 1814 (in the late Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Talks about Autographs , 1896) it seems that he was to contribute more or less regularly to The Champion . Lamb wrote:—

"Sir—Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I accede to your proposal most willingly.

"As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please call upon you for your part of the engagement (supposing I shall have performed mine) on the 1st of March next, and thence forward if it suit you quarterly—you will occasionally wink at Briskets and Veiny Pieces.

"Your Obt. Svt.,

C. Lamb.

This essay on "Tailors" is, however, the only piece by Lamb that can be identified, although probably many of the passages from old authors quoted in The Champion in Scott's time were contributed by Lamb. These might be the briskets and veiny pieces he refers to. On January 23, 1814, is "A Challenge" of the Learned Dog at Drury Lane which he might have written; but it is not interesting now. Later, after John Thelwall took over The Champion in 1818, Lamb contributed various epigrams, which will be found in Vol. IV. of the present edition.

Lamb seems to have sent the present essay to Wordsworth, whose reply we may imagine took the form of an account of certain tailors within his own experience that did not comply with Lamb's scription; since Lamb's answer to that letter is the one dated beginning, "Your experience about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton [Lamb's essay is signed 'Burton, Junior']" and so forth.