Читать книгу The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb - Charles Lamb - Страница 169

I remember Charles Lamb's delight and admiration on reading this work [Lamia]; how pleased he was with the designation of Mercury as the "star of Lethe" (rising, as it were, and glittering, as he came upon that pale region); with the fine daring anticipation in that passage of the second poem—

"So the two brothers and their murdered man, Rode past fair Florence;"

and with the description, at once delicate and gorgeous, of Agnes [i.e., Madeline], praying beneath the painted window.

Lamb did not know Keats well. He had met him only a few times, the historic occasion being the dinner at Haydon's, in December, 1817, when the Comptroller of Stamps was present. But he admired his work (he told Crabb Robinson he considered it next to Wordsworth's), and he hated the treatment that Keats received from certain critics. Keats, by the way, mentions meeting Lamb at Novello's and having to endure some wretched puns.

Page 239. Sir Thomas More.

The Indicator, December 20, 1820. Signed ****. Leigh Hunt introduced the article in these words:—

The author of the Table-Talk in our last [see note on p. 466] has obliged us with the following pungent morsels of Sir Thomas More—devils, we may call them. Brantome, noticing the oaths of some eminent Christian manslayers, and informing us that "the good man, Monsieur de la Roche du Maine, swore by 'God's head full of relics,'" adds in a parenthesis—"Where the devil did he get that?"—"Ou diable avoit-il trouvè celuy-la?" We may apply this vivacious mode of questioning, with a more critical propriety, to those eminent Christian opposers of reformation, past, present, and to come, and ask them, where the devil they get a notion that they are on the side of charity? It is possible to hate for the sake of a loving theory; but it is a dangerous piece of self-flattery, and more likely to spring up in hating than loving minds. If it partakes of the reverent privileges of sorrow in those who are unsuccessful or oppressed, it is odious in those who are flourishing, and we are afraid is nothing but sheer dogmatism and tyranny even in men as great as Sir Thomas More.

Further proof of Lamb's authorship is contained in the circumstance that the passages here quoted are copied in one of his Commonplace Books.

Page 246. The Confessions of H. F. V. H. Delamore, Esq.

London Magazine, April, 1821. First reprinted in Mr. Dobell's Sidelights on Charles Lamb, 1903.

Lamb's "Chapter on Ears" had appeared in the March number, containing the sentence, "I was never, I thank my stars, in the pillory; nor, if I read them aright, is it within the compass of my destiny, that I ever should be." The main confession aroused by this statement, although it is hedged about by a host of inventions, seems to be perfectly true: Lamb did on one occasion sit in the stocks. Our evidence, which, fortified by this little article (a discovery of Mr. Bertram Dobell's), is very strong, is to be found on the fly-leaf of the annotated copy of Wither described above. On this fly-leaf Pulham has recorded that during a country walk on a certain Sunday Lamb was set in the stocks for brawling while service was in progress. According to Mr. Delamore, the indignity was suffered at Barnet, and it was probably, if what he says about the short duration of the punishment be true, nearly as much a joke on the part of the authorities as on the part of Lamb. I cannot find any record of the incident in the Barnet archives, but the stocks are still standing, on the outskirts of Barnet, on Hadley Green.

Additional proof that Lamb wrote these "Confessions" is to be found in the little note inserted in the following (May) number of the London Magazine, under the "Lion's Head":—

"Spes may be assured, that the fact related in the paper in our last Number, signed 'Delamore,' and dated 'Sackville Street,' is genuine, with the exception of the name and date. It is the writer's own story.

"——quæque ipse mìserrima vidi,

Et quorum pars magna fui.

"* * * *."

Four stars was, of course, one of Lamb's commonest non-Elia signatures (see note on page 464). The quotation is from Aeneid, II., 5. "The most unhappy scenes which I beheld, and in which I played a leading part."

Page 247, line 15. * * * * * * * * * * *. In the stocks.

Page 247, line 19. O Clarencieux! O Norroy! The two provincial kings-at-arms, Clarencieux, after the Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III., whose office is south of the Trent, and Norroy (North-roy), whose office is north of the Trent.

