Читать книгу The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb - Charles Lamb - Страница 168

"These Poems were many years ago edited and printed at Bristol by Mr. Gutch: Proof sheets being submitted to Dr. Nott, and the celebrated Charles Lamb, who wrote some very pithy comments on the Notes of the Doctor, which have not been printed. The work was never completed, and the whole impression was consigned to the 'Tomb of the Capulets' and supposed to be effectually destroyed. Now, however, by the resuscitating powers of sundry Bristol Book Chapmen, 'Monsieur Tonson's come again!' etc.

Signed 'J. R. S.' and dated 'London, 1839'."

Gutch himself prepared a life of Wither, but it was not printed in this edition and is still unpublished. The amusing feature of the edition is that Nott, sometimes with slight and deteriorating changes, and sometimes without alteration, uses, in addition to his own comments, many of Lamb's notes also as his own; which, if 1820 is really the date, is the more curious, since a comparison with Lamb's essay in the Works, 1818, would expose the conveyance. Probably the edition was in type some time before it was issued. We know at any rate that it was prepared before 1818, because Lamb had his notes back again in time to use them in writing his essay published early in that year, and finished probably some time earlier. If Lamb ever saw Nott's edition—which is more than probable—it is a pity that in his correspondence is preserved no letter containing his opinion on the matter.

Nott, for example, lifted the whole of the passage in praise of "Fair Virtue or the Mistress of Philarete," beginning "There is a singular beauty," and ending with "probationary courtship," as described above by Mr. Swinburne, and signed it "Editor." He also annexed the reminiscence of the Devil Tavern, making it "within the memory of the Editor," and adapted the criticisms beginning "Wither's prison notes" (fifth paragraph of the present essay) and "Wither's motto" (first paragraph) to his own uses. As a specimen of Nott's treatment of his predecessor's notes we may take that on long lines, which stands as a note at the end of the essay. This is Nott's version:—

If thy verse do bravely tower. A long line is a line we are long in repeating. Mark the time which it takes to repeat these lines properly! What slow movements could Alexandrines express more than these? "As she makes wing, she gets power." One makes a foot of every syllable. Wither was certainly a perfect master of this species of verse.

There is, however, enough genuine un-negatived Lamb (as he would say) remaining to make this edition of Wither a very desirable possession of all collectors of Lamb.

What is even more surprising than Lamb's silence on the subject—which may easily be accounted for by the incomplete state of his correspondence—is the silence of Gutch himself. In 1847, when he told the story of Wither, he made no reference whatever to any use of Lamb's notes beyond Lamb's own, nor even mentioned the fact that a fuller edition of Wither was published by himself, although he refers his readers to two other editions, one earlier and one later, and remarks on the poet's growing popularity. He quotes, however, a long passage from Lamb's 1818 essay, remarking that it was based upon the notes made in the original copy of Wither.

Gutch was wrong in stating that it was through him that Lamb became acquainted with Wither. It was only to Philarete that Gutch introduced him. Lamb was first drawn to Wither by Coleridge, as he admits in the letter of July 1, 1796. In 1798 he wrote to Southey on the subject: "Quarles is a wittier writer, but Wither lays more hold of the heart. … I always love Wither … the extract from Shepherd's Hunting places him in a starry height far above Quarles."

This note is already so long that I hesitate to add to it by quoting from Wither the passages referred to by Lamb. They are, moreover, easily identifiable.

George Wither, or Withers, was born in 1588. His Abuses Stript and Whipt was published in 1613; his Shepherd's Hunting, written in part while its author was in the Marshalsea prison for his plain speaking in Abuses, was published in 1615; Wither's Motto in 1621, and Fair Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete, in 1622, but it may have been composed long before. Wither died in 1667. His light remained under a bushel for many years. The Percy Reliques, 1765, began the revival of Wither's fame; George Ellis's Specimens, 1805, continued it; and then came Lamb, and Gutch, and Southey, and it was assured.

