Читать книгу The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb - Charles Lamb - Страница 167

line 1 of essay. A curious volume. Hazlitt's Handbook to the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain, 1867, gives the title as Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Epigrammatum Libri Quimque. Perth, 1679. 8vo.

Page 182, line 9. "The master of a seminary … at Islington." This was the Rev. John Evans, a Baptist minister, whose school was in Pullin's Row, Islington. Gray's Elegy was published as Lamb indicates in 1806. The headline covering the first three stanzas is "Interesting Silence."

Page 183. IX.—[Dryden and Collier.]

The Examiner, September 26, 1813. Signed ‡.

Page 183, line 3. Jeremy Collier. Jeremy Collier (1650–1726), the nonjuror and controversialist. His Essays upon Several Moral Subjects, Part II., were published in 1697. The passage quoted is from that "On Musick," the second essay in Part II. I have restored his italics and capitals.

Page 183, at foot. "His genius. …" Collier's words are: "His genius was jocular, but when disposed he could be very serious."

Page 184. X.—[Playhouse Memoranda.]

The Examiner, December 19, 1813. Signed ‡. Leigh Hunt reprinted it in The Indicator, December 13, 1820.

The paper, towards the end, becomes a first sketch for the Elia essay "My First Play," 1821. As a whole it is hardly less charming than that essay, while its analysis of the Theatre audience gives it an independent interest and value.

Page 185, line 3. They had come to see Mr. C——. It was George Frederick Cooke, of whom Lamb writes in the criticism on page 41, that they had come to see. Possibly the Cooke they saw was T. P. Cooke (1786–1864), afterwards famous for his sailor parts; but more probably an obscure Cooke who never rose to fame. A Mr. Cook played a small part in Lamb's "Mr. H." in 1806.

Page 186, line 6. The system of Lucretius. Lucretius, in De Rerum Natura, imagined the gods to be above passion or emotion, heedless of this world's concerns, figures of absolute peace.

Page 186, line 22. It was "Artaxerxes." An opera by Thomas Augustine Arne, produced in 1762, founded upon Metastasio's "Artaserse." From the other particulars of Lamb's early play-going, given in the Elia essay "My First Play," we know the date of this performance to be December 1, 1780, that being the only occasion in that or the next season when "Artaxerxes" was followed by "Harlequin's Invasion." But none of the singers named by Lamb were in the caste on that occasion. "Who played, or who sang in it, I know not," he says; merely setting down likely and well-known names at random. As a matter of fact Artaxerxes was played by Mrs. Baddeley, Arbaces by Miss Pruden, and Mandane by "a young lady." Mr. Beard was John Beard (1716?-1791), the tenor. Leoni was the discoverer and instructor of Braham. He made his début in "Artaxerxes" in 1775. Mrs. Kennedy, formerly Mrs. Farrell, was a contralto. She died in 1793.

Page 186, line 10 from foot. I was, with Uriel.

Th' archangel Uriel, one of the sev'n

Who in God's presence, nearest to his throne,

Stand ready at command.

Paradise Lost, III., lines 648–650.

Uriel's station was the sun. See also Paradise Lost, III. 160, IV. 577 and 589, and IX. 60.

Page 187. Wordsworth's "Excursion."

The Quarterly Review, October, 1814. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Wordsworth's Excursion was published in 1814; and it seems to have been upon his own suggestion, made, probably, to Southey, who was a power in the Quarterly office, that Lamb should review it. In his letter to Wordsworth of August 29, 1814, Lamb expressed a not too ready willingness. Writing again a little later, when the review was done, he spoke of "the circumstances of haste and peculiar bad spirits" under which it was written, viewing it without much confidence; and adding, "But it must speak for itself, if Gifford and his crew do not put words in its mouth, which I expect." As Lamb expected, so it happened. Lamb's next letter, after the publication of the October Quarterly (which does not seem to have come out until very late in the year), ran thus:—