Page 248, line 4. Barnet … Red Rose. Referring to the battle of Barnet on April 14, 1471, when Edward IV. defeated and slew the Earl of Warwick, and practically destroyed the Lancastrian, or Red Rose, cause, finally doing so at the battle of Tewkesbury a little later.

Page 248. The Gentle Giantess.

London Magazine, December, 1822. Not reprinted by Lamb.

We find the germ of this essay in a letter from Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth, in 1821, when she was staying with her uncle, Christopher Wordsworth, the Master of Trinity:—

"Ask any body you meet, who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll hold you a wager they'll say Mrs. Smith. She broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens, one on the confines of St. John's, which occasioned a litigation between the societies as to repairing it. In warm weather she retires into an ice-cellar (literally!), and dates the returns of the years from a hot Thursday some 20 years back. She sits in a room with opposite doors and windows, to let in a thorough draft, which gives her slenderer friends toothaches. She is to be seen in the market every morning, at 10 cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge Poulterers are not sufficiently careful to stump."

It was characteristic of Lamb that finding the widow at Cambridge he should have set her in the essay at Oxford. He did the same thing in his Elia essay "On Oxford in the Vacation," which he conceived at the sister university.

Page 248, line 4 of essay. The maid's aunt of Brainford. The maid's aunt of Brentford; otherwise Sir John Falstaff in petticoats (see "The Merry Wives of Windsor," Act IV., Scene 2).

Page 251. Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has been Neglected.

London Magazine, January, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

De Quincey's "Letters to a Young Man whose Education has been Neglected" began in the London Magazine in January, 1823. There were five altogether, ending in July of the same year. From the date at the end of Lamb's "Letter," and from a passage in a Letter to Barton of March 5, 1823, we may suppose him to have meant his parody to appear at the same time. "Your poem," he says, "found me engaged about a humorous Paper for the London, which I had called 'A Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education had been Neglected'—and when it was done Taylor & Hessey would not print it, and it discouraged me from doing anything else."

The problem of De Quincey's "Young Man" was contained in this sentence in the first letter: "To your first question—whether to you, with your purposes and at your age of thirty-two, a residence at either of our English universities—or at any foreign university, can be of much service."—Writing to Miss Hutchinson in January, 1825, Lamb says: "De Quincey's Parody was submitted to him before printed, and had his Probatum."

I have not been able to discover whether or no any special significance attaches to the name of Grierson; or whether Lamb took the name at random.

Page 255, line 25. Mr. Hartlib. Milton's friend, Samuel Hartlib (died about 1670), to whom the Tractate on Education, which Lamb slyly plays upon in this paragraph, was addressed by Milton in 1644. Hartlib is said to have brought himself to poverty by his generosity to poor scholars.

Page 257. Ritson versus John Scott the Quaker.

London Magazine, April, 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb.

This was a hoax, as Lamb explained in a letter to Bernard Barton (March 5, 1823): "I took up Scott, where I had scribbled some petulant remarks, and for a make-shift father'd them on Ritson." Scott was John Scott, the Quaker, better known as Scott of Amwell (1730–1783), whose Critical Essays, 1785, do actually contain the passages quoted by Lamb, with slight errors of transcription. Joseph Ritson (1752–1803), antiquary and critic, might easily have commented as Lamb has done, but with more savagery. Ritson's library was sold in December, 1803.

Page 265. Letter of Elia to Robert Southey.

London Magazine, October, 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb, except in part. See below.

It was Lamb's fate to be misunderstood by the Quarterly Review; and in that misunderstanding lay the real origin of the "Letter to Southey." On at least four occasions Lamb was unfairly treated by this powerful organ: in December, 1811, when, in a review of Weber's edition of Ford's works, Lamb was called a poor maniac (see note on page 471); in October, 1814, when his review of Wordsworth's Excursion was hacked to pieces (see same note); in April, 1822, when a reviewer of Reid's Hypochondriasis (believed to be Dr. Robert Gooch, a friend of Southey) stated that he knew for a fact that Lamb's "Confessions of a Drunkard" were autobiographical (see note on page 458); and lastly, in January, 1823, when Southey, in an article on "Theo-philanthropism in France and the Spread of Infidelity," remarked, incidentally and quite needlessly, of Elia, then just published, that it wanted a sounder religious feeling, and went on to rebuke Lamb's friend, Leigh Hunt, for his lack of Christian faith. It was this accumulation of affront that stirred Lamb to his remonstrance, far more than anger with Southey—although anger he naturally had. Lamb's real opponent was Gifford; as in a private letter to Southey, after the publication of the article and after Southey had written to him on the matter, he admitted (see below).

