Читать книгу Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66 No.406, August 1849 - Various - Страница 1

To Charles Lamb shall be allotted – general assent has already assigned it to him, and we have no wish to dispute his claim – a quiet, quaint niche, apart to himself, in some odd nook or corner in the great temple of English literature. It shall be carved from the solid oak, and decorated with Gothic tracery; but where Madonnas and angels ordinarily appear, there shall be all manner of laughing cherubs – one amongst them disguised as a chimney-sweep– with abundance of sly and humorous devices. Some such niches or stalls may occasionally be seen in old cathedrals, sharing the eternity of the structure, and drawing the peculiar regard of the curious and loitering visitor. You are startled to find a merry device, and a wit by no means too reverential, side by side with the ideal forms of Catholic piety. You approach to examine the solemn-looking carving, and find, perhaps, a fox clothed in priestly raiment – teaching, in his own way, divers lessons of morality to the bears and geese. Such venerable and Gothic drollery suspends for a moment, but hardly mars, the serious and sedate feelings which the rest of the structure, and the other sculptured figures of the place, are designed to excite.

Some such peculiar place amongst our literary worthies seems, as we have said, to be assigned by general consent to Charles Lamb, nor are we about to gainsay his right to this position. He has all the genius that could comport with oddity, and all the oddity that could amalgamate with genius. With a range of thought most singularly contracted, considering the times in which he lived, and the men by whom he was surrounded, he has contrived, by a charming subtlety of observation, and a most felicitous humour, to make us in love even with that contractedness itself, which in another would be despised, as evidencing a sluggishness and obtuseness of mind. Perhaps there are few writers who could be named, of these later days, on whose peculiar merits there is so little difference of opinion. As a poet, he was, at all events, inoffensive, and his mediocrity has been pardoned him in favour of that genius he displayed as the humorous and critical essayist. The publication of his letters, too, has materially added to his reputation, and confirmed him as a favourite with all to whom his lambent and playful wit had already made him known and esteemed. We are not aware, therefore, that we have anything to dispute, or essentially to modify, in the verdict passed by popular opinion on this writer. Yet something may remain to be said to assist in appreciating and discriminating his peculiar merits as a humorist – something to point out where praise is due, and something to draw the limits of that praise. Moreover, his biography, as presented to us by Mr Talfourd, claims some notice; disclosing, as it does, one of the saddest tragedies, and one of the noblest acts of heroism, which ever afflicted and dignified the life of a man of letters. This biography is also written by one who is himself distinguished in the literary world, who was an intimate friend of Lamb, and personally acquainted with those literary characters by whom Lamb had surrounded himself, and who are here grouped around him. Upon the whole, therefore, the Life and Writings of Elia, though a subject which no longer wears the gloss of novelty, still invites and may repay attention.

We hardly know whether to regret it as a disadvantage to us, on the present occasion, that we never enjoyed the slightest acquaintance with Charles Lamb, or indeed with any of those literary friends amongst whom he lived. We never saw this bland humorist; we never heard that half-provoking, half-pleasing stutter, which awakened anticipation whilst it delayed enjoyment, and added zest to the witticism which it threatened to mar, and which it had held back, for a moment, only to project with the happier impetus. We never had before us, in bodily presence, that slight, black-coated figure, and those antique and curiously-gaitered legs, which, we have also been assured, contributed their part to the irresistible effect of his kindly humour. We never even knew those who had seen and talked with him. To us he is a purely historic figure. So, too, of his biographer – which argues ourselves to be sadly unknown – we have no other knowledge than what runs about bruited in the world; even his displays of eloquence, forensic or parliamentary, we have never had an opportunity of hearing; we know him only by his writings, and by that title we have often heard bestowed on him, the amiable author of Ion; – to which amiability we refer, because to this we must attribute, we suppose, a large portion of that too laudatory criticism which, in these volumes, he bestows so lavishly and diffusely. We cannot, therefore, bring to our subject any of those vivid reminiscences, anecdotes, or details which personal acquaintance supplies. But, on the other hand, we have no bias whatever to contend against, whether of a friendly or hostile description, in respect of any of the literary characters whom we may have occasion to speak of. Had they all lived in the reign of good Queen Anne, they could not have been more remote from our personal sympathies or antipathies.

It is probably known to most of our readers that when, shortly after the decease of Charles Lamb, his letters were given to the world with some biographical notices, there were circumstances which imposed silence on certain passages of his life, and which obliged the editor to withhold a certain portion of the letters. That sister, in fact, was still alive whose lamentable history was so intimately blended with the career of Lamb, and an allusion to her unfortunate tragedy would have been cruel in any one, and in an intimate friend utterly impossible. Serjeant Talfourd had no other course than to leave the gap or hiatus in the biography, and cover it up and conceal it as well as might be, from the eyes of such readers as were not better informed from other sources. Upon the decease of that sister, there no longer existed any motive for this silence; and, indeed, shortly after this event, the whole narrative was revealed by a writer in the British Quarterly Review, who had himself waited till then before he permitted himself to disclose it, and by its disclosure do an act of justice to the moral character of Lamb. Mr Talfourd was, therefore, called upon to complete his biographical notice, and also the publication of the letters. This he did in the two volumes entitled Final Memorials, &c.