"Dear Wordsworth—I told you my Review was a very imperfect one. But what you will see in the Quarterly is a spurious one which Mr. Baviad Gifford has palm'd upon it for mine. I never felt more vexd in my life than when I read it. I cannot give you an idea of what he has done to it out of spite at me because he once sufferd me to be called a lunatic in his Thing. The language he has alterd throughout. Whatever inadequateness it had to its subject, it was in point of composition the prettiest piece of prose I ever writ, and so my sister (to whom alone I read the MS.) said. That charm if it had any is all gone: more than a third of the substance is cut away and that not all from one place, but passim, so as to make utter nonsense. Every warm expression is changed for a nasty cold one. I have not the cursed alteration by me, I shall never look at it again, but for a specimen I remember—I had said the Poet of the Excursⁿ 'walks thro' common forests as thro' some Dodona or enchanted wood and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that miraculous one in Tasso, but in language more piercing than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher lovelays.' It is now (besides half a dozen alterations in the same half dozen lines) 'but in language more intelligent reveals to him'—that is one I remember. But that would have been little, putting his damnd Shoemaker phraseology (for he was a shoemaker) in stead of mine which has been tinctured with better authors than his ignorance can comprehend—for I reckon myself a dab at Prose—verse I leave to my betters—God help them, if they are to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter. I have read 'It won't do.'[65] But worse than altering words, he has kept a few members only of the part I had done best which was to explain all I could of your 'scheme of harmonies' as I had ventured to call it between the external universe and what within us answers to it. To do this I had accumulated a good many short passages, rising in length to the end, weaving in the Extracts as if they came in as a part of the text, naturally, not obtruding them as specimens. Of this part a little is left, but so as without conjuration no man could tell what I was driving it [? at]. A proof of it you may see (tho' not judge of the whole of the injustice) by these words—I had spoken something about 'natural methodism—' and after follows 'and therefore the tale of Margaret sh^d have been postponed' (I forget my words, or his words): now the reasons for postponing it are as deducible from what goes before, as they are from the 104th psalm. The passage whence I deduced it, has vanished, but clapping a colon before a therefore is always reason enough for Mr. Baviad Gifford to allow to a reviewer that is not himself. I assure you my complaints are founded. I know how sore a word alterd makes one, but indeed of this Review the whole complexion is gone. I regret only that I did not keep a copy. I am sure you would have been pleased with it, because I have been feeding my fancy for some months with the notion of pleasing you. Its imperfection or inadequateness in size and method I knew, but for the writing part of it, I was fully satisfied. I hoped it would make more than atonement. Ten or twelve distinct passages come to my mind which are gone, and what is left is of course the worse for their having been there, the eyes are pulld out and the bleeding sockets are left. I read it at Arch's shop with my face burning with vexation secretly, with just such a feeling as if it had been a review written against myself, making false quotations from me. But I am ashamd to say so much about a short piece. How are you served! and the labors of years turn'd into contempt by scoundrels.

"But I could not but protest against your taking that thing as mine. Every pretty expression, (I know there were many) every warm expression, there was nothing else, is vulgarised and frozen—but if they catch me in their camps again let them spitchcock me. They had a right to do it, as no name appears to it, and Mr. Shoemaker Gifford I suppose never waved a right he had since he commencd author. God confound him and all caitiffs.

"C. L."

[65] "This will never do"—the beginning of the review in the Edinburgh.—Ed.

The word "lunatic" refers to the Quarterly's review in December, 1811, of The Dramatic Works of John Ford, by Henry William Weber, Sir Walter Scott's assistant, where, alluding to the comments on Ford in Lamb's Specimens, quoted by Weber, the reviewer described them as "the blasphemies of a maniac." See page 57 of this volume for Lamb's actual remarks on Ford. Southey wrote Gifford a letter of remonstrance, and Gifford explained that he had used the words without knowledge of Lamb's history—knowing of him nothing but his name—and adding that he would have lost his right arm sooner than have written what he did had he known the circumstances. The late Mr. Dykes Campbell, whose opinion in such matters was of the weightiest, declined to let Gifford escape with this apology. Reviewing in The Athenæum for August 25, 1894, a new edition of Lamb's Dramatic Specimens, Mr. Campbell wrote thus:—