Lamb's own remark concerning the "Letter to Southey," there expressed—"My guardian angel was absent at that time"—is perhaps right, although the passage in the article in defence of his friends could be ill spared. As for Southey, while one can see his point of view and respect his honesty, one is glad that so poor a piece of literary criticism and so unlovely a display of self-righteousness should be chastised; without, however, too greatly admiring the chastisement.

Lamb's first idea was to let the review pass without notice, as we see from the following remark to Bernard Barton in July, 1823:—

"Southey has attacked 'Elia' on the score of infidelity in the Quarterly article, 'Progress of Infidelity.' I had not, nor have seen the Monthly. He might have spared an old friend such a construction of a few careless flights, that meant no harm to religion. If all his unguarded expressions were to be collected—! But I love and respect Southey, and will not retort. I hate his review, and his being a reviewer. The hint he has dropped will knock the sale of the book on the head, which was almost at a stop before. Let it stop, there is corn in Egypt, while there is cash at Leadenhall. You and I are something besides being writers, thank God!"

But Lamb thought better, or worse, of his first intention, and wrote the "Letter."

It appeared in October, 1823, and caused some talk among literary people. Southey had many enemies who were glad to see him trounced. The Times, for example, of October 2, said:—

The number just published of the London Magazine contains a curious letter from Elia (Charles Lamb) to Mr. Southey. It treats the laureat with that contempt which his always uncandid and frequently malignant spirit deserves. When it is considered that Mr. Lamb has been the fast friend of Southey, and is besides of a particularly kind and peaceable nature, it is evident that nothing but gross provocation could have roused him to this public declaration of his disgust.

On the other hand, Christopher North (John Wilson), of Blackwood, made the letter the text of a homily to literary men, in Blackwood, for October, 1823, under the heading of "A Manifesto." After some general remarks on the tendency of authors to take themselves, or at any rate their position in the public eye, too seriously, he continued:—

Our dearly-beloved friend, Charles Lamb, (we would fain call him Elia; but that, as he himself says, "would be as good as naming him,") what is this you are doing? Mr. Southey, having read your Essays, wished to pay you a compliment, and called them, in the "Quarterly," "a book which wants only a sounder religious feeling, to be as delightful as it is original!" And with this eulogy you are not only dissatisfied, but so irate at the Laureate, that nothing will relieve your bile, but a Letter to the Doctor of seven good pages in "The London." Prodigious! Nothing would content your highness (not serene) of the India-House, but such a sentence as would sell your lucubrations as a puff; and because Taylor and Hessey cannot send this to the newspapers, you wax sour, sulky, and vituperative of your old crony, and twit him with his "old familiar faces." This is, our dear Charles, most unreasonable—most unworthy of you; and we know not how to punish you with sufficient severity, now that Hodge of Tortola[69] is no more; but the inflexible Higgins of Nevis still survives, and we must import him to flog you in the market-place.

[69] See note to "Christ's Hospital" essay, in Vol. II.—Ed.

Are you, or are you not, a friend to the liberty of the press? of human thought? feeling? opinion? Is it, Charles, enormous wickedness in Southey thus to characterize your Essays? If so, what do you think of the invasion of Spain, the murder of the Franks family, Pygmalion's amour with the tailor's daughter, the military execution of the Duc d'Enghien, Palm's death, the massacre at Scio, Z.'s Letters on the Cockney-School, Don Juan, John Knox, Calvin, Cock-fighting, the French Revolution, the Reduction of the Five Per Cents Navy, Godwin's Political Justice, the Tread-Mill, the Crusades, Gas fighting booty, D'Israeli's Quarrels of Authors, Byron's conduct to the Hunts, and the doctrine of the universal depravity of the human race?