Page 211, line 10. No Shaftesbury, no Villiers, no Wharton. Referring to the victims of Dryden and Pope's satires—the first Earl of Shaftesbury in Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel," "Albion and Albanius" and "The Medal;" Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, in "Absalom and Achitophel" and in Pope's third "Moral Essay;" Philip, Duke of Wharton in Pope's "Epistle to Sir Richard Temple."

Page 211, line 23. Where Faithful is arraigned. Faithful was accused of railing also upon Lord Desire of Vain Glory, my old Lord Lechery and Sir Having Greedy.

Page 215. Five Dramatic Criticisms.

None of these were reprinted by Lamb.

During the year 1819 Leigh Hunt's Examiner gave Lamb his first encouragement to indulge in those raptures upon comedians which no one has expressed so well as he. The notices that follow preceded his Elia essays on the "Old Actors" by some three years, although, as is pointed out in the notes to that work, the essay on the "Acting of Munden" first saw the light in The Examiner of November 7 and 8, 1819, as one of the present series. The central figure, however, of the five pieces here collected together is Miss Kelly, Lamb's friend and favourite actress of his middle and later life, whom he began to praise in 1813 (see "The New Acting," page 177), and in praising whom he never tired.

Lamb's sweet allusion to Miss Kelly's "divine plain face" is well known. It may be interesting, to add Oxberry's description: "Her face is round and pleasing, though not handsome; her eyes are light blue; her forehead is peculiarly low … her smile is peculiarly beautiful and may be said to completely sun her countenance."

In The Examiner for December 20, 1818, after Leigh Hunt's criticism of Kenney's comedy "A Word for the Ladies" is the following paragraph. Leigh Hunt's criticism is signed: this is not, nor is it joined to the article. There is, I think, good reason to believe it to be Lamb's:—

"It was not without a feeling of pain, that we observed Miss Kelly among the spectators on the first night of the new comedy. What does she do before the curtain? She should have been on the stage. With such youth, such talents—

Those powers of pleasing, with that will to please,

it is too much that she should be forgotten, discarded, laid aside like an old fashion. It really is not yet the season for her 'among the wastes of time to go.' Is it Mr. Stephen Kemble, or the Sub-Committee; or what heavy body is it, which interposes itself between us and this light of the stage?"

With these Eulogies of Miss Kelly is associated one of the most interesting days in Lamb's life, as the note on page 487 tells.

Page 215. I.—Mrs. Gould (Miss Burrell) in "Don Giovanni in London."

The Examiner, November 22, 1818. Signed †.

This criticism we know to be Lamb's upon Talfourd's testimony. He writes:—

Miss Burrell, a lady of more limited powers, but with a frank and noble style, was discovered by Lamb on one of the visits which he paid, on the invitation of his old friend Elliston, to the Olympic, where the lady performed the hero of that happy parody of Moncrieff's, "Giovanni in London." To her Lamb devoted a little article, which he sent to The Examiner [a portion of the article is quoted]. Miss Burrell soon married a person named Gold, and disappeared from the stage.

Lamb pasted the article in his Album or Commonplace Book accompanied by a portrait of the actress. Writing to Mrs. Wordsworth in February, 1818, he speaks of his power, during business, of reserving "in some corner of my mind 'some darling thoughts, all my own,'—faint memory of some passage in a book, or the tone of an absent friend's voice—a snatch of Miss Burrell's singing, or a gleam of Fanny Kelly's divine plain face."

Page 215, line 2 of essay. A burletta founded, etc. This was "Rochester; or, King Charles the Second's Merry Days," by William Thomas Moncrieff (1794–1857).

Page 215, line 8 of essay. Elliston and Mrs. Edwin. Robert William Elliston (1774–1831), a famous comedian, and the lessee of the Olympic at that date, of whom Lamb wrote with enthusiasm in his Elia essays, "To the Shade of Elliston," and "Ellistoniana." Elizabeth Rebecca Edwin (1771?-1854) was the wife of John Edwin the younger, a favourite actress in Mrs. Jordan's parts.