Had Gifford merely called Lamb a "fool" or a "madman," the epithet would have been mere "common form" as addressed by the Quarterly of those days to a wretch who was a friend of other wretches such as Hunt and Hazlitt; but he went far beyond such common form and used language of the utmost precision. Weber, wrote Gifford, "has polluted his pages with the blasphemies of a poor maniac, who it seems once published some detached scenes from the 'Broken Heart.' For this unfortunate creature every feeling mind will find an apology in his calamitous situation." This passage has no meaning at all if it is not to be taken as a positive statement that Lamb suffered from chronic mental derangement; yet Gifford when challenged confessed that when he wrote it he had known absolutely nothing of Lamb, except his name! It seems to have struck neither Gifford nor Southey that this was no excuse at all, and something a good deal worse than no excuse—that even as an explanation it was not such as an honourable man would have cared to offer. Gifford added a strongly-worded expression of his feeling of remorse on learning that his blows had fallen with cruel effect on a sore place. Both feeling and expression may have been sincere, for, under the circumstances, only a fiend would be incapable of remorse. But the excuse or explanation is open to much suspicion, owing to the fact (revealed in the Murray "Memoirs") that Lamb's friend Barron Field had been Gifford's collaborator in the preparation of the article in which the offending passage occurs. Field was well acquainted with Lamb's personal and family history, and while the article was in progress the collaborators could hardly have avoided some exchange of ideas on a subject which stirred one of them so deeply. Gifford may have said honestly enough, according to his lights, that only a maniac could have written the note quoted by Weber, a remark which would naturally draw from Field some confidences regarding Lamb's history. This is, of course, pure assumption, but it is vastly more reasonable and much more likely to be in substantial accordance with the facts than Gifford's statement that when he called Lamb a poor maniac, whose calamitous situation offered a sufficient apology for his blasphemies, he was imaginatively describing a man of whom he knew absolutely nothing, except that he was "a thoughtless scribbler." If, as seems only too possible, Gifford deliberately poisoned his darts, it is also probable that he did not realize what he was doing. It would be unfair to accept Hazlitt's picture of him as a true portrait; but Lamb's apology for Hazlitt himself applies with at least equal force to the first editor of the Quarterly. "He does bad actions without being a bad man." Perhaps it is too lenient, for though Gifford's attack on Lamb was undoubtedly one of the bad actions of his life, it was, after all, a matter of conduct. The apology, whether truthful or the opposite, reveals deep-seated corruption of principle if not of character.

Lamb's phrase, "Mr. Shoemaker Gifford," had reason for its existence. William Gifford (1756–1826) was apprenticed to a shoemaker in 1772. Lamb later repaid some of his debt in the sonnet "St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford," which appeared in The Examiner, October 3, 1819, and was reprinted in The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion" in 1822. Gifford, who was editor of the Quarterly on its establishment in 1809, held the post until his death, in 1826.

The original copy of Lamb's review of Wordsworth, Mr. John Murray informs me, no longer exists. I have collated the extracts with the first edition of the Excursion and have also corrected the Tasso.

Page 187, line 3 of essay. To be called the Recluse. Wordsworth never completed this scheme. A fragment called The Recluse, Book I., was published in 1888.

Page 188, line 7. Which Thomson so feelingly describes. This is the passage, from Thomson's Seasons, "Winter," 799–809:—

There, through the prison of unbounded wilds,

Barr'd by the hand of Nature from escape,

Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around

Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow;

And heavy-loaded groves; and solid floods,

That stretch'd, athwart the solitary vast,

Their icy horrors to the frozen main;

And cheerless towns far-distant, never bless'd,

Save when its annual course the caravan

Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,

With news of human-kind.

Page 200. On the Melancholy of Tailors.

The Champion, December 4, 1814. Works, 1818.

The editor of The Champion was then John Scott, afterwards editor of the London Magazine, which printed Lamb's best work. From a letter written by Lamb to Scott in 1814 (in the late Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Talks about Autographs, 1896) it seems that he was to contribute more or less regularly to The Champion. Lamb wrote:—

"Sir—Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I accede to your proposal most willingly.

"As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please call upon you for your part of the engagement (supposing I shall have performed mine) on the 1st of March next, and thence forward if it suit you quarterly—you will occasionally wink at Briskets and Veiny Pieces.