Is there a sound religious feeling in your Essays, or is there not? And what is a sound religious feeling? You declare yourself a Unitarian; but, as a set-off to that heterodoxy, you vaunt your bosom-friendship with T. N. T., "a little tainted with Socinianism," and "——, a sturdy old Athanasian." With this vaunting anomaly you make the Laureate blush, till his face tinges Derwent-water with a ruddy lustre as of the setting sun. O Charles, Charles——if we could but "see ourselves as others see us!" Would that we ourselves could do so! But how would that benefit you? You are too amiable to wish to see Christopher North humiliated in his own estimation, and startled at the sight of Public Derision, like yourself! Yes——even Cockneys blush for you; and the many clerks of the India-House hang down their heads and are ashamed.

You present the Public with a list of your friends. "W., the light, and warm—as light-hearted Janus of the London!" Who the devil is he? Let him cover both his faces with a handkerchief. "H. C. R., unwearied in the offices of a friend;" the correspondent and caricaturist of Wordsworth, the very identical "W——th," who "estated" you in so many "possessions," and made you proud of your "rent-roll." "W. A., the last and steadiest of that little knot of whist-players." Ah! lack-a-day, Charles, what are trumps? And "M., the noble-minded kinsman by wedlock" of the same eternal "W——th." Pray, what is his wife's name? and were the banns published in St. Pancras Church?——All this is very vain and very virulent; and you indeed give us portraits of your friends, each in the clare-obscure.

We were in the number of your earliest, sincerest, best, and most powerful friends, Charles; and yet, alas! for the ingratitude of the human heart, you have never so much as fortified yourself with the initials of our formidable name——"C. N. the Editor of Blackwood." Oh, that would have been worth P——r, A—— P——, G——n, and "the rest," all in a lump; better than the "Four-and-twenty Fiddlers all in a row." Or had you had the courage and the conscience to print, at full length, "Christopher North," why, these sixteen magical letters would have opened every door for you, like Sesame in the Arabian Tales. These four magical syllables, triumphant over the Laureate's "ugly characters, standing in the very front of his notice, like some bug-bear, to frighten all good Christians from purchasing," would have been a passport for Elia throughout all the kingdoms of Christianity, and billetted you, a true soldier of the Faith, in any serious family you chose, with morning and evening prayers; a hot, heavy supper every night; a pan of hot-coals ere you were sheeted; and a good motherly body, with six unmarried daughters, to tap at your bed-room door at day-light, and summon you down stairs from a state of "otium cum dignitate" to one of "gaiety and innocence," among damsels with scriptural names, short petticoats, and a zealous attachment to religious establishments.

We may set off against this the comment of Crabb Robinson:—

Nothing that Lamb has ever written has impressed me more strongly with the sweetness of his disposition and the strength of his affections.

Coleridge and Hazlitt also both commended the "Letter." Southey displayed a fine temper. He wrote to Lamb on November 19, 1823:—

My Dear Lamb—On Monday I saw your letter in the London Magazine, which I had not before had an opportunity of seeing, and I now take the first interval of leisure for replying to it.

Nothing could be further from my mind than any intention or apprehension of any way offending or injuring a man concerning whom I have never spoken, thought, or felt otherwise than with affection, esteem, and admiration.

If you had let me know in any private or friendly manner that you felt wounded by a sentence in which nothing but kindness was intended—or that you found it might injure the sale of your book—I would most readily and gladly have inserted a note in the next Review to qualify and explain what had hurt you.

You have made this impossible, and I am sorry for it. But I will not engage in controversy with you to make sport for the Philistines.

The provocation must be strong indeed that can rouse me to do this, even with an enemy. And if you can forgive an unintended offence as heartily as I do the way in which you have resented it, there will be nothing to prevent our meeting as we have heretofore done, and feeling towards each other as we have always been wont to do.

