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

Nott, for example, lifted the whole of the passage in praise of "Fair Virtue or the Mistress of Philarete," beginning "There is a singular beauty," and ending with "probationary courtship," as described above by Mr. Swinburne, and signed it "Editor." He also annexed the reminiscence of the Devil Tavern, making it "within the memory of the Editor," and adapted the criticisms beginning "Wither's prison notes" (fifth paragraph of the present essay) and "Wither's motto" (first paragraph) to his own uses. As a specimen of Nott's treatment of his predecessor's notes we may take that on long lines, which stands as a note at the end of the essay. This is Nott's version:—

If thy verse do bravely tower. A long line is a line we are long in repeating . Mark the time which it takes to repeat these lines properly! What slow movements could Alexandrines express more than these? " As she makes wing, she gets power. " One makes a foot of every syllable. Wither was certainly a perfect master of this species of verse.

There is, however, enough genuine un-negatived Lamb (as he would say) remaining to make this edition of Wither a very desirable possession of all collectors of Lamb.

What is even more surprising than Lamb's silence on the subject—which may easily be accounted for by the incomplete state of his correspondence—is the silence of Gutch himself. In 1847, when he told the story of Wither, he made no reference whatever to any use of Lamb's notes beyond Lamb's own, nor even mentioned the fact that a fuller edition of Wither was published by himself, although he refers his readers to two other editions, one earlier and one later, and remarks on the poet's growing popularity. He quotes, however, a long passage from Lamb's 1818 essay, remarking that it was based upon the notes made in the original copy of Wither.

Gutch was wrong in stating that it was through him that Lamb became acquainted with Wither. It was only to Philarete that Gutch introduced him. Lamb was first drawn to Wither by Coleridge, as he admits in the letter of July 1, 1796. In 1798 he wrote to Southey on the subject: "Quarles is a wittier writer, but Wither lays more hold of the heart. … I always love Wither … the extract from Shepherd's Hunting places him in a starry height far above Quarles."

This note is already so long that I hesitate to add to it by quoting from Wither the passages referred to by Lamb. They are, moreover, easily identifiable.

George Wither, or Withers, was born in 1588. His Abuses Stript and Whipt was published in 1613; his Shepherd's Hunting , written in part while its author was in the Marshalsea prison for his plain speaking in Abuses , was published in 1615; Wither's Motto in 1621, and Fair Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete , in 1622, but it may have been composed long before. Wither died in 1667. His light remained under a bushel for many years. The Percy Reliques , 1765, began the revival of Wither's fame; George Ellis's Specimens , 1805, continued it; and then came Lamb, and Gutch, and Southey, and it was assured.

Page 211,line 10. No Shaftesbury, no Villiers, no Wharton. Referring to the victims of Dryden and Pope's satires—the first Earl of Shaftesbury in Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel," "Albion and Albanius" and "The Medal;" Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, in "Absalom and Achitophel" and in Pope's third "Moral Essay;" Philip, Duke of Wharton in Pope's "Epistle to Sir Richard Temple."

Page 211,line 23. Where Faithful is arraigned. Faithful was accused of railing also upon Lord Desire of Vain Glory, my old Lord Lechery and Sir Having Greedy.

Page 215.Five Dramatic Criticisms.

None of these were reprinted by Lamb.

During the year 1819 Leigh Hunt's Examiner gave Lamb his first encouragement to indulge in those raptures upon comedians which no one has expressed so well as he. The notices that follow preceded his Elia essays on the "Old Actors" by some three years, although, as is pointed out in the notes to that work, the essay on the "Acting of Munden" first saw the light in The Examiner of November 7 and 8, 1819, as one of the present series. The central figure, however, of the five pieces here collected together is Miss Kelly, Lamb's friend and favourite actress of his middle and later life, whom he began to praise in 1813 (see "The New Acting," page 177), and in praising whom he never tired.

Lamb's sweet allusion to Miss Kelly's "divine plain face" is well known. It may be interesting, to add Oxberry's description: "Her face is round and pleasing, though not handsome; her eyes are light blue; her forehead is peculiarly low … her smile is peculiarly beautiful and may be said to completely sun her countenance."

In The Examiner for December 20, 1818, after Leigh Hunt's criticism of Kenney's comedy "A Word for the Ladies" is the following paragraph. Leigh Hunt's criticism is signed: this is not, nor is it joined to the article. There is, I think, good reason to believe it to be Lamb's:—

"It was not without a feeling of pain, that we observed Miss Kelly among the spectators on the first night of the new comedy. What does she do before the curtain? She should have been on the stage. With such youth, such talents—

Those powers of pleasing, with that will to please,

it is too much that she should be forgotten, discarded, laid aside like an old fashion. It really is not yet the season for her 'among the wastes of time to go.' Is it Mr. Stephen Kemble, or the Sub-Committee; or what heavy body is it, which interposes itself between us and this light of the stage?"

With these Eulogies of Miss Kelly is associated one of the most interesting days in Lamb's life, as the note on page 487 tells.

Page 215.I.—Mrs. Gould (Miss Burrell) in "Don Giovanni in London."

The Examiner , November 22, 1818. Signed †.

This criticism we know to be Lamb's upon Talfourd's testimony. He writes:—

Miss Burrell, a lady of more limited powers, but with a frank and noble style, was discovered by Lamb on one of the visits which he paid, on the invitation of his old friend Elliston, to the Olympic, where the lady performed the hero of that happy parody of Moncrieff's, "Giovanni in London." To her Lamb devoted a little article, which he sent to The Examiner [a portion of the article is quoted]. Miss Burrell soon married a person named Gold, and disappeared from the stage.

Lamb pasted the article in his Album or Commonplace Book accompanied by a portrait of the actress. Writing to Mrs. Wordsworth in February, 1818, he speaks of his power, during business, of reserving "in some corner of my mind 'some darling thoughts, all my own,'—faint memory of some passage in a book, or the tone of an absent friend's voice—a snatch of Miss Burrell's singing, or a gleam of Fanny Kelly's divine plain face."

Page 215,line 2 of essay. A burletta founded, etc. This was "Rochester; or, King Charles the Second's Merry Days," by William Thomas Moncrieff (1794–1857).

Page 215,line 8 of essay. Elliston and Mrs. Edwin. Robert William Elliston (1774–1831), a famous comedian, and the lessee of the Olympic at that date, of whom Lamb wrote with enthusiasm in his Elia essays, "To the Shade of Elliston," and "Ellistoniana." Elizabeth Rebecca Edwin (1771?-1854) was the wife of John Edwin the younger, a favourite actress in Mrs. Jordan's parts.

Page 215,line 11 of essay. " Don Giovanni. " "Giovanni in London; or, The Libertine Reclaimed," 1817, also by Moncrieff—the play in which Madame Vestris made so great a hit a year or so later.

Page 216,line 14 from foot. We have seen Mrs. Jordan. Mrs. Jordan had left the London stage in 1815.