Page 215, line 11 of essay. "Don Giovanni." "Giovanni in London; or, The Libertine Reclaimed," 1817, also by Moncrieff—the play in which Madame Vestris made so great a hit a year or so later.

Page 216, line 14 from foot. We have seen Mrs. Jordan. Mrs. Jordan had left the London stage in 1815.

Page 216, line 10 from foot. Great house in the Haymarket. This was the King's Theatre (afterwards His Majesty's) where Mozart's "Don Giovanni" was produced in 1817, with Ambrogetti, the buffo, in the caste. Lamb's friend, William Ayrton, was the moving spirit in this representation.

Page 217. II.—Miss Kelly at Bath.

Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, January 30, 1819. The present article has been set up from that paper. Usually, however, it has been set up from Leigh Hunt's copy in The Examiner, February 7 and 8, 1819, where it was quoted with the following introduction:—

The Reader, we are sure, will thank us for extracting the following observations on a favourite Actress, from a Provincial Paper, the Bristol Journal. We should have guessed the masterly and cordial hand that wrote them had we met with it in the East Indies. There is but one praise belonging to Miss Kelly which it has omitted, and which it could not supply;—and that is, that she has had finer criticism written upon her, than any performer that ever trod the stage.

The letter was written to John Mathew Gutch (see notes to Lamb's essay on "George Wither"), who in 1803 became proprietor of Felix Farley's Bristol Journal. Miss Kelly was at Bath in 1819 at the end of January and first half of February.

Page 217, first line of essay. Our old play-going days. The Lambs lodged with Gutch, who was then a law-stationer, at 34 Southampton Buildings, in 1800. Lamb was there alone for some time, during his sister's illness, and it is probably to this period that he refers.

Page 217, second line. Mrs. Jordan. See note above. Miss Kelly played many of Mrs. Jordan's parts.

Page 217, third line. Dodd and Parsons. See note to "The New Acting," page 465.

Page 217, fourth line. Smith or Jack Palmer. William Smith (1730?-1819), known as Gentleman Smith. Lamb perhaps saw him on the night of May 18, 1798, his sole appearance for ten years; otherwise his knowledge of his acting could be but small. On that occasion Smith played Charles Surface in "The School for Scandal," Joseph Surface being Jack Palmer's great part (see the Elia essay on "The Artificial Comedy," for an analysis of Palmer's acting).

Page 217, sixth line. Miss Kelly. See note to "The New Acting," page 466. Frances Maria Kelly (1790–1882) made her début at the age of seven in "Bluebeard" (the music by her uncle, Michael Kelly), at Drury Lane, in 1798. She was enrolled as a chorister of Drury Lane in 1799. She made her farewell appearance at Drury Lane in 1835.

Page 218, line 20. Yarico. In "Inkle and Yarico," 1787, by George Colman the younger (1762–1836).

Page 218, line 11 from foot. A Phœbe or a Dinah Cropley. Phœbe, in "Rosina," by Mrs. Frances Brooke (1724–1789). I do not find a Dinah Cropley among Miss Kelly's parts. She played Dinah Primrose in O'Keeffe's "Young Quaker"—Lamb may have been thinking of that.

Page 218, line 5 from foot. "The Merry Mourners." "Modern Antiques; or, The Merry Mourners," 1791, by John O'Keeffe. It was while playing in this farce on February 17, 1816, that Miss Kelly was fired at by a lunatic in the pit. Some of the shot is said to have fallen into the lap of Mary Lamb, who was present with her brother.

Page 218, foot. Inebriation in Nell. Nell, in "The Devil to Pay," 1731, originally by Charles Coffey (d. 1745), but much adapted. Nell was one of Mrs. Jordan's great parts.

Page 219, line 2. Our friend C. Coleridge, who was also at Christ's Hospital with Gutch. He says, in Biographia Literaria: "Men of Letters and literary genius are too often what is styled in trivial irony 'fine gentlemen spoilt in the making.' They care not for show and grandeur in what surrounds them, having enough within … but they are fine gentlemen in all that concerns ease and pleasurable, or at least comfortable, sensation." In one of his lectures on "Poetry, the Drama and Shakespeare" in 1818, Coleridge says: "As it must not, so genius can not, be lawless;" which is the reverse of Lamb's recollection.