As a separate and subsidiary publication became inevitable, and as probably the exigencies of the trade required that it should be of a certain bulk and substance, we suppose we must rather commiserate Mr Talfourd than cast any blame upon him for the manifest difficulty he has had to fill these two volumes of Final Memorials. One of them would have been sufficient for all that he had to communicate, or that it was wise to add. Many of the letters of Lamb here printed are such as he had very properly laid aside, in the first instance, not because they trenched upon too delicate ground, but because they were wholly uninteresting. He had very correctly said, in what, for distinction's sake, we will call The Life– "I have thought it better to omit much of this verbal criticism, which, not very interesting in itself, is unintelligible without a contemporary reference to the poems which are its subject." – (P. 12.) Now we cannot, of course, undertake to say that the letters given us here are precisely those which he speaks of as being wisely rejected on the former occasion, but we know that there was the same good reason for this rejection, for they are occupied with a verbal criticism utterly uninteresting. Surely, what neither illustrates a man's life, nor adds a tittle to his literary reputation, ought not to be allowed to encumber for ever, as with a dead weight, the collected works of an author. The mischief is, that, if materials of this kind are once published, every succeeding editor finds it incumbent on him to reprint them, lest his edition should be thought less perfect than others, and thus there is no getting rid of the useless and burdensome increment. It is otherwise with another portion of these two volumes, the sketches of the contemporaries and friends of Lamb, which Mr Serjeant Talfourd, or any future editor, can either retrench, omit, or enlarge, at his option.

In the next edition that is published of the works of Lamb, we hope the editor may be persuaded altogether to recast his materials. The biography should be kept apart, and not interspersed piecemeal amongst the letters. This is an arrangement, the most provoking and irritating to the reader that could have been devised. Let us have all the biography at once, and then sit down and enjoy the letters of Lamb. Why be incessantly bandied from the one to the other? Few of the letters need any explanation; if they do, the briefest note at the head or at the foot would be sufficient. Not to add, that, if it is wished to refer to any event in the biography, one does not know where to look for it. And, apropos of this matter of reference, it may be just worth mentioning that the present volume is so divided into Parts, and the parts so paged, that any reference to a passage by the number of the page is almost useless. The numbers recommence some half-dozen times in the course of the volume; so that if you are referred to page 50, you may find five of them – you may find page 50 five times over before you come to the right one. For which reason we shall dispense ourselves, in respect to this volume, with our usual punctuality of reference, for the reference must be laboriously minute, and even then will impose a troublesome search. In the mere and humble task of editing, the Serjeant has been by no means fortunate.

Lying about in such confusion as the fractions of the biography do at present, we shall perhaps be rendering a slight service if we bring together from the two different publications the leading events of the life of Lamb.

"Charles Lamb," says the first publication, "was born on the 18th February 1775, in Crown-office Row, in the Inner Temple, where he spent the first seven years of his life." At the age of seven he was presented to the school of Christ's Hospital, and there remained till his fifteenth year. His sweetness of disposition rendered him a general favourite. From one of his schoolfellows we have the following account of him: – "Lamb," says Mr Le Grice, "was an amiable, gentle boy, very sensible, and keenly observing, indulged by his schoolfellows and by his master, on account of his infirmity of speech. His countenance was mild; his complexion clear brown, with an expression which might lead you to think that he was of Jewish descent. His eyes were not each of the same colour – one was hazel, the other had specks of gray in the iris, mingled as we see red spots in the bloodstone. His step was plantigrade, (Mr Le Grice must be a zoologist – Lamb would have smiled to hear himself so scientifically described,) which made his walk slow and peculiar, adding to the staid appearance of his figure. I never heard his name mentioned without the addition of Charles, although, as there was no other boy of the name of Lamb, the addition was unnecessary; but there was an implied kindness in it, and it was a proof that his gentle manner excited that kindness." Mr Le Grice adds that, in the sketch Lamb gave in his Recollections of Christ's Hospital, he drew a faithful portrait of himself. "While others were all fire and play, he stole along with all the self-concentration of a young monk." He had, in fact, only passed from cloister to cloister, and, during the holidays, it was in the Temple that he found his home and his only place of recreation. This cloistering-in of his mind was the early and constant peculiarity of his life. He would have made an excellent monk; in those good old times, be it understood, when it was thought no great scandal if there was a well-supplied cellarage underneath the cloister.

After quitting Christ's Hospital, he was employed for some time in the South Sea House, but on the 5th April 1792 obtained that appointment in the accountant's office in the East India Company which was his stay and support, in more senses than one, through life.