"Your Obt. Svt.,

C. Lamb.

This essay on "Tailors" is, however, the only piece by Lamb that can be identified, although probably many of the passages from old authors quoted in The Champion in Scott's time were contributed by Lamb. These might be the briskets and veiny pieces he refers to. On January 23, 1814, is "A Challenge" of the Learned Dog at Drury Lane which he might have written; but it is not interesting now. Later, after John Thelwall took over The Champion in 1818, Lamb contributed various epigrams, which will be found in Vol. IV. of the present edition.

Lamb seems to have sent the present essay to Wordsworth, whose reply we may imagine took the form of an account of certain tailors within his own experience that did not comply with Lamb's scription; since Lamb's answer to that letter is the one dated beginning, "Your experience about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton [Lamb's essay is signed 'Burton, Junior']" and so forth.

When preparing this essay for the Works, 1818, Lamb omitted certain portions. The footnote on page 202 originally continued thus:—

"But commend me above all to a shop opposite Middle Row, in Holborn, where, by the ingenious contrivance of the master taking in three partners, there is a physical impossibility of the conversation ever flagging, while 'the four' alternately toss it from one to the other, and at whatever time you drop in, you are sure of a discussion: an expedient which Mr. A——m would do well to think on, for with all the alacrity with which he and his excellent family are so dexterous to furnish their successive contributions, I have sometimes known the continuity of the dialogue broken into, and silence for a few seconds to intervene."

In connection with Mr. A——m there is a passage in a letter from Mary Lamb to Miss Hutchinson in 1818, wherein she says that when the Lambs, finding London insupportable after a long visit to Calne, in Wiltshire (at the Morgans'), had taken lodgings in Dalston, Charles was so much the creature of habit, or the slave of his barber, that he went to the Temple every morning to be shaved, on a roundabout way to the India House. This would very likely be Mr. A——m, Flower de Luce Court being just opposite the Temple, off Fetter Lane. The London directories in those days ignored barbers; hence his name must remain in disguise.

In The Champion, also, the paragraph on page 203, beginning, "I think," etc., ran thus:—

"I think, then, that they [the causes of tailors' melancholy] may be reduced to three, omitting some subordinate ones; viz.

"The sedentary habits of the tailor.—

Something peculiar in his diet.—

Mental perturbation from a sense of reproach, &c.—"

And at the end of the article, as it now stands, came the following exposition of the third theory:—

"Thirdly, and lastly, mental perturbation, arising from a sense of shame; in other words, that painful consciousness which he always carries about with him, of lying under a sort of disrepute in popular estimation. It is easy to talk of despising public opinion, of its being unworthy the attention of a wise man &c. The theory is excellent; but, somehow, in practice

"still the world prevails and its dread laugh.

"Tailors are men (it is well if so much be allowed them,) and as such, it is not in human nature not to feel sore at being misprized, undervalued, and made a word of scorn.[66] I have often racked my brains to discover the grounds of this unaccountable prejudice, which is known to exist against a useful and industrious body of men. I confess I can discover none, except in the sedentary posture, before touched upon, which from long experience has been found by these artists to be the one most convenient for the exercise of their vocation. But I would beg the more stirring and locomotive part of the community, to whom the quiescent state of the tailor furnishes a perpetual fund of rudeness, to consider, that in the mere action of sitting (which they make so merry with) there is nothing necessarily ridiculous. That, in particular, it is the posture best suited to contemplation. That it is that, in which the hen (a creature of all others best fitted to be a pattern of careful provision for a family) performs the most beautiful part of her maternal office. That it is that, in which judges deliberate, and senators take counsel. That a Speaker of the House of Commons at a debate, or a Lord Chancellor over a suit, will oftentimes sit as long as many tailors. Lastly, let these scoffers take heed, lest themselves, while they mock at others, be found 'sitting in the seat of the scornful.'"

[66] "It is notorious that to call a man a tailor, is to heap the utmost contempt upon him which the language of the streets can convey. Barber's clerk is an appellative less galling than this. But there is a word, which, though apparently divested of all ill meaning, has for some people a far deeper sting than either. It is the insulting appellation of governor, with which a black-guard, not in anger, but in perfect good will, salutes your second-rate gentry, persons a little above his own cut. He rarely bestows it upon the topping gentry of all, but reserves it for those of a rank or two above his own, or whose garb is rather below their rank. It is a word of approximation. A friend of mine will be melancholy a great while after, from being saluted with it. I confess I have not altogether been unhonoured with it myself."

