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

Whether from mental indolence, or from that strong partiality he contracted towards familiar things, he lived, for a man of education and intelligence, in a singularly limited circle of thought. In the stirring times of the first French Revolution, we find him abstracting himself from the great drama before him, to bury himself in the gossip of Burnet's History . He writes to Manning – "I am reading Burnet's own Times . Quite the prattle of age, and outlived importance… Burnet's good old prattle I can bring present to my mind; I can make the Revolution present to me – the French Revolution, by a converse perversity in my nature, I fling as far from me." Science appears never to have interested him, and such topics as political economy may well be supposed to have been quite foreign to his nature. But even as a reader of poetry, his taste, or his partialities in his range of thought, limited him within a narrow circuit. He could make nothing of Goethe's Faust ; Shelley was an unknown region to him, and the best of his productions never excited his attention. To Byron he was almost equally indifferent. From these he could turn to study George Withers! and find matter for applause in lines which needed, indeed, the recommendation of age to give them the least interest. His personal friendship for Wordsworth and Coleridge led him here out of that circle of old writers he delighted to dwell amongst; otherwise, we verily believe, he would have deserted them for Daniell and Quarles. But perhaps, to one of his mental constitution, it required a certain concentration to bring his powers into play; and we may owe to this exclusiveness of taste the admirable fragments of criticism he has given us on Shakspeare and the elder dramatists.

In forming our opinion, however, of the tastes and acquirements of Lamb, we must not forget that we are dealing with a humorist, and that his testimony against himself cannot be always taken literally. On some occasions we shall find that he amused himself and his friends by a merry vein of self-disparagement; he would delight to exaggerate some deficiency, or perhaps some Cockney taste, in which, perhaps, he differed from others only in his boldness of avowal. He had not, by all accounts, what is called an ear for music; but we are not to put faith in certain witty descriptions he has given of his own obtuseness to all melodious sounds. We find him, in some of his letters, speaking of Braham with all the enthusiasm of a young haunter of operas. "I follow him about," he says, "like a dog." Nothing has given more scandal to some of the gentle admirers of Lamb, than to find him boldly avowing his preference of Fleet Street to the mountains of Cumberland. He claimed no love for the picturesque. Shops, and the throng of men, were not to be deserted for lakes and waterfalls. It was his to live in London, and, as a place to live in , there was no peculiarity of taste in preferring it to Cumberland; but when he really paid his visit to Coleridge at Keswick, he felt the charm fully as much as tourists who are accustomed to dwell, rather too loudly, upon their raptures. The letters he wrote, after this visit, from some of which we will quote, if our space permits us, describe very naturally, unaffectedly, and vividly, the impressions which are produced on a first acquaintance with mountainous scenery.

Indeed we may remark, that no man can properly enter into the character or the writings of a humorist, who is not prepared both to permit and to understand certain little departures from truth. We mean, that playing with the subject where our convictions are not intended to be seriously affected. Those who must see everything as true or false, and immediately approve or reject accordingly, who know nothing of that punctum indifferens on which the humorist, for a moment, takes his stand, had better leave him and his writings entirely alone. "I like a smuggler," says Charles Lamb, in one of his essays. Do you, thereupon, gravely object that a smuggler, living in constant violation of the laws of the land, ought by no means to be an object of partiality with any respectable order-loving gentleman? Or do you nod assent and acquiesce in this approbation of the smuggler? You do neither one nor the other. You smile and read on. You know very well that Lamb has no design upon your serious convictions, has no wish whatever that you should like a smuggler; he merely gives expression to a partiality of his own, unreasonable if you will, but arising from certain elements in the smuggler's character, which just then are uppermost in his mind. A great deal of the art and tact of the humorist lies in bringing out little truths, and making them stand in the foreground, where greater truths usually take up their position. Thus, in one of Lamb's papers, he would prove that a convalescent was in a less enviable condition than a man downright ill. This is done by heightening the effect of a subordinate set of circumstances, and losing sight of facts of greater importance. No error of judgment can really be introduced by this sportive ratiocination, this mock logic, while it perhaps may be the means of disclosing many ingenious and subtle observations, to which, afterwards, you may, if you will, assign their just relative importance.

It would be a work of supererogation, even if space allowed us, to go critically over the whole writings of Lamb – his poems, his essays, and his letters. It is the last alone that we shall venture to pause upon, or from which we may hope to make any extract not already familiar to the reader. His poetry, indeed, cannot claim much critical attention. It is possible, here and there, to find an elegant verse, or a beautiful expression; there is a gentle, amiable, pleasing tone throughout it; but, upon the whole, it is without force, has nothing to recommend it of deep thought or strong passion. His tragedy of John Woodville is a tame imitation of the manner of the old dramatists – of their manner when engaged in their subordinate and preparatory scenes. For there is no attempt at tragic passion. We read the piece asking ourselves when the play is to begin, and while still asking the question, find ourselves brought to its conclusion. If the poems are read by few, the Essays of Elia have been perused by all. Who is not familiar with what is now a historic fact – the discovery of roast pig in China? This, and many other touches of humour, it would be useless here to repeat. His letters, as being latest published, seem alone to call for any especial observations, and from these we shall cull a few extracts to enliven our own critical labours.

What first strikes a reader, on the perusal of the letters, is their remarkable similarity in style to the essays. Some of them, indeed, were afterwards converted into essays, and that more by adding to them than altering their structure. That style, which at first seems extremely artificial, was, in fact, natural in Lamb. He had formed for himself a manner, chiefly by the study of our classical essayists, and of still older writers, from which it would have been an effort in him to depart. With whatever ease, therefore, or rapidity, he may have written his letters, it was impossible that they should bear the impress of freedom. His style was essentially a lettered style, partaking little of the conversational tone of his own day. They could obtain the case of finished compositions, not of genuine letters. For this, if for no other reason, they can never be brought into comparison with those charming spontaneous effusions of humour which flowed from Cowper, in his letters to his old friend Hill, and his cousin, Lady Hesketh. They are charming productions, however, and the best of his letters will take rank, we think, with the best of his essays, in the public estimation.