A little anecdote is here introduced, which strikes us as very characteristic. It reveals the humorist, ready to appreciate and promote a jest even at his own expense, and at the easy sacrifice of his own dignity or self-respect: but it reveals something more and sadder; it seems to betray a broken, melancholy spirit, that was no longer disposed to contend for its claim to respect from others. "In the first year of his clerkship," says Mr Le Grice, "Lamb spent the evening of the 5th November with some of his former schoolfellows, who, being amused with the particularly large and flapping brim of his round hat, pinned it up on the sides in the form of a cocked hat. Lamb made no alteration in it, but walked home in his usual sauntering gait towards the Temple. As he was going down Ludgate Hill, some gay young men, who seemed not to have passed the London Tavern without resting, exclaimed, 'The veritable Guy! – no man of straw!' and with this exclamation they took him up, making a chair with their arms, carried him, seated him on a post in St Paul's Churchyard, and there left him. This story Lamb told so seriously, that the truth of it was never doubted. He wore his three-cornered hat many evenings, and retained the name of Guy ever after. Like Nym, he quietly sympathised in the fun, and seemed to say 'that was the humour of it.'" Some one may suggest that probably Lamb was himself in the same condition, on this 5th of November, as the young men "who had not passed the London Tavern without resting," and that therefore all peculiar significance of the anecdote, as it bears upon his character and disposition, is entirely lost. But Lamb relates the story himself, and afterwards, and when there is no question of sobriety, quietly acquiesces and participates in the absurd joke played upon himself.

At this time his most constant companion was one Jem White, who wrote some imaginary "Letters of John Falstaff." These letters Lamb went about all his life praising, and causing others to praise, but seems never to have found any one to share his admiration. As even Mr Talfourd has not a good word to throw away upon the literary merits of Jem White, we may safely conclude that Lamb's friendship had in this instance quite overruled his critical judgment.

But the associate and friend who really exercised a permanent and formative influence upon his mind, was a man of a very different stamp – Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They had been schoolfellows at Christ's Hospital, and, though no particular intimacy existed at that time, the circumstance formed a foundation for a future friendship. "While Coleridge," writes Mr Talfourd, "remained at the university, they met occasionally on his visits to London; and when he quitted it and came to town, full of mantling hopes and glorious schemes, Lamb became his admiring disciple. The scene of these happy meetings was a little public-house, called the Salutation and Cat, in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, where they used to sup, and remain long after they had 'heard the chimes at midnight.'"

These suppers at the Salutation and Cat, in Smithfield, seem to carry back the imagination far beyond the period here alluded to; they seem to transport us to the times of Oliver Goldsmith, or to take us across the water into Germany, where poetry and philosophy may still occasionally find refuge in the beer-shop. They were always remembered by Lamb as the brightest spots of his life. "I think I hear you again," he says, writing to Coleridge. "I imagine to myself the little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with poetry." And in another place he alludes to "those old suppers at our old inn – when life was fresh and topics exhaustless – and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness." It was in these interviews that the project was started, we believe, of publishing a volume of poems, the joint production of the two friends.

But this pleasing project, and all the poetry of life, was for a time to give place, in the history of Lamb, to a domestic tragedy of the most afflicting nature. It is here that the Final Memorials take up the thread of the biography. It was on the 22d September 1796, that the terrible event took place which cast so perpetual a shade, and reflected also so constant an honour, on the life of Lamb. He was living at this time with his father, mother, and sister, in lodgings in Little Queen Street, Holborn. After being engaged in his taskwork at the India House, he returned in the evening to amuse his father by playing cribbage. The old man had sunk into dotage and the miserable selfishness that so often attends on old age. If his son wished to discontinue for a time the game at cribbage, and turn to some other avocation, or the writing of a letter, he would pettishly exclaim, – "If you don't play cribbage, I don't see the use of your coming home at all." The mother also was an invalid, and Miss Lamb, we are told, was worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery, by attention to needlework by day, and to her mother by night, until the insanity which had been manifested more than once broke out into frenzy. "It appeared," says the account extracted from the Times, (an account of the inquest, in which the names of the parties are suppressed,) "that while the family were preparing for dinner, the young lady seized a case-knife lying on the table, and in a menacing manner pursued a little girl, her apprentice, round the room. On the calls of her infirm mother to forbear, she renounced her first object, and with loud shrieks approached her parent. The child by her cries quickly brought up the landlord of the house, but too late. The dreadful scene presented to him the mother lifeless, pierced to the heart, on a chair, her daughter yet wildly standing over her with the fatal knife, and the old man, her father, weeping by her side, himself bleeding at the forehead from the effects of a severe blow he received from one of the forks she had been madly hurling about the room."

The following is the letter which Lamb wrote to Coleridge shortly after the event. From this it appears that it was he, and not the landlord, who took the knife from the hand of the lunatic.

"My Dearest Friend, – White, or some of my friends, or the public papers, by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will only give you the outlines. My poor, dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a madhouse, from whence I fear she must be removed to an hospital. God has preserved to me my senses. I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr Norris of the Blue-coat School has been very kind to us, and we have no other friend; but, thank God, I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do. Write as religious a letter as possible, but no mention of what is gone and done with. With me 'the former things are passed away,' and I have something more to do than to feel.

"God Almighty have us all in his keeping! – C. Lamb.

"Mention nothing of poetry; I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind. Do as you please; but if you publish, publish mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a book, I charge you.

"Your own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this yet to your dear wife. You look after your family – I have my reason and strength left to take care of mine. I charge you, don't think of coming to see me – write. I will not see you if you come. God Almighty love you, and all of us." – C. Lamb.