Only signify a correspondent willingness on your part, and send me your address, and my first business next week shall be to reach your door, and shake hands with you and your sister. Remember me to her most kindly and believe me—Yours, with unabated esteem and regards,

Robert Southey.

Lamb replied at once—November 21, 1823:—

Dear Southey—The kindness of your note has melted away the mist which was upon me. I have been fighting against a shadow. That accursed Q. R. had vexed me by a gratuitous speaking, of its own knowledge, that the Confessions of a D——d was a genuine description of the state of the writer. Little things, that are not ill meant, may produce much ill. That might have injured me alive and dead. I am in a public office, and my life is insured. I was prepared for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few obnoxious words, a hard case of repetition directed against me. I wished both magazine and review at the bottom of the sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and my sister (though innocent) will be still more so; for the folly was done without her knowledge, and has made her uneasy ever since. My guardian angel was absent at that time.

I will muster up courage to see you, however, any day next week (Wednesday excepted). We shall hope that you will bring Edith with you. That will be a second mortification. She will hate to see us; but come and heap embers. We deserve it; I for what I've done, and she for being my sister.

Do come early in the day, by sun-light, that you may see my Milton.

I am at Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Islington: a detached whitish house, close to the New River end of Colebrook Terrace, left hand from Sadler's Wells.

Will you let me know the day before?

Your penitent,

C. Lamb.

P.S.—I do not think your handwriting at all like ****'s. I do not think many things I did think.

There the matter ended. Seven years later, however, when The Literary Gazette fell upon Lamb's Album Verses, in a paltry attack, Southey sent to The Times a poem in defence and praise of his friend, beginning:—

Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear,

For rarest genius, and for sterling worth,

Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere,

And wit that never gave an ill thought birth …

Page 265, line 4 of essay. A recent paper on "Infidelity." The passage relating to Lamb and Thornton Hunt ran as follows:—

Unbelievers have not always been honest enough thus to express their real feelings; but this we know concerning them, that when they have renounced their birthright of hope, they have not been able to divest themselves of fear. From the nature of the human mind this might be presumed, and in fact it is so. They may deaden the heart and stupify the conscience, but they cannot destroy the imaginative faculty. There is a remarkable proof of this in Elia's Essays, a book which wants only a sounder religious feeling, to be as delightful as it is original. In that upon "Witches and other Night Fears," he says: "It is not book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, which create these terrors in children. They can at most but give them a direction. Dear little T. H., who of all children has been brought up with the most scrupulous exclusion of every taint of superstition, who was never allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, or scarcely to be told of bad men, or to hear or read of any distressing story, finds all this world of fear, from which he, has been so rigidly excluded ab extra, in his own 'thick-coming fancies; and from his little midnight pillow this nurse-child of optimism will start at shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which the reveries of the cell-damned murderer are tranquillity." This poor child, instead of being trained up in the way which he should go, had been bred in the ways of modern philosophy; he had systematically been prevented from knowing any thing of that Saviour who said, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven;" care had been taken that he should not pray to God, nor lie down at night in reliance upon His good Providence.

Page 267, line 14 from foot. "Given king" in bliss and a "given chamberlain" in torment. A reference to Southey's "Vision of Judgment," 1820, wherein George III. is received into heaven, among those coming from hell to arraign him being Wilkes, thus described:—

Beholding the foremost,

Him by the cast of his eye oblique, I knew as the firebrand

Whom the unthinking populace held for their idol and hero,

Lord of Misrule in his day.

Page 268, line 5. A jest of the Devil. Southey's early "Ballads and Metrical Tales" are rich in legends of the Devil, somewhat in the vein of Ingoldsby, though lacking Barham's rollicking fun.

Page 268, line 10. A noble Lord. Lord Byron, whose "Vision of Judgment," written in 1821 in ridicule of Southey's, begins:—

Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate:

His keys were rusty, and the lock was dull.

Page 268, line 19. A life of George Fox. Southey was collecting for some years materials for a life of George Fox, the first Quaker, but he did not carry out the project.

Page 268, line 22. The Methodists are shy. Southey's Life of Wesley was published in 1820. It was greatly admired by Coleridge.

