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

Page 427,at the end. The Salutation. Lamb was probably wrong in this theory. According to Larwood and Hotten's History of Signboards , 1867, the sign originally represented an angel saluting the Virgin Mary. In the time of the Commonwealth this was changed to a soldier saluting a civilian; and later it became the salutation of two citizens: the form of the old sign of the Salutation in Newgate Street, where Coleridge lived a while, and where Lamb and he talked into the night over egg-hot. Ben Jonson's Salutation, referred to in "Bartholomew Fair," was in Billingsgate. Salutation and Cat was a blend of two signs.

Page 427.The Choice of a Grave. London Magazine , January, 1823. Not signed.

There is a passage in the Elia essay on "Distant Correspondents," concerning Lord Camelford's fantastic instructions concerning the burial of his body, which bears upon this same subject.

Page 428.Wilks. London Magazine , January, 1823. Not signed.

John Wilkes (1727–1797) of The North Briton . Barry Cornwall writes in his Memoir of Lamb: "I remember that, at one of the monthly magazine dinners, when John Wilkes was too roughly handled, Lamb quoted the story (not generally known) of his replying, when the blackbirds were reported to have stolen all his cherries, 'Poor birds, they are welcome.' He said that those impulsive words showed the inner nature of the man more truly that all his political speeches."

Page 428.Milton. London Magazine , February, 1823. Not signed.

Page 428,foot. Mr. Todd. Henry John Todd (1763–1845), whose edition of Milton in six volumes, for long the standard, was first published in 1801. The lines in question are crossed out in the original manuscript of Comus , now preserved at Trinity College, Cambridge, and are not printed in ordinary editions of Milton. Todd was the first to print them, in his edition of Comus , 1798.

Page 429.A Check to Human Pride. London Magazine , February, 1823. Not signed.

Page 429.Review of Dibdin's "Comic Tales."

The New Times , January 27, 1825.

I have no doubt that Lamb wrote this review, both from internal evidence and from what we know, through the medium of his Letters , of his feelings towards the book and its author; and it has been retained in the appendix instead of taking its place in the text proper through an oversight. In a letter to John Bates Dibdin, the author's son, dated January 11, 1825, Lamb writes:

"Pray return my best thanks to your father for his little volume. It is like all of his I have seen, spirited, good humoured, and redolent of the wit and humour of a century ago. He should have lived with Gay and his set. The Chessiad is so clever that I relish'd it in spite of my total ignorance of the game. I have it not before me, but I remember a capital simile of the Charwoman letting in her Watchman husband, which is better than Butler's Lobster turned to Red. Hazard is a grand Character Jove in his Chair."

Butler's simile, in Hudibras , runs:—

The sun had long since in the lap

Of Thetis taken out his nap,

And, like a lobster boiled, the morn

From black to red began to turn.

Charles Dibdin the younger (1768–1853) was the author of a number of plays and songs and also of a History of the London Theatres , 1826. The full title of the Comic Tales was Comic Tales and Lyrical Fancies; including The Chessiad, a mock-heroic, in five cantos; and The Wreath of Love, in four cantos , 1825.

The adaptation from Milton in the first sentence is very Elian. See Paradise Lost , VII., 21–23.

Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound

Within the visible diurnal spheare,

Standing on earth, not rapt above the Pole.

Page 430,line 13. Hoyle … Phillidor. Meaning more at home in whist than in chess. From Edmond Hoyle (1672–1769), author of A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist , 1742, and François André Philidor (1726–1795), the composer and an authority upon chess. Lamb was, of course, a great whist player.

Page 430,line 16. Swift and Gay. Swift wrote a short but admirably observant city poem, "A Description of the Morning." Gay's Trivia; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London , would be the work in Lamb's mind.

Page 430.Dog Days.

Every-Day Book , July 14, 1825.

This humane letter is considered by Mr. J. A. Rutter, a profound student of Lamb, to be probably Lamb's work, a protest against Hone's remark in the Every-Day Book that dogs would have to be exterminated. There certainly is no difficulty in conceiving it to be from Lamb's pen, although there is no overwhelming internal evidence. Writing to Hone on July 25, 1825, Lamb offers further hints as to the "Dog Days" for the Every-Day Book .

Lamb's interest in dogs became more personal after Hood gave him Dash for a companion. In the letter to P. G. Patmore, dated from Enfield, September, 1827, he speaks of mad dogs:—

"All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people, to those who are not used to them. Try him [Dash] with hot water: if he won't lick it up it is a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally, or perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased—for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep him for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time; but that was in Hyder-Ally's time."

Page 431.Hood's "Progress of Cant."

There can be, I think, very little doubt that Lamb was the author of this criticism of Hood's picture "The Progress of Cant" in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1826. Lamb, we know, praised the detail of the Beadle, reproduced in Hone's Every-Day Book , under the title "An Appearance of the Season" (see page 360).

Page 432.Mr. Ephraim Wagstaff.

In The Table Book , 1827, beginning on column 185, Vol. II., is this humorous story which there is some reason to believe is by Lamb. The late Mr. Dykes Campbell had no doubt whatever, the proof residing not only in internal evidence but in the rhymed story of "Dick Strype," which we may safely assume Lamb to have written. The subject of the two stories, prose and verse, is the same, and the style of Ephraim Wagstaff is not unlike that of Juke Judkins. "Dick Strype" is printed in Vol. IV. of this edition.

Page 435.Review Of Moxon's Sonnets.

The Athenæum , April 13, 1833. Not signed.

Edward Moxon (1801–1858), the publisher, and Lamb's protégé and adopted son-in-law, was himself a poet in a modest way. His first book, The Prospect , 1826, he dedicated to Samuel Rogers, another patron; Christmas followed in 1829, dedicated to Lamb; and in 1830 his first collection of Sonnets was issued. In the second series, 1835, are some touching lines on Lamb.

I have no proof that The Athenæum review is by Lamb, but I believe it to be so. Attention was first drawn to it by Mr. J. A. Rutter in Notes and Queries , December 22, 1900, who remarked upon the phrase "integrity above his avocation" as being perhaps the only instance that exists of unconscious humour on the part of Charles Lamb.

Page 435,line 12. Humphrey Mosely. Humphrey Moseley (d. 1661), the bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard and publisher of the first collected edition of Milton, 1645, and also of Waller, Crashaw, Donne, Vaughan. He prefixed to the Milton the words: "It is the love I have to our own language that hath made me diligent to collect and set forth such pieces, both in prose and verse, as may renew the wonted honour and esteem of our English tongue."