Miss Lamb was of course placed in an asylum, where, however, she was in a short time restored to reason. And now occurred the act of life-long heroism on the part of the brother. As soon as she was recovered, he petitioned the authorities to resign her to his care; he pledged himself to be her guardian, her provider, her keeper, for all her days to come. He was at that time paying his addresses to a young lady, with what hopes, or with what degree of ardour, we are not informed. But marriage with her, or with any other, was now to be entirely renounced. He devoted his life, and all his love, to his unhappy sister, and to the last he fulfilled the obligation he had taken upon himself without a murmur, and without the least diminution of affection towards the object of it.

We have called it an act of heroism; we applaud it, and rejoice that it stands upon record a complete and accomplished act. There it stands, not only to relieve the character of Lamb from such littleness as it may have contracted from certain habits of intemperance, (of which perhaps more has been said than was necessary;) but it remains there as an enduring memorial, prompting, to all time, to the like acts of self-denying kindness, and unshaken generosity of purpose. But, admiring the act as we do, we must still be permitted to observe, that there was a degree of imprudence in it which fully justified other members of the family in their endeavours to dissuade Lamb from his resolution, and which would have justified the authorities (whoever they were – and about this matter there seems a singular obscurity, and a suspicion is created that even in proceedings of this nature much is done carelessly, informally, uncertainly) in refusing to accede to his request. Miss Lamb had several relapses into temporary derangement; and, although she never committed, as far as we are informed, any acts of violence, this calmness of behaviour, in her seasons of mental aberration, could not have been calculated on. We confess we should have shrunk from the responsibility of advising the generous but perilous course which was adopted with so fortunate a result.

How sad and fearful a charge Lamb had entailed upon himself, let the following extract suffice to show. The subject is too painful to be longer dwelt upon than is necessary. "The constant impendency of this great sorrow saddened to 'the Lambs' even their holidays, as the journey which they both regarded as the relief and charm of the year was frequently followed by a seizure; and, when they ventured to take it, a strait-waistcoat, carefully packed up by Miss Lamb herself, was their constant companion. Sad experience at last induced the abandonment of the annual excursion, and Lamb was contented with walks in and near London during the interval of labour. Miss Lamb experienced, and full well understood, premonitory symptoms of the attack, in restlessness, low fever, and the inability to sleep; and, as gently as possible, prepared her brother for the duty he must soon perform; and thus, unless he could stave off the terrible separation till Sunday, obliged him to ask leave of absence from the office as if for a day's pleasure – a bitter mockery! On one occasion Mr Charles Lloyd met them slowly pacing together a little footpath in Haxton Fields, both weeping bitterly, and found, on joining them, that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed asylum!"2

It seems that a tendency to lunacy was hereditary in the family, and Charles Lamb himself had been for a short period deprived of his reason.

On this subject Mr Talfourd makes the following excellent remark: – "The wonder is, that, amidst all the difficulties, the sorrows, and the excitements of his succeeding forty years, the malady never recurred. Perhaps the true cause of this remarkable exemption – an exemption the more remarkable when his afflictions are considered in association with one single frailty – will be found in the sudden claim made on his moral and intellectual nature by a terrible exigency, and by his generous answer to that claim; so that a life of self-sacrifice was rewarded by the preservation of unclouded reason."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After this singular parallel, we are shown round a gallery of portraits. First we have George Dyer, who appears to be the counterpart of our old friend Dominie Sampson. But, indeed, we hold George Dyer to be a sort of myth, a fabulous person, the creation of Charles Lamb's imagination, and imposed as a reality on his friends. Such an absurdity as he is here represented to be could not have been bred, could not have existed, in these times, and in London. If we are to credit the stories told of him, his walking in broad day into the canal at Islington was one of the wisest things he did, or could possibly have done. Lamb tells him, in the strictest confidence, that the "Waverley Novels" are the works of Lord Castlereagh, just returned from the Congress of Sovereigns at Vienna! Off he runs, nor stops till he reaches Maida Hill, where he deposits his news in the ears of Leigh Hunt, who, "as a public man," he thinks ought to be possessed of the great fact. At another time Lamb gravely inquires of him, "Whether it was true, as was commonly reported, that he was to be made a lord?" "Oh dear, no! Mr Lamb," he responds with great earnestness, "I could not think of such a thing: it is not true, I assure you." "I thought not," replies the wit, "and I contradict it wherever I go; but the government will not ask your consent – they may raise you to the peerage without your even knowing it." "I hope not, Mr Lamb; indeed, indeed, I hope not; it would not suit me at all," repeats our modern Dominie, and goes away musing on the possibility of strange honours descending, whether he will or not, upon his brow. It goes to our heart to disturb a good story, but such a man as the George Dyer here represented never could have existed.

We have rather a long account of Godwin, with some remarks not very satisfactory upon his intellectual character. That Mr Godwin was taciturn, that he conversed, when he did talk, upon trivial subjects, and in a small precise manner, and that he was especially fond of sleeping after dinner – all this we can easily understand. Mr Godwin's mental activity was absorbed in his authorship, and he was a very voluminous author. But we cannot so easily understand Mr Talfourd's explanations, nor why these habits should have any peculiar connexion with the intellectual qualities of the author of Caleb Williams, and a host of novels, as well as of the Political Justice, of the Life of Chaucer, and the History of the Commonwealth. Such habits are rather the result of a man's temperament, and the manner of life which circumstances have thrown him into, than of his intellectual powers. Profound metaphysicians have been very vivacious talkers, and light and humorous writers very taciturn men. Mr Talfourd finds that Godwin had no imagination, was all abstract reason, and thus accounts for his having no desire to address his fellowmen but through the press. The passage is too long to quote, and would be very tedious. We must leave him in quiet possession of his own theory of the matter.

