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

Page 435,line 20. What we hope E. M. will be in his. Moxon nobly fulfilled the wish. He published Tennyson's first book in 1833 and all that followed during his lifetime; he became Wordsworth's publisher in 1835; he published Browning's Sordello and Bells and Pomegranates ; and he commissioned fine editions of the old dramatists.

Table of Contents Table of Contents Volume 1 Volume 1 Table of Contents Volume 2 Volume 2 Table of Contents Volume 3 Volume 4 Volume 5 Volume 6

INTRODUCTION

ELIA

THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE

OXFORD IN THE VACATION

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO

THE TWO RACES OF MEN

NEW YEAR'S EVE

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST

A CHAPTER ON EARS

ALL FOOLS' DAY

THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER

VALENTINE'S DAY

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES

WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS

MY RELATIONS

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE

MODERN GALLANTRY

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE

GRACE BEFORE MEAT

MY FIRST PLAY

DREAM-CHILDREN

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS

A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY

ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN

THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA

PREFACE

BLAKESMOOR IN H——SHIRE

POOR RELATIONS

STAGE ILLUSION

TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON

ELLISTONIANA

DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING

THE OLD MARGATE HOY

THE CONVALESCENT

SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS

CAPTAIN JACKSON

THE SUPERANNUATED MAN

THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING

BARBARA S——

THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY

AMICUS REDIVIVUS

SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY

NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART

REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE

THE WEDDING

THE CHILD ANGEL

A DEATH-BED

OLD CHINA

POPULAR FALLACIES

APPENDIX

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

THE OLD ACTORS

THE OLD ACTORS

NOTES

THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA

APPENDIX

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This volume contains the work by which Charles Lamb is best known and upon which his fame will rest— Elia and The Last Essays of Elia . Although one essay is as early as 1811, and one is perhaps as late as 1832, the book represents the period between 1820 and 1826, when Lamb was between forty-five and fifty-one. This was the richest period of his literary life.

The text of the present volume is that of the first edition of each book— Elia , 1823, and The Last Essays of Elia , 1833. The principal differences between the essays as they were printed in the London Magazine and elsewhere, and as they were revised for book form by their author, are shown in the Notes, which, it should be pointed out, are much fuller in my large edition. The three-part essay on "The Old Actors" ( London Magazine , February, April, and October, 1822), from which Lamb prepared the three essays; "On Some of the Old Actors," "The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," and "The Acting of Munden," is printed in the Appendix as it first appeared. The absence of the "Confessions of a Drunkard" from this volume is due to the fact that Lamb did not include it in the first edition of The Last Essays of Elia . It was inserted later, in place of "A Death-Bed," on account of objections that were raised to that essay by the family of Randal Norris. The story is told in the notes to "A Death-Bed." The "Confessions of a Drunkard" will be found in Vol. I.

In Mr. Bedford's design for the cover of this edition certain Elian symbolism will be found. The upper coat of arms is that of Christ's Hospital, where Lamb was at school; the lower is that of the Inner Temple, where he was born and spent many years. The figures at the bells are those which once stood out from the façade of St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street, and are now in Lord Londesborough's garden in Regent's Park. Lamb shed tears when they were removed. The tricksy sprite and the candles (brought by Betty) need no explanatory words of mine.

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( From the 1st Edition, 1823 )

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Reader, in thy passage from the Bank—where thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself)—to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat northerly—didst thou never observe a melancholy looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the left—where Threadneedle-street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out—a desolation something like Balclutha's. [1]

This was once a house of trade—a centre of busy interests. The throng of merchants was here—the quick pulse of gain—and here some forms of business are still kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately porticos; imposing staircases; offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces—deserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; the still more sacred interiors of court and committee rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door-keepers—directors seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend,) at long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands long since dry;—the oaken wainscots hung with pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of queen Anne, and the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty;—huge charts, which subsequent discoveries have antiquated;—dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams—and soundings of the Bay of Panama!—The long passages hung with buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, whose substance might defy any, short of the last, conflagration;—with vast ranges of cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces of eight once lay, an "unsunned heap," for Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart withal—long since dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the breaking of that famous BUBBLE.—

Such is the SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. At least, such it was forty years ago, when I knew it—a magnificent relic! What alterations may have been made in it since, I have had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take for granted, has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the face of the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this time stagnates upon it. The moths, that were then battening upon its obsolete ledgers and day-books, have rested from their depredations, but other light generations have succeeded, making fine fretwork among their single and double entries. Layers of dust have accumulated (a superfoetation of dirt!) upon the old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, save by some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign; or, with less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the mysteries of that tremendous HOAX, whose extent the petty peculators of our day look back upon with the same expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modern conspiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's superhuman plot.

Peace to the manes of the BUBBLE! Silence and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial!