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

To assist our notions still further, let us suppose some lucky dog of a reporter, who had escaped by miracle upon some plank of St. Stephen's benches, and came plump upon the roof of the adjacent Abbey, from whence descending, at some neighbouring coffee-house, first wiping his clothes and calling for a glass of lemonade, he sits down and reports what he had heard and seen (quorum pars magna fuit) for the Morning Post or the Courier —we can scarcely imagine him describing the event in any other words but some such as these:—

"A Motion was put and carried, That this House do adjourn : That the Speaker do quit the Chair . The House ROSE amid clamours for Order."

In some such way the event might most technically have been conveyed to the public. But a poetical mind, not content with this dry method of narration, cannot help pursuing the effects of this tremendous blowing up, this adjournment in the air sine die . It sees the benches mount—the Chair first, and then the benches, and first the Treasury Bench, hurried up in this nitrous explosion; the Members, as it were, pairing off; Whigs and Tories taking their friendly apotheosis together, (as they did their sandwiches below in Bellamy's room). Fancy, in her flight, keeps pace with the aspiring legislators, she sees the awful seat of order mounting till it becomes finally fixed a constellation, next to Cassiopeia's chair—the wig of him that sat in it taking its place near Berenice's curls. St. Peter, at Heaven's wicket—no, not St. Peter—St. Stephen, with open arms, receives his own.——

While Fancy beholds these celestial appropriations, Reason, no less pleased, discerns the mighty benefit which so complete a renovation must produce below. Let the most determined foe to corruption, the most thorough-paced redresser of abuses, try to conceive a more absolute purification of the House than this was calculated to produce;—why, Pride's Purge was nothing to it;—the whole borough-mongering system would have been got rid of, fairly exploded ;—with it, the senseless distinctions of party must have disappeared; faction must have vanished; corruption have expired in air. From Hundred, Tything, and Wapentake, some new Alfred would have convened, in all its purity, the primitive Wittenagemot—fixed upon a basis of property or population, permanent as the poles——

From this dream of universal restitution, Reason and Fancy with difficulty awake to view the real state of things. But, blessed be Heaven, St. Stephen's walls are yet standing, all her seats firmly secured; nay, some have doubted (since the Septennial Act) whether gunpowder itself, or any thing short of a Committee above stairs , would be able to shake any one member from his seat;—that great and final improvement to the Abbey, which is all that seems wanting—the removing Westminster-hall and its appendages, and letting in the view of the Thames—must not be expected in our days. Dismissing, therefore, all such speculations as mere tales of a tub, it is the duty of every honest Englishman to endeavour, by means less wholesale than Guido's, to ameliorate, without extinguishing, Parliaments; to hold the lantern to the dark places of corruption; to apply the match to the rotten parts of the system only; and to wrap himself up, not in the muffling mantle of conspiracy, but in the warm, honest cloak of integrity and patriotic intention.

Elia.

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On a Passage in "The Tempest"

(1823)

As long as I can remember the play of the Tempest, one passage in it has always set me upon wondering. It has puzzled me beyond measure. In vain I strove to find the meaning of it. I seemed doomed to cherish infinite hopeless curiosity.

It is where Prospero, relating the banishment of Sycorax from Argier, adds—

—For one thing that she did

They would not take her life—

how have I pondered over this, when a boy! how have I longed for some authentic memoir of the witch to clear up the obscurity!—Was the story extant in the Chronicles of Algiers? Could I get at it by some fortunate introduction to the Algerine ambassador? Was a voyage thither practicable? The Spectator (I knew) went to Grand Cairo, only to measure a pyramid. Was not the object of my quest of at least as much importance?—The blue-eyed hag—could she have done any thing good or meritorious? might that Succubus relent? then might there be hope for the devil. I have often admired since, that none of the commentators have boggled at this passage—how they could swallow this camel—such a tantalising piece of obscurity, such an abortion of an anecdote.

At length I think I have lighted upon a clue, which may lead to show what was passing in the mind of Shakspeare when he dropped this imperfect rumour. In the "accurate description of Africa, by John Ogilby (Folio), 1670," page 230, I find written, as follows. The marginal title to the narrative is—

In the last place, we will briefly give an Account of the Emperour Charles the Fifth, when he besieg'd this City; and of the great Loss he suffer'd therein.

This Prince in the Year One thousand five hundred forty one, having Embarqued upon the Sea an Army of Twenty two thousand Men aboard Eighteen Gallies, and an hundred tall Ships, not counting the Barques and Shallops, and other small Boats, in which he had engaged the principal of the Spanish and Italian Nobility, with a good number of the Knights of Maltha ; he was to Land on the Coast of Barbary , at a Cape call'd Matifou . From this place unto the City of Algier a flat Shore or Strand extends it self for about four Leagues, the which is exceeding favourable to Gallies. There he put ashore with his Army, and in a few days caused a Fortress to be built, which unto this day is call'd The Castle of the Emperor .

In the meantime the City of Algier took the Alarm, having in it at that time but Eight hundred Turks , and Six thousand Moors , poorspirited men, and unexercised in Martial affairs; besides it was at that time Fortifi'd onely with Walls, and had no Out-works: Insomuch that by reason of its weakness, and the great Forces of the Emperour, it could not in appearance escape taking. In fine, it was Attaqued with such Order, that the Army came up to the very Gates, where the Chevalier de Sauignac , a Frenchman by Nation, made himself remarkable above all the rest, by the miracles of his Valour. For having repulsed the Turks , who having made a Sally at the Gate call'd Babason , and there desiring to enter along with them, when he saw that they shut the Gate upon him, he ran his Ponyard into the same, and left it sticking deep therein. They next fell to Battering the City by the Force of Cannon; which the Assailants so weakened, that in that great extremity the Defendants lost their Courage, and resolved to surrender.

But as they were thus intending, there was a Witch of the Town, whom the History doth not name, which went to seek out Assam Aga , that Commanded within, and pray'd him to make it good yet nine Days longer, with assurance, that within that time he should infallibly see Algier delivered from that Siege, and the whole Army of the Enemy dispersed, so that Christians should be as cheap as Birds. In a word, the thing did happen in the manner as foretold; for upon the Twenty first day of October in the same Year, there fell a continual Rain upon the Land, and so furious a Storm at Sea, that one might have seen Ships hoisted into the Clouds, and in one instant again precipitated into the bottom of the Water: insomuch that that same dreadful Tempest was followed with the loss of fifteen Gallies, and above an hundred other Vessels; which was the cause why the Emperour, seeing his Army wasted by the bad Weather, pursued by Famine, occasioned by wrack of his Ships, in which was the greatest part of his Victuals and Ammunition, he was constrain'd to raise the Siege, and set Sail for Sicily , whither he Retreated with the miserable Reliques of his Fleet.