Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66 No.406, August 1849

We will not weaken so admirable a remark by repeating it in a worse phraseology of our own. We wish the Serjeant always wrote in the same clear, forcible, and unaffected manner. With respect to this seizure which Lamb, in an early part of his life, had experienced, there is a reference in one of his letters too curious to pass unnoticed. Writing to Coleridge, he says – "At some future time I will amuse you with an account, as full as my memory will permit, of the strange turns my frenzy took. I look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of envy, for, while it lasted, I had many, many hours of pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad! All now seems to me vapid, or comparatively so."

The residue of Lamb's life is uneventful. The publication of a book – a journey into Cumberland – his final liberation from office, are the chief incidents. These it is not necessary to arrange in chronological order: they can be alluded to as occasion requires. But we will pursue a little further our notice of Mr Talfourd's biographical labours, that we may clear our way as we proceed.

We have seen that Lamb, in the first agony of his grief, rudely threw aside his poetry, and his scheme of publishing conjointly with Coleridge. Poetry and schemes of publication are not, however, so easily dismissed. As his mind subsided into a calmer state, they were naturally resumed. The literary partnership was extended, and Lloyd was admitted to associate his labours in the forthcoming volume. "At length," says Mr Talfourd, "the small volume containing the poems of Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lamb, was published by Mr Cottle at Bristol. It excited little attention." We do not wonder at this, if the lucubrations of Mr Lloyd had any conspicuous place in the volume. How the other two poets – how Coleridge especially, could have consented to this literary partnership, with so singularly inept and absurd a writer, would be past explaining, if it were not for some hint that we receive that Charles Lloyd was the son of a wealthy banker, and might, therefore, be the fittest person to transact that part of the business which occurs between the author and the publisher. Here we have a striking instance of Mr Talfourd's misplaced amiability of criticism. "Lloyd," he says, "wrote pleasing verses, and with great facility – a facility fatal to excellence; but his mind was chiefly remarkable for the fine power of analysis which distinguishes his 'London,' and other of his later compositions. In this power of discriminating and distinguishing – carried to a pitch almost of painfulness – Lloyd has scarcely been equalled; and his poems, though rugged in point of versification, will be found, by those who will read them with the calm attention they require, replete with critical and moral suggestions of the highest value." Very grateful to Mr Serjeant Talfourd will any reader feel who shall be induced, by his recommendation, to peruse, or attempt to peruse, Mr Lloyd's poem of "London!" We were. "Fine power of analysis!" Why, it is one stream of mud – of theologic mud. "Rugged in point of versification!" There is no trace of verse, and the style is an outlandish garb, such as no man has ever seen elsewhere, either in prose or verse. Poor Lloyd was a lunatic patient! – on him no one would be severe; but why should an intelligent Serjeant, unless prompted by a sly malice against all mankind, persuade us to read his execrable stuff? The following is a fair specimen of the drug, and is, indeed, taken as the book opened. We add the two last lines of the preceding stanza, to give all possible help to the elucidation of the one we quote. The italics are all Mr Lloyd's: —

But divinity of this kind, it may be said, though well calculated to display "the power of discriminating and distinguishing, carried to a pitch almost of painfulness," is not exactly favourable to flowing verse. Here is a specimen where a lady is the subject, and the verse should be smooth then, if ever.

The poor man seems to have had not the least appreciation of the power of language, so as to distinguish between the ludicrous and the pathetic. He must have read "Hudibras" with tears, not of laughter, in his eyes, and hence drawn his notion of tenderness of diction as well as harmony of verse. The most surprising thing about Lloyd is, that such a man should have chosen for his literary task to translate – Alfieri! And although he has performed the task very far from well, he has accomplished it in a manner that could not have been anticipated from his original compositions.

After this specimen of Mr Talfourd's laudatory criticism, we need not be astonished at any amount of eulogy he bestows on such names as Hazlitt and others, which really have a certain claim on the respect of all men. And yet, even after this, we felt some slight surprise at hearing Mr Talfourd speak of "the splendid reputation" of Mr Harrison Ainsworth! Would Mr Talfourd have such a reputation, if it were offered him? Would he not rather have remained in complete obscurity than be distinguished by such "splendours" as the authorship of Jack Sheppard would have invested him with? Why should he throw about this indiscriminate praise, and make his good word of no possible value? Splendid reputation! Can trash be anything but trash, because a multitude of the idle and the ignorant, whom it exactly suits, read and admire? By-and-by they grow ashamed of their idol, when they find they have him all to themselves, and that sensible people are smiling at their enthusiasm; they then discard him for some new, untried, and unconvicted favourite. Such is the natural history of these splendid reputations.

The second volume of the "Final Memorials" is in great part occupied with sketches of the literary friends and companions of Lamb. These Mr Talfourd introduces by a somewhat bold parallel between the banquets at the lordly halls of Holland House and the suppers in the dark and elevated chambers in the Inner Temple, whither Lamb had removed. We are by no means scandalised at such a comparison. Wit may flow, and wisdom too, as freely in the garret as in the saloon. To eat off plate, to be served assiduously by liveried attendants, may not give any more real zest to colloquial pleasure, to good hearty talking, than to attack without ceremony "the cold beef flanked with heaps of smoking potatoes, which Becky has just brought in." Nor do we know that claret in the flagon of beautifully cut glass, may be a more potent inspiration of wit than "the foaming pots of porter from the best tap in Fleet Street." We are not at all astonished that such a parallel should be drawn; what surprises us is, that, being in the humour to draw such comparisons, the Sergeant could find only one place in all London which could be brought into this species of contrast, and of rivalry, with Holland House. "Two circles of rare social enjoyment, differing as widely as possible in all external circumstances — but each superior in its kind to all others , were at the same time generously opened to men of letters." We, who have been admitted to neither, have perhaps no right to an opinion; but, judging by the bill of fare presented to us, we shrewdly suspect there were very many circles where we should have preferred the intellectual repast to that set out in Inner Temple Lane. We doubt not the Serjeant himself has assembled round his own table a society that we should greatly more have coveted the pleasure of joining. We have the name of Godwin, it is true, but Godwin never opened his mouth; – played whist all the evening. Had he not written his book? why should he talk? We have Hazlitt, – but by all accounts he was rarely in a tolerable humour, perpetually raving, with admirable consistency, in praise of republics and Bonaparte. Coleridge was too rarely a visitor to be counted in the list; and certain we are that we should have no delight in hearing Charles Lloyd "reason of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," to Leigh Hunt. Some actors are named, of whose conversational powers we know nothing, and presume nothing very extraordinary. Lamb's "burly jovial brother, the Ajax Telamon of clerks," and a Captain Burney, of whom we are elsewhere told that he liked Shakspeare "because he was so much of a gentleman," promise little on the score of intellectual conversation; neither should we be particularly anxious to sit opposite a certain M. B., of whom Lamb said, "M., if dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!"