Page 219. III.—Richard Brome's "Jovial Crew."

Examiner, July 4 and 5, 1819. Signed ****. Richard Brome's "Jovial Crew; or, The Merry Beggars," was first acted in 1641, and continually revived since then, although it is now no longer seen. Indeed our opportunities are few to-day of seeing most of the plays that Lamb praised. The revival criticised by Lamb began at the English Opera House (the Lyceum) on June 29, 1819.

Page 219, line 7 from foot. Lovegrove. William Lovegrove (1778–1816), a famous character actor. He ceased to be seen at except rare intervals after 1814.

Page 219, line 5 from foot. Dowton. See note to "The New Acting," page 465.

Page 220, line 3. Wrench. Benjamin Wrench (1778–1843), a comedian of the school of Elliston.

Page 220, line 6. Miss Stevenson. This actress afterwards became Mrs. Wiepperts.

Page 220, line 12. She that played Rachel. Miss Kelly. Lamb returned to his praise of this piece and of Miss Kelly in it in a note to the "Garrick Plays," but he there credited her with playing Meriel.

Page 220, line 15 from foot. "Pretty Bessy." In the old ballad "The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green," Bessie was the daughter of Henry, son of Simon de Montfort.

Page 220, line 6 from foot. Society for the Suppression of Mendicity. Lamb returned to the attack upon this body in his Elia essay "On the Decay of Beggars," in 1822.

It has recently come to light that Charles Lamb proposed marriage to Miss Kelly on July 20, 1819, and was refused; and this proposal is so intimately associated with two of the Examiner articles that I place the story of it here.

On July 4th appeared Lamb's article on "The Jovial Crew" with Miss Kelly as Rachel. To read this article in ignorance of the critic's innermost feelings for the actress is to experience no more than the customary intellectual titillation that is imparted by a piece of rich appreciation from such a pen; but to read it knowing what was in his mind at the time is a totally different thing. What before was mere inspired dramatic criticism becomes a revelation charged with human interest. Read again the passage from "But the Princess of Mumpers, and Lady Paramount, of beggarly counterfeit accents, was she that played Rachel," down to "'What a lass that were,' said a stranger who sate beside us, speaking of Miss Kelly in Rachel, 'to go a gypseying through the world with.'" Knowing what we do of Charles Lamb's little ways, we can be in no doubt as to the identity of the stranger who was fabled to have sate beside him.

Miss Kelly would of course read the criticism, and being a woman, and a woman of genius, would probably be not wholly unaware of the significance of a portion of it; and therefore perhaps she was not wholly unprepared for Lamb's letter of proposal, which he wrote a fortnight later.

"20 July, 1819.

"Dear Miss Kelly—We had the pleasure, pain I might better call it, of seeing you last night in the new Play. It was a most consummate piece of Acting, but what a task for you to undergo! at a time when your heart is sore from real sorrow! it has given rise to a train of thinking, which I cannot suppress.

"Would to God you were released from this way of life; that you could bring your mind to consent to take your lot with us, and throw off for ever the whole burden of your Profession. I neither expect or wish you to take notice of this which I am writing, in your present over occupied & hurried state.—But to think of it at your leisure. I have quite income enough, if that were all, to justify for me making such a proposal, with what I may call even a handsome provision for my survivor. What you possess of your own would naturally be appropriated to those, for whose sakes chiefly you have made so many hard sacrifices. I am not so foolish as not to know that I am a most unworthy match for such a one as you, but you have for years been a principal object in my mind. In many a sweet assumed character I have learned to love you, but simply as F. M. Kelly I love you better than them all. Can you quit these shadows of existence, & come & be a reality to us? can you leave off harrassing yourself to please a thankless multitude, who know nothing of you, & begin at last to live to yourself & your friends?

