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

In connection with this theory it may be remarked that it was an old belief that during pregnancy a woman's eyes became blue. Webster, in the "Duchess of Malfi," makes Bosola say of the Duchess:—

The fins of her eyelids look most teeming blue.

I do not know of any editor of Shakespeare who has adopted Lamb's suggestion.

Page 288.Original Letter of James Thomson.

London Magazine , November, 1824. Not reprinted by Lamb.

This letter of James Thomson is printed in this edition, because Lamb was sufficiently interested in it to copy it out; but it is believed to be a genuine work of the author of the Seasons , and not, as has been stated, a hoax of Lamb's. In the memoir of Thomson by Sir Harris Nicolas (revised by Peter Cunningham), prefixed to the Aldine edition of Thomson's poems, the letter will be found in its right place. It is addressed to Dr. Cramston, September, 1725.

Page 292.Biographical Memoir of Mr. Liston.

London Magazine , January, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

This article was not signed, but we know it to be Lamb's from a reference in a letter to Miss Hutchinson, of January 20, 1825:—

"But did you read the 'Memoir of Liston'? and did you guess whose it was? Of all the Lies I ever put off, I value this most. It is from top to toe, every paragraph, Pure Invention; and has passed for Gospel, has been republished in newspapers, and in the penny play-bills of the Night, as an authentic Account. I shall certainly go to the Naughty Man some day for my Fibbings."

Writing to Barton on February 10, 1825, Lamb alludes to it again, remarking, "A life more improbable for him [Liston] to have lived would not be easily invented."

To come from Lamb to facts—according to the best accounts that we have, the father of John Liston (1776?-1846) was either a watchmaker, or a subordinate official in the Custom House. He went to Soho School, afterwards became an usher at Dr. Burney's school at Gosport, and in 1799 was a master at the Grammar School of St. Martin's in Castle Street, Leicester Square. His first appearance on the stage proper was at Weymouth, where he failed utterly. Later he joined a touring company in the north of England as a serious actor, and again failed. At last, however, a manager induced him to take up comic old men's and bumpkins' parts, and his real talents were at once discovered. Thereafter he succeeded steadily, until his salary was larger than that paid to any other comedian of his time. His greatest part was Paul Pry in John Poole's play of that name, which was produced in September in the year of Lamb's essay. Liston left the stage in 1837. He married a Miss Tyrer, a favourite actress in burlesque. Liston's own tendency to punning and practical jokes must have led him to look upon this spurious biography with much favour.

Mrs. Cowden Clarke in her autobiography, My Long Life , says that she often met Mr. and Mrs. Liston in the Lambs' rooms in Great Russell Street.

It is interesting, in connection with Lamb's joke, to know that Liston's library contained a number of works of biblical criticism.

Page 299.A Vision of Horns.

London Magazine , January, 1825. Signed "Elia." Not reprinted by Lamb.

I had some little doubt as to whether or no to include in the present edition this fantasia on a theme no longer acceptable, since Lamb himself says he did not care to be associated with it. "The Horns is in poor taste [he wrote to Miss Hutchinson], resembling the most laboured papers in the Spectator. I had sign'd it 'Jack Horner:' but Taylor and Hessey said, it would be thought an offensive article, unless I put my known signature to it; and wrung from me my slow consent." And again, to Barton: "I am vexed that ugly paper should have offended. I kept it as clear from objectionable phrases as possible, and it was Hessey's fault, and my weakness, that it did not appear anonymous. No more of it, for God's sake."

Lamb's objections being, however, lodged rather against the publicity of the essay's paternity than the essay itself, and the aim of the present edition being to be as complete as possible, the essay stands. Moreover it has a peculiar interest as being to a large extent an experiment in what we might call Congrevism: forming a whimsical appendix to the Elia essay on the "Artificial Comedy," wherein Lamb urges upon the readers of the old licentious plays the value of dissociating them in their minds altogether from real life; looking upon them purely as fanciful dramas of an impossible society; and thus being able to enjoy their wit and high spirits without shock to the moral sensibilities. In his "Vision of Horns" Lamb seems to me to be himself dramatising this genial and reasonable view. He has carried out Congreve's method to a still higher power, and imagined a land peopled wholly by cuckolds—a reductio ad absurdum of the old English and modern French comedy theory of society. Rightly the essay should follow that on the "Artificial Comedy" as an ironical postscript.

Page 304.The Illustrious Defunct.

New Monthly Magazine , January, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

The footnote with which the article properly begins refers to the last effort, then in preparation, which was made to add to the life of the State Lottery. Actually, the last State Lottery in England was held on October 18, 1826.

Page 305,line 4. Devout Chancellors of the Exchequer . The lottery produced between £250,000 and £300,000 per annum. Its death was decreed by a Parliamentary Committee which had inquired into its merits and demerits as a means of replenishing the national coffers.

Page 305,line 9. Sorrowing contractors . It was customary to apportion the sale of lottery tickets among speculators, who sold them again, if possible at a profit. The most prominent of these at the last was T. Bish (see below).

Page 305,line 28. The Blue-coat Boy . It was the habit, which began about 1694, for a dozen boys from Christ's Hospital to be requisitioned by the lottery controllers, from whom two were selected to draw the tickets from the wheels in Coopers' Hall. An old print, given in the Rev. E. H. Pearce's Annals of Christ's Hospital , 1901, shows them at their work.

Page 309,line 3. The art and mystery of puffing . An interesting collection of lottery puffs will be found in Hone's Every-Day Book , Vol. II., November 15. The arch-professor of puffery in the lottery's later days was T. Bish, of Cornhill and Charing Cross, whose blandishments to the public were often presented in ingenious verse. We know from one of Mary Lamb's letters that Lamb (in addition to speculating in lottery tickets) had himself written lottery puffs twenty years earlier than this essay; but I have not been able confidently to trace any to his hand.

Page 310.Unitarian Protests.

London Magazine , February, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

The marriages of Unitarian and other Dissenters had to be solemnised in English established churches until the end of 1836. Lord Hardwicke's Act of 1753, in force, with certain modifications, at the time of Lamb's essay, provided that all marriages not performed in church, with due publication of banns and licence duly granted, were null and void. It was customary, after the ceremony in an established church, to lodge a protest against the terms of the service. Hence Lamb's scathing strictures. Lamb was himself nominally a Unitarian, as were many of his friends. In 1796, as he told Coleridge, he adored Priestley almost to the point of sin. But in later life Lamb dropped away from all sects, although he says, in a late letter, that he is as old a "one-goddite" as George Dyer himself. Hood, who knew Lamb well, and wrote of him as lovingly as any one, remarked in his "Literary Reminiscences" in Hood's Own , probably with truth:—