It is told of Lamb that he once said he would sit with anything but a hen or a tailor.

Page 200. Motto. From Virgil's Æneid, Book VI., lines 617, 618. "There luckless Theseus sits, and shall sit for ever."

Page 201, line 25. Beautiful motto. Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who married Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., appeared at a tournament with a saddle-cloth made half of frieze and half of cloth of gold. Each side had a symbolical motto. One ran:—

Cloth of frize, be not too bold,

Though thou art match'd with cloth of gold.

The other:—

Cloth of gold do not despise,

Though thou art match'd with cloth of frize.

Page 201, line 3 from foot. Eliot's famous troop. General George Augustus Eliott (afterwards Lord Heathfield), the defender of Gibraltar and the founder of the 15th or King's Own Royal Light Dragoons, now the 15th Hussars, whose first action was at Emsdorf. At the time that regiment was being collected, there was a strike of tailors, many of whom joined it. Eliott, one version of the incident says, wished to get men who never having ridden had not to unlearn any bad methods of riding. Later they were engaged against the Spaniards in Cuba in 1762–1763.

Page 202, line 6. Speculative politicians. Lamb was probably referring to Francis Place (1771–1854), the tailor-reformer, among whose friends were certain of Lamb's own—William Frend, for example.

Page 202. Footnote. "Gladden life." From Johnson's Life of Edmund Smith—"one who has gladdened life"; or possibly from Coombe's "Peasant of Auburn":—

And whilst thy breast matures each patriot plan

That gladdens life and man endears to man.

Page 203, line 22. Dr. Norris's famous narrative. The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris concerning the strange and deplorable Frenzy of Mr. John Dennis was a satirical squib by Pope against the critic John Dennis (1657–1734). The passage referred to by Lamb runs:—

Doct. Pray, Sir, how did you contract the Swelling?

Denn. By a Criticism.

Doct. A Criticism! that's a Distemper I never read of in Galen.

Denn. S' Death, Sir, a Distemper! It is no Distemper, but a Noble Art. I have sat fourteen Hours a Day at it; and are you a Doctor, and don't know there's a Communication between the Legs and the Brain?

Doct. What made you sit so many Hours, Sir?

Denn. Cato, Sir.

Doct. Sir, I speak of your Distemper, what gave you this Tumour?

Denn. Cato, Cato, Cato.

Page 204, line 2. Envious Junos. Lucina, at Juno's bidding, sat cross-legged before Alcmena to prolong her travail. Sir Thomas Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica; or, Enquiry into Vulgar Errors, Book V., speaks of the posture as "veneficious," and cites Juno's case.

Page 204, at the end. Well known that this last-named vegetable. This is the old joke about tailors "cabbaging," that is to say, stealing cloth. The term is thus explained in Phillips' History of Cultivated Vegetables:—

The word cabbage … means the firm head or ball that is formed by the leaves turning close over each other. … From thence arose the cant word applied to tailors, who formerly worked at the private houses of their customers, where they were often accused of cabbaging: which means the rolling up of pieces of cloth instead of the list and shreds, which they claim as their due.

Lamb returned to this jest against tailors in his verses "Satan in Search of a Wife," in 1831.

In The Champion for December 11, 1814, was printed a letter defending tailors against Lamb.

Page 204. On Needle-Work.

The British Lady's Magazine and Monthly Miscellany, April 1, 1815. By Mary Lamb.

The authority for attributing this paper to Mary Lamb is Crabb Robinson. In his Diary for December 11, 1814, he writes: "I called on Miss Lamb, and chatted with her. She was not unwell, but she had undergone great fatigue from writing an article about needle-work for the new Ladies' British Magazine. She spoke of writing as a most painful occupation, which only necessity could make her attempt."