"As plainly & frankly as I have seen you give or refuse assent in some feigned scene, so frankly do me the justice to answer me. It is impossible I should feel injured or aggrieved by your telling me at once, that the proposal does not suit you. It is impossible that I should ever think of molesting you with idle importunity and persecution after your mind once firmly spoken—but happier, far happier, could I have leave to hope a time might come, when our friends might be your friends; our interests yours; our book-knowledge, if in that inconsiderable particular we have any little advantage, might impart something to you, which you would every day have it in your power ten thousand fold to repay by the added cheerfulness and joy which you could not fail to bring as a dowry into whatever family should have the honor and happiness of receiving you, the most welcome accession that could be made to it.

"In haste, but with entire respect & deepest affection, I subscribe myself

C. Lamb."

This was Miss Kelly's reply to Lamb's letter, returned by hand—the way, I imagine, in which his proposal had reached her:—

"Henrietta Street, July 20th, 1819.

"An early & deeply rooted attachment has fixed my heart on one from whom no worldly prospect can well induce me to withdraw it, but while I thus frankly & decidedly decline your proposal, believe me, I am not insensible to the high honour which the preference of such a mind as yours confers upon me—let me, however, hope that all thought upon this subject will end with this letter, & that you will henceforth encourage no other sentiment towards me than esteem in my private character and a continuance of that approbation of my humble talents which you have already expressed so much & so often to my advantage and gratification.

"Believe me I feel proud to acknowledge myself

"Your obliged friend

"F. M. Kelly."

Lamb also replied at once, and his little romance was over, July 20th, 1819, seeing the whole drama played.

"July 20th, 1819.

"Dear Miss Kelly—Your injunctions shall be obeyed to a tittle. I feel myself in a lackadaisacal no-how-ish kind of a humour. I believe it is the rain, or something. I had thought to have written seriously, but I fancy I succeed best in epistles of mere fun; puns & that nonsense. You will be good friends with us, will you not? let what has past 'break no bones' between us. You will not refuse us them next time we send for them?[68]

"Yours very truly,

"C. L.

"Do you observe the delicacy of not signing my full name? N.B. Do not paste that last letter of mine into your Book."

[68] By "bones" Lamb here means also the little ivory discs which were given by the management to friends, entitling them to free admission to the theatre.

I have said that the drama was played to the end on July 20th; but it had a little epilogue. In The Examiner for August 1st Lamb wrote of the Lyceum again. The play was "The Hypocrite," and this is how he spoke of Miss Kelly: "She is in truth not framed to tease or torment even in jest, but to utter a hearty Yes or No; to yield or refuse assent with a noble sincerity. We have not the pleasure of being acquainted with her, but we have been told that she carries the same cordial manners into private life."

That Lamb's wishes with regard to the old footing were realised we may feel sure, for she continued to visit her friends, both in London and at Enfield, and in later years was taught Latin by Mary Lamb. Miss Kelly died unmarried at the age of ninety-two; Charles Lamb died unmarried at the age of fifty-nine.

Page 221. IV.—Isaac Bickerstaff's "Hypocrite."

Examiner, August 1 and 2, 1819. Signed ****. This play was produced, in its operatic form, at the English Opera House on July 27, 1819. It was announced as from "Tartuffe," by Molière, with alterations by Cibber, Bickerstaff and others. The music was arranged by Mr. Jolly. Miss Kelly played Charlotte.

Page 221, line 4. Dowton in Dr. Cantwell. For Dowton see note to "The New Acting," page 465. Dr. Cantwell was the chief character in "The Hypocrite."

Page 221, line 5. Mr. Arnold. Samuel James Arnold (1774-1852), dramatist and manager of the Lyceum. Lamb's friend, William Ayrton, married Arnold's sister.

Page 221, line 6. Mathews. The great Charles Mathews (1776–1835), whom Lamb afterwards came to know personally, whose special gift was the rapid impersonation of differing types.