It was new to us, and may be to our readers, to hear that Godwin supported himself "by a shop in Skinner Street, where, under the auspices of 'Mr J. Godwin & Co.,' the prettiest and wisest books for children issued, which old-fashioned parents presented to their children, without suspecting that the graceful lessons of piety and goodness which charmed away the selfishness of infancy, were published, and sometimes revised, and now and then written, by a philosopher whom they would scarcely venture to name!" We admire the good sense which induced him to adhere to so humble an occupation, if he found it needful for his support. But what follows is not quite so admirable. He was a great borrower; or, in the phrase of Mr Talfourd, "he met the exigencies of business with the trusting simplicity which marked his course; he asked his friends for aid without scruple, considering that their means were justly the due of one who toiled in thought for their inward life, and had little time to provide for his own outward existence, and took their excuses when offered without doubt or offence." And then the Serjeant proceeds to relate, in a tone of the most touching simplicity, his own personal experience upon this matter. "The very next day after I had been honoured and delighted by an introduction to him at Lamb's chambers, I was made still more proud and happy by his appearance at my own on such an errand, which my poverty, not my will, rendered abortive. After some pleasant chat on indifferent matters, he carelessly observed that he had a little bill for £150 falling due on the morrow, which he had forgotten till that morning, and desired the loan of the necessary amount for a few weeks. At first, in eager hopes of being able thus to oblige one whom I regarded with admiration akin to awe, I began to consider whether it was possible for me to raise such a sum; but, alas! a moment's reflection sufficed to convince me that the hope was vain, and I was obliged, with much confusion, to assure my distinguished visitor how glad I should have been to serve him, but that I was only just starting as a special pleader, was obliged to write for magazines to help me on, and had not such a sum in the world. 'Oh dear!' said the philosopher, 'I thought you were a young gentleman of fortune – don't mention it, don't mention it – I shall do very well elsewhere!' And then, in the most gracious manner, reverted to our former topics, and sat in my small room for half-an-hour, as if to convince me that my want of fortune made no difference in his esteem." How very gracious! The most shameless borrower coming to raise money from a young gentleman of fortune, to meet "a little bill which he had forgotten till that morning," would hardly, on finding his mistake, have made an abrupt departure. He would have coolly beat a retreat, as the philosopher did. We never hear, by the way, that he returned "to my small room" at any other time, for half-an-hour's chat. But how very interesting it is to see the learned Serjeant, whose briefs have made him acquainted with every trick and turn of commercial craft, retaining this sweet and pristine simplicity!

The Serjeant, however, has a style of narrative which, though on the surface it displays the most good-natured simplicity, slyly insinuates to the more intelligent reader that he sees quite as far as another, and is by no means the dupe of his own amiability. Thus, in his description of Coleridge, (which would be too long a subject to enter into minutely,) he has the following passage, (perhaps the best in the description,) which, while it seems to echo to the full the unstinted applause so common with the admirers of that singular man, gives a quiet intimation to the reader that he was not altogether so blind as some of those admirers. "If his entranced hearers often were unable to perceive the bearings of his argument – too mighty for any grasp but his own – and sometimes reaching beyond his own – they understood 'a beauty in the words, if not the words;' and a wisdom and a piety in the illustrations, even when unable to connect them with the idea which he desired to illustrate." Mr Talfourd reveals here, we suspect, the true secret of the charm which Coleridge exercised in conversation. His hearers never seemed to have carried away anything distinct or serviceable from his long discourses. They understood "a beauty in the words, if not the words;" they felt a charm like that of listening to music, and, when the voice ceased, there was perhaps as little distinct impression left, as if it had really been a beautiful symphony they had heard.

There is only one more in this gallery of portraits before which we shall pause, and that only for a moment, to present a last specimen of the critical manner of Mr Talfourd. We are sorry the last should not be the best; and yet, as this sketch is a reprint, in an abridged form, of an essay affixed to the Literary Remains of Hazlitt, it may be considered as having received a more than usual share of the author's attention. It is thus that he analyses the mental constitution of one whom he appears to have studied and greatly admired – William Hazlitt. "He had as unquenchable a desire for truth as others have for wealth, or power, or fame: he pursued it with sturdy singleness of purpose, and enunciated it without favour or fear. But besides that love of truth, that sincerity in pursuing it, and that boldness in telling it, he had also a fervent aspiration after the beautiful, a vivid sense of pleasure, and an intense consciousness of his own individual being, which sometimes produced obstacles to the current of speculation, by which it was broken into dazzling eddies, or urged into devious windings. Acute, fervid, vigorous as his mind was, it wanted the one great central power of imagination, which brings all the other faculties into harmonious action, multiplies them into each other, makes truth visible in the forms of beauty, and substitutes intellectual vision for proof. Thus in him truth and beauty held divided empire. In him the spirit was willing but the flesh was strong, and when these contend it is not difficult to anticipate the result; 'for the power of beauty shall sooner transform honesty from what it is into a bawd, than the person of honesty shall transform beauty into its likeness.' This 'sometime paradox' was vividly exemplified in Hazlitt's personal history, his conversation, and his writings."3

