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

Page 232,line 8 from foot. A merry Captain. Captain (afterwards Rear-Admiral) James Burney (1750–1821), Lamb's friend, who sailed with Cook on two voyages. Lamb told Mrs. Shelley of the Captain's pun in much the same words; but the pun itself we do not know.

Page 233,line 16. Jobson, etc. These characters are in "The Devil to Pay," by Charles Coffey, 1731.

Page 233,line 26. Braham or Stephens. John Braham, the tenor; Miss Stephens made her first appearance at Drury Lane, as Polly in "The Beggar's Opera," in 1798.

Page 233,line 12 from foot. The first. … The first poem was entitled "Botany Bay Flowers."

Page 234." The Kangaroo. " Writing to Barron Field in 1820 Lamb says: "We received your 'Australian First-Fruits,' of which I shall say nothing here, but refer you to **** of 'The Examiner,' who speaks our mind on all public subjects. I can only assure you that both Coleridge and Wordsworth … were hugely taken with your Kangaroo." The poem is here corrected from the author's text.

Page 235.IV.—Keats' "Lamia."

The New Times , July 19, 1820. This is the article referred to by Cowden Clarke in his Recollections of Writers , 1878: "Upon the publication of the last volume of poems [ Lamia , etc.] Charles Lamb wrote one of his finely appreciative and cordial critiques in the Morning Chronicle ." By a slip of memory Clarke gave the wrong paper. Lamb wrote in the Morning Chronicle occasionally (his sonnet to Sarah Burney appeared in it as near to the date in question as July 13, 1820), but it was in The New Times that he reviewed Keats. The New Times was founded by John (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart (1773–1856), Lamb and Coleridge's friend, and the brother-in-law of Hazlitt.

Two days after the appearance of Lamb's review—on July 21, 1820— The New Times printed some further extracts from the book, which presumably had been crowded out of the article.

There is so little doubt in my own mind that this is Lamb's review that I have placed it in the body of this book and not in the Appendix. The internal evidence is very strong, particularly at the end, and in the use of such phrases as "joint strengths" and "younger impressibilities." But there is external evidence too. Leigh Hunt, writing of Keats, in his Lord Byron and his Contemporaries , 1828, says:—

I remember Charles Lamb's delight and admiration on reading this work [ Lamia ]; how pleased he was with the designation of Mercury as the "star of Lethe" (rising, as it were, and glittering, as he came upon that pale region); with the fine daring anticipation in that passage of the second poem—

"So the two brothers and their murdered man , Rode past fair Florence;"

and with the description, at once delicate and gorgeous, of Agnes [ i.e. , Madeline], praying beneath the painted window.

Lamb did not know Keats well. He had met him only a few times, the historic occasion being the dinner at Haydon's, in December, 1817, when the Comptroller of Stamps was present. But he admired his work (he told Crabb Robinson he considered it next to Wordsworth's), and he hated the treatment that Keats received from certain critics. Keats, by the way, mentions meeting Lamb at Novello's and having to endure some wretched puns.

Page 239.Sir Thomas More.

The Indicator , December 20, 1820. Signed ****. Leigh Hunt introduced the article in these words:—

The author of the Table-Talk in our last [see note on p. 466] has obliged us with the following pungent morsels of Sir Thomas More—devils, we may call them. Brantome, noticing the oaths of some eminent Christian manslayers, and informing us that "the good man, Monsieur de la Roche du Maine, swore by 'God's head full of relics,'" adds in a parenthesis—"Where the devil did he get that?"—"Ou diable avoit-il trouvè celuy-la?" We may apply this vivacious mode of questioning, with a more critical propriety, to those eminent Christian opposers of reformation, past, present, and to come, and ask them, where the devil they get a notion that they are on the side of charity? It is possible to hate for the sake of a loving theory; but it is a dangerous piece of self-flattery, and more likely to spring up in hating than loving minds. If it partakes of the reverent privileges of sorrow in those who are unsuccessful or oppressed, it is odious in those who are flourishing, and we are afraid is nothing but sheer dogmatism and tyranny even in men as great as Sir Thomas More.

Further proof of Lamb's authorship is contained in the circumstance that the passages here quoted are copied in one of his Commonplace Books.

Page 246.The Confessions of H. F. V. H. Delamore, Esq.

London Magazine , April, 1821. First reprinted in Mr. Dobell's Sidelights on Charles Lamb , 1903.

Lamb's "Chapter on Ears" had appeared in the March number, containing the sentence, "I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the compass of my destiny, that I ever should be." The main confession aroused by this statement, although it is hedged about by a host of inventions, seems to be perfectly true: Lamb did on one occasion sit in the stocks. Our evidence, which, fortified by this little article (a discovery of Mr. Bertram Dobell's), is very strong, is to be found on the fly-leaf of the annotated copy of Wither described above. On this fly-leaf Pulham has recorded that during a country walk on a certain Sunday Lamb was set in the stocks for brawling while service was in progress. According to Mr. Delamore, the indignity was suffered at Barnet, and it was probably, if what he says about the short duration of the punishment be true, nearly as much a joke on the part of the authorities as on the part of Lamb. I cannot find any record of the incident in the Barnet archives, but the stocks are still standing, on the outskirts of Barnet, on Hadley Green.

Additional proof that Lamb wrote these "Confessions" is to be found in the little note inserted in the following (May) number of the London Magazine , under the "Lion's Head":—

" Spes may be assured, that the fact related in the paper in our last Number, signed 'Delamore,' and dated 'Sackville Street,' is genuine, with the exception of the name and date. It is the writer's own story.

"——quæque ipse mìserrima vidi,

Et quorum pars magna fui.

"* * * *."

Four stars was, of course, one of Lamb's commonest non- Elia signatures ( see note on page 464). The quotation is from Aeneid , II., 5. "The most unhappy scenes which I beheld, and in which I played a leading part."

Page 247,line 15. * * * * * * * * * * *. In the stocks.

Page 247,line 19. O Clarencieux! O Norroy! The two provincial kings-at-arms, Clarencieux, after the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III., whose office is south of the Trent, and Norroy (North-roy), whose office is north of the Trent.

Page 248,line 4. Barnet … Red Rose. Referring to the battle of Barnet on April 14, 1471, when Edward IV. defeated and slew the Earl of Warwick, and practically destroyed the Lancastrian, or Red Rose, cause, finally doing so at the battle of Tewkesbury a little later.

Page 248.The Gentle Giantess.

London Magazine , December, 1822. Not reprinted by Lamb.

We find the germ of this essay in a letter from Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth, in 1821, when she was staying with her uncle, Christopher Wordsworth, the Master of Trinity:—

"Ask any body you meet, who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll hold you a wager they'll say Mrs. Smith. She broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens, one on the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a litigation between the societies as to repairing it. In warm weather she retires into an ice-cellar (literally!), and dates the returns of the years from a hot Thursday some 20 years back. She sits in a room with opposite doors and windows, to let in a thorough draft, which gives her slenderer friends toothaches. She is to be seen in the market every morning, at 10 cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge Poulterers are not sufficiently careful to stump."