We know that Mary Lamb's needle was required to help keep the Lamb family, not only after Samuel Salt's death in 1792, when they had to move from the Temple, but very likely while they were there also. In one of the newspaper accounts of the tragedy of September, 1796, she is described as "a mantua-maker." Possibly she continued to sew for a while after she joined her brother, in 1799, but she would hardly call that "early life," being thirty-five in that year.

Page 210. On the Poetical Works of George Wither.

This is the one prose article that, to the best of our knowledge, made its first and only appearance in the Works (1818). It was inspired by John Mathew Gutch (1776–1861), Lamb's schoolfellow at Christ's Hospital, with whom he shared rooms in Southampton Buildings in 1800. Later, when Gutch had become proprietor, at Bristol, of Felix Farley's Bristol Journal (in which many of Chatterton's poems had appeared), he took advantage of his press to set up a private edition of selections from Wither, a poet then little known and not easily accessible, an interleaved copy of which, in two volumes, was sent to Lamb in 1809 or 1810. Gutch told the story in an Appendix to his Lytell Geste of Robin Hoode (1847), wherein he printed a letter from Lamb dated April 9, 1810, concerning the edition, in the course of which Lamb remarks: "I never saw Philarete before—judge of my pleasure. I could not forbear scribbling certain critiques in pencil on the blank leaves. … Perhaps I could digest the few critiques prefixed to the 'Satires,' 'Shepherd's Hunting,' etc., into a short abstract of Wither's character and works. … "

Lamb returned the book with this letter; and Gutch seems to have then sent it to Dr. John Nott (1751–1825), of the Hot Wells, Bristol, a medical man with literary tastes, and the author of a number of translations, medical treatises, and subsequently of an edition of Herrick; who added comments of his own both upon Wither and upon Lamb.

Lamb, Gutch tells us, subsequently asked for the book again, with the intention of preparing from it the present essay on Wither, and coming then upon Nott's criticisms of himself, superimposed sarcastic criticisms of Nott. Thus the volumes contain first Wither, then Gutch and Lamb on Wither, then Nott on Wither and Lamb, and then Lamb on Nott again and incidentally on Wither again, too, for some of his earlier opinions were slightly modified.

Lamb gave the volume to his friend John Brook Pulham of the East India House, and the treasure passed to the fitting possession of the late Mr. Swinburne, who described it in a paper in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1885, afterwards republished in his Miscellanies, 1886. Mr. Swinburne permitted me to quote from his very entertaining analysis:—

The second fly-leaf of the first volume bears the inscription, "Jas Pulham Esqr. from Charles Lamb." A proof impression of the well-known profile sketch of Lamb by Pulham has been inserted between this and the preceding fly-leaf. The same place is occupied in the second volume by the original pencil drawing, to which is attached an engraving of it "Scratched on Copper by his Friend Brook Pulham;" and on the fly-leaf following is a second inscription—"James Pulham Esq. from his friend Chas Lamb." On the reverse of the leaf inscribed with these names in the first volume begins the commentary afterwards republished, with slight alterations and transpositions, as an essay "on the poetical works of George Wither. … "

After the quotation from Drayton, with which the printed essay concludes, the manuscript proceeds thus:—

"The whole poem, for the delicacy of the thoughts, and height of the passion, is equal to the best of Spenser's, Daniel's or Drayton's love verses; with the advantage of comprising in a whole all the fine things which lie scatter'd in their works, in sonnets, and smaller addresses—The happy chearful spirit of the author goes with it all the way; that sanguine temperament, which gives to all Wither's lines (in his most loved metre especially, where chiefly he is a Poet) an elasticity, like a dancing measure; it [is] as full of joy, and confidence, and high and happy thoughts, as if it were his own Epithalamium which, like Spenser, he were singing, and not a piece of perambulary, probationary flattery. … "[67]

[67] Lamb subsequently altered the conclusion of this paragraph to: "as if, like Spenser, he were singing his own Epithalamium, and not a strain of probationary courtship."

On page 70 Lamb has proposed a new reading which speaks for itself—"Jove's endeared Ganimed," for the meaningless "endured" of the text before him. Against a couplet now made famous by his enthusiastic citation of it—

"Thoughts too deep to be expressed

And too strong to be suppressed—"

he has written—"Two eminently beautiful lines." Opposite the couplet in which Wither mentions the poets

"whose verse set forth

Rosalind and Stella's worth"

Gutch (as I suppose) has written the names of Lodge and Sidney; under which Lamb has pencilled the words "Qu. Spenser and Sidney;" perhaps the more plausible conjecture, as the date of Lodge's popularity was out, or nearly so, before Wither began to write.