Page 268, line 24. The errors of that Church. See Southey's "Ballads and Metrical Tales" again, for comic versions of legends of saints.

Page 269, line 26. And N. Randal Norris, Sub-Treasurer of the Inner Temple, who died in 1827.

Page 269, line 27. T. N. T. Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795–1854), the advocate, author of "Ion" who was to become Lamb's executor and biographer. He wrote an enthusiastic and discriminating essay on Wordsworth's genius in the New Monthly Magazine.

Page 269, line 31. And W. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794–1852), essayist, painter and criminal, who contributed gay and whimsical articles to the London Magazine over the signature "Janus Weathercock." Subsequently Wainewright was convicted of forgery, and he became also a poisoner; but he seems to have shown Lamb only his most charming side.

Page 269, line 32. The translator of Dante. Henry Francis Cary (1772–1844), whose Inferno appeared in 1805, the whole poem being completed in 1812. He contributed to the London Magazine. Later in life Cary, then assistant keeper of the printed books in the British Museum, became one of Lamb's closer friends. He wrote the epitaph on his grave.

Page 269, line 33. And Allan C. Allan Cunningham (1784–1842), the Scotch ballad writer and author, and a regular contributor to the London Magazine over the signature "Nalla."

Page 269, line 34. And P——r. Bryan Walter Procter (1787–1874), better known as Barry Cornwall, another contributor to the London Magazine. He afterwards, 1866–1868, wrote a Memoir of Lamb.

Page 269, line 35. A——p. Thomas Allsop (1795–1880), a stock-broker, whose sympathies were with advanced social movements. He has been called the favourite disciple of Coleridge. In 1836 he issued a volume entitled Letters, Conversations and Recollections of Coleridge, which contains many interesting references to Lamb.

Page 269, line 35. G——n. James Gillman, a doctor, residing at the Grove, Highgate, who received Coleridge into his house, in 1816, as a patient, and kept him there to the end as a friend. He afterwards began a Life of him, which was not, however, completed. Coleridge at this time, 1823, was nearly fifty-one.

Page 269, line 38. Salutation tavern. The Salutation and Cat, the tavern at 17 Newgate Street, opposite Christ's Hospital, where Lamb and Coleridge most resorted in the '90's. Now a new building.

Page 269, line 39. Pantisocracy. The chief Pantisocrats—Coleridge, Southey and Robert Lovell—who all married sisters, a Miss Fricker falling to each—were, with a few others—George Burnett among them and Favell—to establish a new and ideal communism in America on the banks of the Susquehanna. Two hours' work a day was to suffice them for subsistence, the remaining time being spent in the cultivation of the intellect. This was in 1794. Southey, however, went to Portugal, Lovell died, Coleridge was Coleridge, and Pantisocracy disappeared.

Page 269, line 40. W——th. William Wordsworth, the poet.

Page 270, line 1. And M. Thomas Monkhouse, who died in 1825, a cousin of Mary Hutchinson, William Wordsworth's wife, and of Sarah Hutchinson, her sister, and Lamb's correspondent.

Page 270, line 2. H. C. R. Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867), the diarist and the friend of the Lambs until their death. In Crabb Robinson's reminiscences of Lamb is this passage:—

I felt flattered by the being mingled with the other of Lamb's friends under the initials of my name. I mention it as an anecdote which shows that Lamb's reputation was spread even among lawyers, that a 4 guinea brief was brought to me by an Attorney an entire stranger, at the following Assizes, by direction of another Attorney also a stranger, who knew nothing more of me than that I was Elia's H. C. R.

Page 270, line 3. Clarkson. Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846), the great opponent of slavery, whom Lamb met in the Lakes in 1802.

Page 270, line 6. Dyer. George Dyer (1755–1841), whom we meet so often in Lamb's writings.

Page 270, line 7. The veteran Colonel. Colonel Phillips, Admiral Burney's brother-in-law. He married Susanna Burney, who died in 1800. Phillips, once an officer in the Marines, had sailed with Cook, and was a witness of his death. He had known Dr. Johnson, and a letter on the great man from his pen is printed in J. T. Smith's Book for a Rainy Day.