Are we to gather from this most singular combination of words, that Hazlitt had a grain too much of sensuality in his composition, which diverted him from the search after truth? The expression, "the flesh was strong," and the quotation so curiously introduced from Shakspeare, seem to point this way. And then, again, are we to understand that this too much of sensuality was owing to a want of imagination? – that central power of imagination which is here described in a manner that no system of metaphysics we have studied enables us in the least to comprehend. We know something of Schelling's "intellectual intuition" transcending the ordinary scope of reason. Is this "intellectual vision, which the imagination substitutes for proof," of the same family? But indeed it would be idle insincerity to ask such questions. Sergeant Talfourd knows no more than we do what it means. The simple truth is, that here, as too frequently elsewhere, he aims at a certain subtlety of thought, and falls unfortunately upon no thought whatever – upon mere confusion of thought, which he attempts to hide by a quantity of somewhat faded phrase and rhetorical diction.

If we refer to the original essay itself, we shall not be aiding ourselves or Mr Talfourd. The statement is fuller, and the confusion greater. In one point it relieves us – it relieves us entirely from the necessity of too deeply pondering the philosophic import of any phraseology our critic may adopt, for the phrase is changed merely to please the ear; and what at first has the air of definition proves to be merely a poetic colouring. He thus commences his essay: "As an author, Mr Hazlitt may be contemplated principally in three aspects – as a moral and political reasoner, as an observer of character and manners, and as a critic in literature and painting. It is in the first character only that he should be followed with caution." In the two others he is, of course, to be followed implicitly. Why he was not equally perfect as a moral and political reasoner, Mr Talfourd proceeds to explain. Mr Hazlitt had "a passionate desire for truth," and also "earnest aspirations for the beautiful." Now, continues our critic, "the vivid sense of beauty may, indeed, have fit home in the breast of the searcher after truth, but then he must also be endowed with the highest of all human faculties – the great mediatory and interfusing power of imagination, which presides supreme over the mind, brings all its powers and impulses into harmonious action, and becomes itself the single organ of all. At its touch, truth becomes visible in the shape of beauty; the fairest of material things become the living symbols of airy thought, and the mind apprehends the finest affinities of the world of sense and spirit 'in clear dream and solemn vision.'" This last expression conveys, we presume, all the meaning, or no-meaning, of the phrase afterwards adopted – the "intellectual vision which it substitutes for truth." Both are mere jingle. The rest of the passage is much the same as it stands in the Final Memorials. Somehow or other Mr Hazlitt is proved to have been defective as a reasoner, because he wanted imagination! – and imagination was wanted, not to enlarge his experience of mental phenomena, but to step between his love of truth and his sense of beauty. Did he ever divulge this discovery to his friend Hazlitt? – and how did the metaphysician receive it?

To one so generous towards others, it would be ungracious to use hard words. Indeed, to leave before an intelligent reader these specimens of "fine analysis," and "powers of discriminating and distinguishing," is quite severe enough punishment. We wish we could expunge them, with a host of similar ones, not only from our record, but from the works of the author himself.4

It is time that we turn from the biography to the writings of Charles Lamb – to Elia, the gentle humorist. Not that Charles Lamb is exclusively the humorist: far from it. His verse is, at all events, sufficient to demonstrate a poetic sensibility, and his prose writings display a subtlety of analysis and a delicacy of perception which were not always enlisted in the service of mirth, but which were often displayed in some refined criticism, or keen observation upon men and manners. Still it is as a humorist that he has chiefly attracted the attention of the reading public, and obtained his popularity and literary status. But the coarser lineaments of the humorist are not to be found in him. His is a gentle, refined, and refining humour, which never trespasses upon delicacy; which does not excite that common and almost brutal laughter, so easily raised at what are called the comic miseries of life – often no comedy to those who have to endure them. It is a humour which generally attains its end by investing what is lowly with an unexpected interest, not by degrading what is noble by allying it with mean and grotesque circumstance, (the miserable art of parody;) it is a humour, in short, which excites our laughter, not by stifling all reflection, but by awakening the mind to new trains of thought, and prompting to odd but kindly sympathies. It is a humour which a poet might indulge in, which a very nun might smile at, which a Fenelon would at times prepare himself mildly to admonish, but, on seeing from how clear a spirit it emanated, would, relaxing his brows again, let pass unreproved.