The next verses [The Shepherd's Hunting] are worth transcription on their own account no less than on account of Lamb's annotation.

"It is known what thou canst do,

For it is not long ago

When that Cuddy, thou, and I,

Each the other's skill to try,

At St. Dunstan's charmèd well,

(As some present there can tell)

Sang upon a sudden theme,

Sitting by the crimson stream;

Where if thou didst well or no

Yet remains the song to show."

To the fifth of these verses the following note is appended:—

"The Devil Tavern, Fleet Street, where Child's Place now stands, and where a sign hung in my memory within 18" (substituted for 16) "years, of the Devil and St. Dunstan—Ben Jonson made this a famous place of resort for poets by drawing up a set of Leges Convivales which were engraven in marble on the chimney piece in the room called Apollo. One of Drayton's poems is called The Sacrifice to Apollo; it is addrest to the priests or Wits of Apollo, and is a kind of poetical paraphrase upon the Leges Convivales—This tavern to the very last kept up a room with that name. C. L."—who might have added point and freshness to this brief account by citing the splendid description of a revel held there under the jovial old Master's auspices, given by Careless to Aurelia [Carlesse to Æmilia] in Shakerley Marmion's admirable comedy, A Fine Companion. But it is remarkable that Lamb—if I mistake not—has never quoted or mentioned that brilliant young dramatist and poet who divided with Randolph the best part of Jonson's mantle. …

At the close of Wither's high-spirited and manly postscript to the poem on which, as he tells us, his publisher had bestowed the name of The Shepherd's Hunting, a passage occurs which has provoked one of the most characteristic outbreaks of wrath and mirth to be found among all Lamb's notes on Nott's notes on Lamb's notes on the text of Wither. "Neither am I so cynical but that I think a modest expression of such amorous conceits as suit with reason, will yet very well become my years; in which not to have feeling of the power of love, were as great an argument of much stupidity, as an over-sottish affection were of extreme folly." In illustration of this simple and dignified sentence Lamb cites the following most apt and admirable parallel.

"'Nor blame it, readers, in those years to propose to themselves such a reward, as the noblest dispositions above other things in this life have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible, when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and withall an ungentle and swainish breast.'

"Milton—Apology for Smectymn[u]us."

"Why is this quoted?" demands the too inquisitive Nott; "I see little similarity." "It was quoted for those who can see," rejoins Lamb, with three thick strokes of his contemptuous pencil under the luckless Doctor's poor personal pronoun; on which this special note of indignation is added beneath.

"I. I. I. I. I. in Capitals!—

for shame, write your Ego thus little i with a dot stupid Nott!"

At the opening of the second we find the notes on Abuses stript and whipt which in their revised condition as part of the essay on Wither are familiar to all lovers of English letters. They begin with the second paragraph of that essay, in which sundry slight and delicate touches of improvement have fortified or simplified the original form of expression. After the sentence which describes the vehemence of Wither's love for goodness and hatred of baseness, the manuscript proceeds thus: "His moral feeling is work'd up into a sort of passion, something as Milton describes himself at a like early age, that night and day he laboured to attain to a certain idea which he had of perfection." Another cancelled passage is one which originally followed on the reflection that "perhaps his premature defiance often exposed him" (altered in the published essay to "sometimes made him obnoxious") "to censures, which he would otherwise have slipped by." The manuscript continues: "But in this he is as faulty as some of the primitive Christians are described to have been, who were ever ready to outrun the executioner. … "

This not immoderate satire on clerical ambition seems to have ruffled the spiritual plumage of Dr. Nott, who brands it as a "very dull essay indeed." To whom, in place of exculpation or apology, Lamb returns this question by way of answer:—"Why double-dull it with thy dull commentary? have you nothing to cry out but 'very dull,' 'a little better,' 'this has some spirit,' 'this is prosaic,' foh!