Page 221, line 9. Our favourite theatre. The English Opera House—the Lyceum—rebuilt 1816.

Page 221, line 10 from foot. Mr. Kean. Edmund Kean (1787–1833).

Page 221, line 9 from foot. "The City Madam." A play by Philip Massinger, licensed 1632, in which Luke Frugal is the leading character.

Page 222, lines 3–5. Whitfield … Lady Huntingdon. George Whitefield (1714–1770), the great Methodist preacher, and chaplain to the Countess of Huntingdon. Whitefield was actually put on the stage, in "The Mirror," by Foote, in 1760, as Dr. Squintum.

Page 222, line 13. Mr. Pearman. William Pearman, the tenor, a popular singer, second only to Braham in sea songs.

Page 222. V.—New Pieces at the Lyceum.

Examiner, August 8 and 9, 1819. Signed ****. This criticism was introduced by the following note by Leigh Hunt:—

We must make the public acquainted with a hard case of ours.—Here had we been writing a long elaborate, critical, and analytical account of the new pieces at the Lyceum, poring over the desk for two hours in the morning after a late night, and melting away what little had been left of our brains and nerves from the usual distillation of the week, when an impudent rogue of a friend, whose most daring tricks and pretences carry as good a countenance with them as virtues in any other man, and who has the face, above all, to be a better critic than ourselves, sends us the following remarks of his own on those two very pieces. What do we do? The self-love of your inferior critic must vent itself somehow; and so we take this opportunity of showing our virtue at the expense of our talents, and fairly making way for the interloper.

Dear, nine closely-written octavo pages! you were very good after all, between you and me; and should have given way to nobody else. If there is room left, a piece of you shall be got in at the end; for virtue is undoubtedly its own reward, but not quite.

Page 222, foot. "Belles without Beaux." This was probably, says Genest, another version of the French piece from which "Ladies at Home; or, Gentlemen, we can do without You" (by J. G. Millingen, and produced also in 1819) was taken. The date of production was August 6, 1819.

Page 223, lines 2–7. There is Miss Carew, etc. The seven ladies in the play were: Miss Kelly, who played Mrs. Dashington; Mrs. W. S. Chatterly, née Louisa Simeon (b. 1797), wife of William Simmonds Chatterly, the actor (1787–1822): she was said to be the best representative of a Frenchwoman on the English stage; Miss Carew (b. 1799), a comic opera prima donna, at first the understudy of Miss Stephens, and a special favourite with Barry Cornwall, who says in his Sicilian Story, "Give me (but p'r'aps I'm partial) Miss Carew;" Mrs. Grove, probably the wife of Grove, an excellent impersonator of whimsical old men and scheming servants; Miss Love (b. 1801), excellent in chambermaids, to whom Colonel Berkeley turned (see note on page 521) after leaving Miss Foote; Miss Stevenson (see note above); and Mrs. Richardson, who was probably the wife of Richardson, a member of the Covent Garden Company.

Page 223, line 15. Holcroft's last Comedy. "The Vindictive Man" (see note "On the Custom of Hissing," page 450).

Page 223, line 19. Mrs. Harlow. Sarah Harlowe (1765–1852), a low-comedy actress, who played many of Mrs. Jordan's parts. She left the stage in 1826.

Page 224, line 5. Wilkinson … in a "Walk for a Wager." In "Walk for a Wager; or, A Bailiff's Bet," a musical farce, the hero, Hookey Walker, was impersonated by John Penbury Wilkinson, and Miss Kelly played Emma.

Page 224, line 12. "Amateurs and Actors" … Mr. Peak. A musical farce, by Richard Brinsley Peake (1792–1847), produced in 1818.

Page 224, last paragraph. Last week's article. That on "The Hypocrite," preceding this (see notes above). "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," published 1632, is a comedy by Massinger, in which Sir Giles Overreach is the leading character.

Page 225. Four Reviews.