There is a great rage at present for the comic; and, to do justice to our own times, we think it may be said that wit was never more abundant – and certainly the pencil was never used with more genuine humour. But we cannot sympathise with, or much admire, that class of writers who seem to make the comic their exclusive study, who peer into everything merely to find matter of jest in it. Everything is no more comic than everything is solemn, in this mingled world of ours. These men, reversing the puritanical extravagance, would improve every incident into the occasion of a laugh. At length one extreme becomes as tedious as the other. We have, if we may trust to advertisements, for we never saw the production itself, a Comic History of England! and, amongst other editions of the learned commentator, A Comic Blackstone! We shall be threatened some day with a Comic Encyclopædia; or we shall have these comic gentry following the track round the whole world which Mrs Sommerville has lately taken, in her charming book on Physical Geography. They will go hopping and grinning after her, peeping down volcanoes, and punning upon coral reefs, and finding laughter in all things in this circumnavigable globe. Well, let them go grinning from pole to pole, and all along the tropics. We can wish them no worse punishment.

This exclusive cultivation of the comic must sadly depress the organ of veneration, and not at all foster any refined feelings of humanity. To him who is habitually in the mocking vein, it matters little what the subject, or who the sufferer, so that he has his jest. It is marvellous the utter recklessness to human feeling these light laughers attain to. Their seemingly sportive weapon, the "satiric thong" they so gaily use, is in harder hands than could be found anywhere else out of Smithfield. Nor is it quite idle to notice in what a direct barefaced manner these jesters appeal to the coarse untutored malice of our nature. If we were to analyse the jest, we should sometimes find that we had been laughing just as wisely as the little untaught urchin, who cannot hold his sides for "fun," if some infirm old woman, slipping upon the slide he has made, falls down upon the pavement. The jest only lasts while reflection is laid asleep.

In this, as we have already intimated, lies the difference between the crowd of jesters and Charles Lamb. We quit their uproarious laughter for his more quiet and pensive humour with somewhat the same feeling that we leave the noisy, though amusing, highway, for the cool landscape and the soft greensward. We reflect as we smile; the malice of our nature is rather laid to rest than called forth; a kindly and forgiving temper is excited. We rise from his works, if not with any general truth more vividly impressed, yet prepared, by gentle and almost imperceptible touches, to be more social in our companionships, and warmer in our friendships.

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

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

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

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

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

We must first quote from a letter to Manning, after his visits to the lakes, to rescue his character in the eyes of the lovers of the picturesque from the imputation of being utterly indifferent to the higher beauties of nature.

"Coleridge received us with all the hospitality in the world. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains: great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the mountains into colours, purple, &c., &c. We thought we had got into fairyland. But that went off (and it never came again; while we stayed we had no more fine sunsets), and we entered Coleridge's comfortable study just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with clouds on their heads. Such an impression I never received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose that I can ever again. Glorious creatures, fine old fellows – Skiddaw, &c. – I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that night like an entrenchment – gone to bed, as it seemed for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the morning… We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw; and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I have satisfied myself that there is such a thing as tourists call romantic, which I very much suspected before; they make such a sputtering about it… Oh! its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with the prospects of mountains about and about, making you giddy. It was a day that will stand out like a mountain, I am sure, in my life."

Of Mr Manning we are told little or nothing, though he seems to have been one of the very dearest friends of Lamb. His best letters are written to Manning – the drollest, and some of the most affecting. The following was written to dissuade him from some scheme of oriental travel. Manning was, at the time, at Paris: —

"Feb. 19, 1803.

"My Dear Manning, – The general scope of your letter afforded no indications of insanity; but some particular points raised a scruple. For God's sake, don't think any more of 'Independent Tartary.' What are you to do among such Ethiopians? Read Sir John Mandeville's travels to cure you, or come over to England. There is a Tartar-man now exhibiting at Exeter Change. Come and talk with him, and hear what he says first. Indeed, he is no favourable specimen of his countrymen! Some say they are cannibals; and then conceive a Tartar fellow eating my friend, and adding the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar! I am afraid 'tis the reading of Chaucer has misled you; his foolish stories about Cambuscan, and the ring and the horse of brass. Believe me, there are no such things. These are all tales – a horse of brass never flew, and a king's daughter never talked with birds. The Tartars really are a cold, insipid, smoutchy set. You'll be sadly moped (if you are not eaten) amongst them. Pray try and cure yourself. Shave yourself oftener. Eat no saffron; for saffron eaters contract a terrible Tartar-like yellow. Shave the upper lip. Go about like a European. Read no books of voyages, (they are nothing but lies;) only now and then a romance, to keep the fancy under. Above all, don't go to any sights of wild beasts. That has been your ruin."

And when Manning really departed on his voyage to China, he writes to him in the following mingled strains of humour and of feeling. Being obliged to omit a great deal, it would only be unsightly to mark every instance where a sentence has been dropt. The italics, we must remark, are not ours. If Lamb's, they show how naturally, even in writing to his most intimate friend, he fell into the feelings of the author: —

"May 10, 1806.

"… Be sure, if you see any of those people whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, that you make a draught of them. It will be very curious. Oh! Manning, I am serious to sinking almost, when I think that all those evenings which you have made so pleasant are gone, perhaps for ever. Four years, you talk of, may be ten – and you may come back and find such alterations! Some circumstance may grow up to you or to me, that may be a bar to the return of any such intimacy. I dare say all this is hum! and that all will come back; but, indeed, we die many deaths before we die, and I am almost sick to think that such a hold I had of you is gone."

"Dec. 5, 1806.

