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

For soon as I've secur'd my rival's life,

All stain'd i' th' husband's blood, I'll force the wife.—

She stabs herself rather than be dishonoured; and it is Nigridius who mangles, gashes, racks and distorts the little son of Coriolanus.

Page 377,line 3. Shadwell. The version of "Timon of Athens," by Thomas Shadwell (1642?-1692), Poet Laureate, is "The History of Timon of Athens, the Man Hater," produced at the Dorset Garden Theatre in 1678. Timon's last words are:—

Timon. I charge thee live, Evandra. Thou lov'st me not if thou wilt not obey me; Thou only! Dearest! Kind! Constant thing on earth, Farewell.

Dies.

Evandra. He's gone! he's gone! would all the world were so. I must make haste, or I shall not o'ertake Him in his flight. Timon, I come, stay for me, Farewell, base world.

Stabs herself. Dies.

Evandra was played not only by Mrs. Betterton, but also by Mrs. Bracegirdle.

Page 377,foot. " Macbeth. " The new version of "Macbeth" was probably by Sir William Davenant (1606–1668). There is an edition as early as 1673.

Macduff's chariot is greatly insisted upon. His servant remarks in the same scene:—

This is the entrance o' th' Heath; and here

He order'd me to attend him with the chariot,

and a little later, to Macduff's question, "Where are our children?" Lady Macduff replies:—

They are securely sleeping in the chariot.

Lady Macbeth's final repentance leads her to address her husband thus:—

You may in peace resign the ill-gain'd crown.

Why should you labour still to be unjust?

There has been too much blood already spilt.

Make not the subjects victims to your guilt.

resign your kingdom now,

And with your crown put off your guilt.

Page 379.Saturday Night.

The Gem , 1830. Signed "Nepos." Not reprinted by Lamb.

This little essay was written to accompany an engraving of Wilkie's picture with the same title. Whether Lamb's grandmother was as he has recorded we cannot know; his reminiscences of her in "Dream Children" and "The Grandam" are very different. That was Mrs. Field; Lamb, I think, never knew a paternal grandmother. The recollection of the fly in the eye seems to have an authentic air.

Page 380,line 9. Burking. After Burke and Hare, who suffocated their victims and sold them to the hospitals for dissection. Burke was executed in January, 1829.

Page 381.Estimate of De Foe's Secondary Novels.

This criticism was written for Wilson's Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel de Foe , 1830. It will be found on page 636 of the third of Wilson's volumes. Lamb never reprinted it.

Walter Wilson (1781–1847) had been a bookseller, and a fellow-clerk of Lamb's at the India House. Later he entered at the Inner Temple. In addition to his work on De Foe, he wrote The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches in London, Westminster and Southwark, including the Lives of their Ministers , a work in four volumes. Lamb, as his Letters tell us, helped Wilson with advice concerning De Foe. He also seems to have wished the "Ode to the Treadmill" to be included; but it was not.

This criticism of the Secondary Novels is usually preceded in the editions of Lamb's works by the following remarks contained in Lamb's letter to Wilson of December 16, 1822, which Wilson printed as page 428 of Vol. III., but they do not rightly form part of the article, which Lamb wrote seven years later, in 1829. I quote from the original MS. in the Bodleian:—

"In the appearance of truth , in all the incidents and conversations that occur in them, they exceed any works of fiction I am acquainted with. It is perfect illusion. The Author never appears in these self-narratives (for so they ought to be called, or rather Autobiographies) but the Narrator chains us down to an implicit belief in every thing he says. There is all the minute detail of a log-book in it. Dates are painfully pressed upon the memory. Facts are repeated over and over in varying phrases, till you cannot chuse but believe them. It is like reading Evidence given in a Court of Justice. So anxious the storyteller seems that the truth should be clearly comprehended, that when he has told us a matter of fact, or a motive, in a line or two farther down he repeats it, with his favourite figure of speech, 'I say,' so and so—though he had made it abundantly plain before. This is in imitation of the common people's way of speaking, or rather of the way in which they are addressed by a master or mistress, who wishes to impress something upon their memories, and has a wonderful effect upon matter-of-fact readers. Indeed it is to such principally that he writes. His style is elsewhere beautiful, but plain and homely . Robinson Crusoe is delightful to all ranks and classes, but it is easy to see that it is written in phraseology peculiarly adapted to the lower conditions of readers; hence it is an especial favourite with sea-faring men, poor boys, servant-maids, &c. His novels are capital kitchen-reading, while they are worthy from their deep interest to find a shelf in the Libraries of the wealthiest, and the most learned. His passion for matter-of-fact narrative , sometimes betrayed him into a long relation of common incidents which might happen to any man, and have no interest but the intense appearance of truth in them, to recommend them. The whole latter half, or two thirds, of Colonel Jack is of this description. The beginning of Colonel Jack is the most affecting natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn. His losing the stolen money in the hollow of a tree, and finding it again when in despair, and then being in equal distress at not knowing how to dispose of it, and several similar touches in the early history of the Colonel, evince a deep knowledge of human nature; and, putting out of question the superior romantic interest of the latter, in my mind very much exceed Crusoe. Roxana (1st edition) is the next in Interest, though he left out the best part of it [in] subsequent Editions, from a foolish hyper criticism of his friend Southerne. But Moll Flanders, the account of the Plague, &c. &c. are all of one family, and have the same stamp of character."

One point in this 1822 criticism requires notice—that touching the first edition of Roxana . According to a letter from Lamb to Wilson, Lamb considered the curiosity of Roxana's daughter to be the best part of Roxana . But the episode of the daughter does not come into the first edition of the book (1724) at all, and is thought by some critics not to be De Foe's. Mr. Aitken, De Foe's latest editor, doubts the Southerne story altogether. In any case, Lamb was wrong in recommending the first edition for its completeness, for the later ones are fuller. It was upon the episode of Susannah that Godwin based his play, "Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote a prologue in praise of De Foe. Godwin's preface stated that the only edition of Roxana then available—in 1807—in which to find the full story of Roxana's daughter, was that of 1745. Godwin turned the avenging daughter into a son.

Writing to Wilson on the publication of his Memoirs of De Foe , Lamb says: "The two papers of mine will puzzle the reader, being so akin. Odd, that never keeping a scrap of my own letters, with some fifteen years' interval I should have nearly said the same things." (According to the dating of the letters the interval was not fifteen years, but seven.) Lamb also remarks, "De Foe was always my darling."

For a further criticism of De Foe see "The Good Clerk," page 148 of the present volume, and the notes to the same.

In introducing the criticism of the Secondary Novels, Wilson wrote:—

It may call for some surprise that De Foe should be so little known as a novelist, beyond the range of "Robinson Crusoe." To recall the attention of the public to his other fictions, the present writer is happy to enrich his work with some original remarks upon his secondary novels by his early friend, Charles Lamb, whose competency to form an accurate judgment upon the subject, no one will doubt who is acquainted with his genius.