These four reviews, together with that of Wordsworth's Excursion, written five years earlier (see page 187), and that of Hood and Reynolds' Odes and Addresses (see page 335), make up the total number of reviews that Lamb is known positively to have written. We know from his Letters that in 1803 he was trying to review Godwin's Chaucer, and again in 1821 he writes to Taylor that he is busy on a review for a friend; but neither of these articles has come to light. The fact is that Lamb always reviewed with difficulty, and after his bitter experience with Gifford (see note on page 470) he was more than ever disinclined to attempt that form of writing.

Page 225. I.—"Falstaff's Letters."

Examiner, September 5 and 6, 1819. Signed ****. Reprinted in The Indicator, January 24, 1821. Not reprinted by Lamb.

James White, born in the same year as Lamb, was nominally the author of this book, but there is strong reason to believe that Lamb had a big share in it. Jem White, who is now known solely by the pleasant figure that he cuts in the Elia essay "The Praise of Chimney Sweepers," was at school with Lamb at Christ's Hospital, receiving his nomination from Thomas Coventry, Samuel Salt's friend and fellow Bencher. Lamb saw much of White for a few years after leaving school, finding him, on the merry side, as congenial a companion as he could wish.

It was Lamb who, probably in 1795, when they both were only twenty, induced White to study Shakespeare; and it is impossible to believe that a friend of Lamb's, whom he saw nearly every night, could have been composing a full-blooded Shakespearian joke, and Lamb have no hand in it. Southey, indeed, in a letter to Edward Moxon after Lamb's death, states the fact that Lamb and White were joint authors of Falstaff's Letters, as if there were no doubt about it.

My own impression is that Lamb's fingers certainly held the pen when the Dedication to Master Samuel Irelaunde was written.

And very characteristically Elian is the following explanation, in the preface, of certain gaps in the Letters:—

"Reader, whenever as journeying onward in thy epistolary progress, a chasm should occur to interrupt the chain of events, I beseech thee blame not me, but curse the rump of roast pig. This maiden-sister, conceive with what pathos I relate it, absolutely made use of several, no doubt invaluable letters, to shade the jutting protuberances of that animal from disproportionate excoriation in its circuitous approaches to the fire."

Either Lamb wrote that, or to James White's influence we owe some of the most cherished mannerisms of Elia. Be that as it may, it is probably true that White's zest in the making of this book helped towards Lamb's Elizabethanising.

Lamb admired Falstaff's Letters more than it is possible quite to understand except on the supposition that he had a share in it; or, at any rate, that it brought back to him the memory of so many pleasant nights. He never, says Talfourd, omitted to buy a copy when he saw one in the sixpenny box of a bookstall, in order to give it with superlative recommendations to a friend. For example, after sending it to Manning, he asks: "I hope by this time you are prepared to say the Falstaff Letters are a bundle of the sharpest, queerest, profoundest humours of any these juice-drained latter times have spawned?" The little volume is now very rare. A second edition was published in 1797 and reprints in 1877 and 1905. The full title runs: Original Letters, &c., of Sir John Falstaff and his friends; now first made public by a gentleman, a descendant of Dame Quickly, from genuine manuscripts which have been in the possession of the Quickly Family near four hundred years. 1796. "White," said J. M. Gutch, another schoolfellow, "was known as Sir John among his friends." See the footnote to the Elia essay on "The Old Actors".

Page 225, first line of essay. The Roxburgh sale. The library of the third Duke of Roxburgh was sold, in a forty-five days' sale, between May 18 and July 8, 1812.

Page 229. II.—Charles Lloyd's Poems.

Examiner, October 24 and 25, 1819. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb. Lamb and Lloyd had been intimate friends in 1797 and 1798, when they produced together Blank Verse, and when for a while Lloyd shared rooms with James White. But serious differences arose which need not be inquired into here, and after 1800 they drifted apart and were never really friendly again. Lloyd settled among the Lakes, where at frequent intervals for many years he became the prey of religious mania. In 1818, however, the clouds effectually dispersed for a while, and, returning to London, he resumed the poetical activity of his early life. The new pieces in Nugæ Canoræ, 1819, were the first-fruit of this period, which lasted until 1823. He then relapsed into his old state and died, lost to the world, in 1839. Writing to Lloyd concerning his later poetry Lamb said: "Your lines are not to be understood reading on one leg."