Page 270, line 9. W. A. William Ayrton (1777–1858), the musical critic; in Hazlitt's praise, "the Will Honeycomb of our set."

Page 270, line 12. Admiral Burney. Rear-Admiral Burney (1750–1821), brother of Fanny Burney, Madame D'Arblay. The Admiral lived in Little James Street, Pimlico. For a further account of this circle of friends see Hazlitt's essay "On the Conversation of Authors" (The Plain Speaker). Hazlitt's own share in the gathering ceased after an unfortunate discussion of Fanny Burney's Wanderer, which Hazlitt condemned in terms that her brother, the Admiral, could not forgive. Hence, perhaps, to some extent, Hazlitt's description of the old seaman as one who "had you at an advantage by never understanding you." Later, in his essay "On the Pleasures of Hating," also in The Plain Speaker, Hazlitt wrote:—

What is become of "that set of whist-players," celebrated by Elia in his notable Epistle to Robert Southey, Esq. (and now I think of it—that I myself have celebrated in this very volume), "that for so many years called Admiral Burney friend?" They are scattered, like last year's snow. Some of them are dead, or gone to live at a distance, or pass one another in the street like strangers, or if they stop to speak, do it as coolly and try to cut one another as soon as possible. Some of us have grown rich, others poor. Some have got places under Government, others a niche in the Quarterly Review. Some of us have dearly earned a name in the world; whilst others remain in their original privacy. We despise the one, and envy and are glad to mortify the other.

On the next page Hazlitt added:—

I think I must be friends with Lamb again, since he has written that magnanimous Letter to Southey, and told him a piece of his mind!

It was very soon after that Hazlitt began to visit the Lambs once more; and they never were on bad terms again.

Page 270, line 18. Authors of "Rimini" and "Table Talk." Leigh Hunt (1784–1859), whose Story of Rimini was published in 1816; and William Hazlitt (1778–1830), whose Table Talk, first series, which appeared in the London Magazine, was published in 1821–1822; other series coming later.

Page 271, line 15. "Here," say you … This is the passage in Southey's article to which Lamb refers:—

But if the sincere inquirer would see the authenticity of the Gospels proved by a chain of testimony, step by step, through all ages, from the days of the Apostles, he is referred to the exact and diligent Lardner. Even then, perhaps, it may surprize him to be told that more critical labour, and that too of a severer kind, has been bestowed upon the New Testament, than upon all other books of all ages and countries; that there is not a difficult text, a disputed meaning, or doubtful word, which has not been investigated, not only through every accessible manuscript, but through every ancient version; and that the most profound and laborious scholars whom the world ever produced, generation after generation, have devoted themselves to these researches, and past in them their patient, meritorious, and honourable lives. Let him read Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament, and he will be satisfied that there is no exaggeration in this statement. The unwearied diligence, the profound sagacity, and the comprehensive erudition with which the New Testament has been scrutinized, and its authenticity ascertained, cannot be estimated too highly; and we will boldly assert, cannot possibly have been conceived by any person unacquainted with biblical studies. But here, as in the history of the Mosaic dispensation, if the books are authentic, the events which they relate must be true; if they were written by the evangelists, Christ is our Redeemer and our God:—there is no other possible conclusion.

Page 272, line 5. The poor child. Thornton Leigh Hunt, who afterwards became a journalist, dying in 1873, was born in 1810. Lamb was very fond of this little boy, whom he first saw when he visited Leigh Hunt in prison (1813–1815). He addressed a poem to him, ending:—

Thornton Hunt, my favourite child.

Page 272, line 22. Thomas Holcroft. Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809), the playwright and miscellaneous author, one of Lamb's friends, was a republican and a freethinker.

Page 272, line 27. Accident introduced me … The first literary connection between Lamb and Leigh Hunt was set up by The Reflector (see note on page 445). Leigh Hunt, however, tells us in his Autobiography that he had as a schoolboy at Christ's Hospital seen Lamb—then an old boy: he was by nine and a half years Hunt's senior. Probably Lamb's first real intimacy with Leigh Hunt began with Lamb's visits to him in prison, 1813–1815.