"If the sun of Wither withdraw a while, Clamour not for joy, Owl, it will out again, and blear thy envious Eyes! … "

The commentary on 'Wither's Motto' will be remembered by all students of the most exquisite critical essays in any language. They will not be surprised to learn that neither the style nor the matter of it found any favour in the judicial eye of Nott. "There is some tautology in this, and some of the sentences are harsh—These repetitions are very awkward; but the whole sentence is obscure and far-fetched in sentiment;" such is the fashion in which this unlucky particle of a pedant has bescribbled the margin of Lamb's beautiful manuscript. But those for whom alone I write will share my pleasure in reading the original paragraph as it came fresh from the spontaneous hand of the writer, not as yet adapted or accommodated by any process of revision to the eye of the general reader.

"Wither's Motto.

"The poem which Wither calls his Motto is a continued self-eulogy" (originally written "self-eulogium") "of two thousand lines: yet one reads it to the end without feeling any distaste, or being hardly conscious of having listen'd so long to a man praising himself. There are none of the cold particles of vanity in it; no hardness or self-ends" (altered to "no want of feeling, no selfishness;" but restored in the published text), "which are the qualities that make Egotism hateful—The writer's mind was continually glowing with images of virtue, and a noble scorn of vice: what it felt, it honestly believed it possessed, and as honestly avowed it; yet so little is this consciousness mixed up with any alloy of selfishness, that the writer seems to be praising qualities in another person rather than in himself; or, to speak more properly, we feel that it was indifferent to him, where he found the virtues; but that being best acquainted with himself, he chose to celebrate himself as their best known receptacle. We feel that he would give to goodness its praise, wherever found; that it is not a quality which he loves for his own low self which possesses it; but himself that he respects for the qualities which he imagines he finds in himself. With these feelings, and without them, it is impossible to read it, it is as beautiful a piece of self-confession as the Religio Medici of Browne.

"It will lose nothing also if we contrast it" (or, as previously written, "It may be worth while also to contrast it") "with the Confessions of Rousseau." ("How is Rousseau analogous?" queries the interrogatory Nott: on whom Lamb retorts—"analogous?!! why, this note was written to show the difference not the analogy between them. C. L.") "In every page of the latter we are disgusted with the vanity, which brings forth faults, and begs us to take them (or at least the acknowledgment of them) for virtue. But in Wither we listen to a downright confession of unambiguous virtues; and love the heart which has the confidence to pour itself out." Here, at a later period, Lamb has written—"C. L. thus far." On the phrase "confession of unambiguous virtues" Dr. Nott has obliged us with the remark—"this seems an odd association:" and has received this answer:—"It was meant to be an odd one, to puzzle a certain sort of people. C. L."—whose words should be borne in mind by every reader of his essays or letters who may chance to take exception to some passing turn of speech intended, or at least not wholly undesigned, to give occasion for that same "certain sort of people" to stumble or to trip.

So far Mr. Swinburne. After his death the Wither was sold to America by Mr. Watts-Dunton and is now in the library of Mr. John A. Spoor of Chicago. Mr. Swinburne's description was supplemented by the American bibliophile Mr. Luther S. Livingston in the New York Evening Post, April 30, 1910.

Gutch, it seems, was sufficiently interested in Wither to undertake a really representative edition, the editorship of which was entrusted to Nott. The work was issued in 1820, without either date or publisher's name. There is a copy in the British Museum which is in four volumes, the fourth incomplete. On the fly-leaf is written: "This selection of the Poems of Wither was printed by Gutch, of Bristol, about twenty years since, and was edited by Dr. Nott. The work remained unfinished, and was sold for waste-paper; a few copies only were preserved. 1839."

Mr. Livingston says that there is another copy of this work, in New York. "It is in four volumes, with the title, 'Selections from the Juvenilia and Other Poems of George Wither, with a prefatory Essay by John Matthew Gutch, F.S.A., and His Life, by Robert Aris Wilmott, Esq., Vol. I. [etc.] Typ. Felix Farley: Bristol.' In addition, the first volume has another title-page, 'Poems by George Wither, in four volumes. Vol. I. London: 1839.' On the verso of this is the following Preface:—