In Lloyd's poem, "Desultory Thoughts in London," 1821, are portraits of both Coleridge and Lamb. One stanza on Lamb has these lines:—

It is a dainty banquet, known to few,

To thy mind's inner shrine to have access;

While choicest stores of intellect endue

That sanctuary, in marvellous excess.

Those lambent glories ever bright and new,

Those, privileged to be its inmates, bless!

This shows that Lloyd retained his old affection and admiration for Lamb, just as Lamb's willingness to review Lloyd shows that he had forgotten the past. The quotations have been corrected from Lloyd's pages.

Page 230, line 15. Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1759–1797), the first wife of William Godwin, and the advocate of women's independence. Charles Lloyd had known her in his early London days.

Page 232. III.—Barron Field's Poems.

Examiner, January 16 and 17, 1820. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Barron Field (1786–1846), son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital, was long one of Lamb's friends, possibly through his brother, a fellow clerk of Lamb's in the India House. See the Elia essays on "Distant Correspondents" and "Mackery End," and notes. Field was in Australia from 1817 to 1824 as Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. His First-Fruits of Australian Poetry was printed privately in 1819 and afterwards added as an appendix to Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales, 1825.

Page 232. Motto. "I first adventure. … " An adaptation of the couplet in Hall's satires:—

I first adventure. Follow me who list,

And be the second English satirist.

This couplet was placed by Field on the threshold of the poems in the Geographical Memoirs, borrowed, I imagine, from Lamb's review.

Page 232, line 11 from foot. Thiefland. Compare the Elia essay "Distant Correspondents."

Page 232, line 8 from foot. A merry Captain. Captain (afterwards Rear-Admiral) James Burney (1750–1821), Lamb's friend, who sailed with Cook on two voyages. Lamb told Mrs. Shelley of the Captain's pun in much the same words; but the pun itself we do not know.

Page 233, line 16. Jobson, etc. These characters are in "The Devil to Pay," by Charles Coffey, 1731.

Page 233, line 26. Braham or Stephens. John Braham, the tenor; Miss Stephens made her first appearance at Drury Lane, as Polly in "The Beggar's Opera," in 1798.

Page 233, line 12 from foot. The first. … The first poem was entitled "Botany Bay Flowers."

Page 234. "The Kangaroo." Writing to Barron Field in 1820 Lamb says: "We received your 'Australian First-Fruits,' of which I shall say nothing here, but refer you to **** of 'The Examiner,' who speaks our mind on all public subjects. I can only assure you that both Coleridge and Wordsworth … were hugely taken with your Kangaroo." The poem is here corrected from the author's text.

Page 235. IV.—Keats' "Lamia."

The New Times, July 19, 1820. This is the article referred to by Cowden Clarke in his Recollections of Writers, 1878: "Upon the publication of the last volume of poems [Lamia, etc.] Charles Lamb wrote one of his finely appreciative and cordial critiques in the Morning Chronicle." By a slip of memory Clarke gave the wrong paper. Lamb wrote in the Morning Chronicle occasionally (his sonnet to Sarah Burney appeared in it as near to the date in question as July 13, 1820), but it was in The New Times that he reviewed Keats. The New Times was founded by John (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart (1773–1856), Lamb and Coleridge's friend, and the brother-in-law of Hazlitt.

Two days after the appearance of Lamb's review—on July 21, 1820—The New Times printed some further extracts from the book, which presumably had been crowded out of the article.

There is so little doubt in my own mind that this is Lamb's review that I have placed it in the body of this book and not in the Appendix. The internal evidence is very strong, particularly at the end, and in the use of such phrases as "joint strengths" and "younger impressibilities." But there is external evidence too. Leigh Hunt, writing of Keats, in his Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, 1828, says:—