Page 272, line 6 from foot. An equivocal term. Hunt's Story of Rimini was reviewed, with Maga's deepest scorn, in Blackwood for November, 1817, under the heading, "The Cockney School of Poetry." Precisely what was the equivocal term referred to by Lamb I do not discover; but unfair emphasis was laid by the reviewer on the poem's alleged incestuous character.

Page 273, line 11. His handwriting. In the postscript to his private letter (of apology) to Southey (see above), Lamb took this back.

Page 273, line 18. The "Political Justice." Godwin's Enquiry into Political Justice, 1793, wherein the marriage ceremony meets with little respect.

Page 273, line 28. Sundry harsh things … against our friend C. Perhaps a reference to The Examiner's criticism of Remorse, in 1813. Coleridge, writing to Southey about it, says:—

They were forced to affect admiration of the Tragedy, but yet abuse me they must, and so comes the old infamous crambe bis millies cocta of the "sentimentalities, puerilities, whinings, and meannesses, both of style and thought" in my former writings. …

Page 274, line 3. "Foliage." Leigh Hunt published Foliage in 1818. It contains, among other familiar epistles, one to Charles Lamb, reprinted, as was the poem on his son, from The Examiner. This is one stanza to Thornton Hunt:—

Ah, first-born of thy mother,

When life and hope were new,

Kind playmate of thy brother,

Thy sister, father too;

My light, where'er I go,

My bird, when prison bound,

My hand in hand companion—no,

My prayers shall hold thee round.

Page 274, line 10. The other gentleman. William Hazlitt. Lamb first met Hazlitt about 1805, and they were intimate, with occasional differences, until Hazlitt's death in 1830. Lamb was with him at the end.

Page 275, line 1. You were pleased (you know where). Lamb had been a Unitarian, as had Coleridge and many others of his friends. Later, indeed, he claimed communion with no sect; while Coleridge became as much against Unitarianism as he had once been for it. Southey was himself converted to Unitarianism by Coleridge, in 1794. Later, however, the Church of England had few stouter supporters. What Lamb means by "You know where" I have not been able to discover—a memory possessed possibly only by Lamb and Southey.

Page 275, line 12. The last time. The only portion of this "Letter" which Lamb preserved began at this point. He rewrote this particular paragraph and included the remainder in Last Essays of Elia, in 1833, under the title, "The Tombs in the Abbey."

Page 276, line 25. Two shillings. The fees cannot have been reduced for at least ten years, for in 1833 Lamb reprinted this passage as it stood in 1823. The Abbey is not yet wholly free on every day of the week; but there is no charge except to view the chapels, and that has been reduced to sixpence. The first reduction after Lamb's protest was made by Dean Ireland, whose term of office lasted from 1816 to 1842. It was he also who appointed official guides. Lamb was not alone in this protest against the fees. One of Hood and Reynolds' Odes and Addresses, 1825, took up the point again.

Page 277, line 20. Major André. John André (1751–1780), a major in the British army in America in the War of Independence. In his capacity as Clinton's Adjutant-General he corresponded with one Arnold, who was plotting to deliver West Point to the British. In the course of his negotiations with Arnold, he crossed into the American lines and was compelled by circumstances to adopt civilian clothes. Being caught in this costume, he was charged as a spy, and, though every effort was made to save him, was, by the necessities of war, shot as such by Washington on October 2, 1780. He died like a hero. The British army donned mourning for his death, and a monument to his memory was erected in Westminster Abbey. Lamb alludes to the mutilation of this monument by the fracture of a nose, but as a matter of fact the whole head of Washington had to be renewed more than once. According to Mrs. Gordon's Life of Dean Buckland, two heads taken from the monument were returned from America to the Dean many years ago, with the request that they might be replaced. They had been appropriated as relics. Lamb's reference to Transatlantic Freedom was another hit at Southey's Pantisocratic tendencies (see note above) and his Joan of Arc rebel days.

In the London Magazine for December, 1823, under "The Lion's Head," is the following:—

We have to thank an unknown correspondent for the following