"Manning, your letter dated Hottentots, August the – what was it? came to hand. I can scarce hope that mine will have the same luck. China – Canton – bless us! how it strains the imagination, and makes it ache. It will be a point of conscience to send you none but bran-new news (the latest edition), which will but grow the better, like oranges, for a sea voyage. Oh that you should be so many hemispheres off – if I speak incorrectly you can correct me – why, the simplest death or marriage that takes place here must be important to you as news in the old Bastile."

He then tells him of the acceptance of his farce —Mr H.; which farce, by the way, was produced, and failed, Lamb turning against his own production, and joining the audience in hissing it off the stage. It certainly deserved its fate.

"Now, you'd like to know the subject. The title is, 'Mr H.' No more; how simple, how taking! A great H sprawling over the play-bill, and attracting eyes at every corner. The story is, a coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich – all the ladies dying for him – all bursting to know who he is; but he goes by no other name than Mr H. – a curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg about the man with the great nose. But I won't tell you any more about it. Yes, I will; but I can't give you any idea how I have done it. I'll just tell you that, after much vehement admiration, when his true name comes out, 'Hogsflesh,' all the women shun him, avoid him, and not one can be found to change her name for him; that's the idea – how flat it is here – but how whimsical in the farce! And only think how hard upon me it is, that the ship is despatched to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the Wednesday after. But all China will ring of it by-and-by. Do you find, in all this stuff I have written, anything like those feelings which one should send my old adventuring friend that is gone to wander among Tartars, and may never come again? I don't; but your going away, and all about you, is a threadbare topic. I have worn it out with thinking. It has come to me when I have been dull with anything, till my sadness has seemed more to have come from it than to have introduced it. I want you, you don't know how much; but if I had you here, in my European garret, we should but talk over such stuff as I have written.

"Good Heavens! what a bit only I've got left! How shall I squeeze all I know into this morsel! Coleridge is come home, and is going to turn lecturer on taste at the Royal Institution. How the paper grows less and less! In less than two minutes I shall cease to talk to you, and you may rave to the great Wall of China. – N.B. Is there such a wall? Is it as big as Old London Wall by Bedlam? Have you met with a friend of mine, named Ball, at Canton? If you are acquainted, remember me kindly to him."

But we should be driven into as hard straits as Lamb, at the close of his epistle, if we, should attempt, in the small space that remains to us, to give any fair idea of the various "humours" and interests, of many kinds, of these letters. We pass at once to those that illustrate the last important incident of his life, his retirement from office. It is thus he describes his manumission, and the sort of troubled delight it brought with it, to Wordsworth: —

"6th April, 1825.

"Here am I then, after thirty-three years' slavery, sitting in my own room, at eleven o'clock this finest of all April mornings, a freed man, with £441 a-year for the remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved at ninety.

"I came home FOR EVER on Tuesday of last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three; i. e., to have three times as much real time – time that is my own in it! I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift."

And to Bernard Barton he writes:

"My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my recent emancipation, that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much more of mind, to compose a letter. I am free, Bernard Barton – free as air!

I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o'clock. I came home for ever!

"I have been describing my feelings, as well as I can, to Wordsworth, and care not to repeat. Take it briefly, that for a few days I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it is becoming daily more natural to me. I went and sat among them all, at my old thirty-three years' desk yester morning; and deuce take me, if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them in the lurch – fag, fag, fag! The comparison of my own superior felicity gave me anything but pleasure.

"B. B., I would not serve another seven years for seven hundred thousand pounds! I have got £440 net for life, with a provision for Mary if she survives me. I will live another fifty years."

But to live without any steady compulsory occupation requires an apprenticeship as much as any other mode of life. An idle man ought to be born and bred to the profession. With Lamb, literature could be nothing but an amusement, and for a mere amusement literature is far too laborious. It cannot, indeed, serve long as an amusement except when it is adopted also as a labour. He was destined, therefore, to make the humiliating discovery, which so many have made before him, that one may have too much time, as well as too little, at one's own disposal. Writing to the same Bernard Barton, a year or two afterwards, he says: —

"What I can do, and over-do, is to walk; but deadly long are the days, these summer all-day days, with but a half-hour's candle-light and no fire-light. I do not write, tell your kind inquisitive Eliza, and can hardly read. 'Tis cold work authorship, without something to puff one into fashion… I assure you no work is worse than over-work. The mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome food. I bragged, formerly, that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit; with few years to come, the days are wearisome. But weariness is not eternal. Something will shine out to take the load off that crushes me, which is at present intolerable. I have killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl. Well; I shall write merrier anon. 'Tis the present copy of my countenance I send, and to complain is a little to alleviate."

He had taken a house at Enfield, but the cares of housekeeping were found to be burdensome to Miss Lamb, and they took up their abode as boarders in the house of a neighbour. To this circumstance he alludes in the following extract from a letter to Wordsworth, which is the last we shall make, and with which we shall bid farewell to our subject. It will be found to be not the least remarkable amongst the letters of Lamb, and contains one passage, we think, the boldest piece of extravagance that ever humorist ventured upon with success. It just escapes! – and, indeed, it rather takes away our breath at its boldness than prompts to merriment.

"January 2, 1831.

"And is it a year since we parted from you at the steps of Edmonton stage? There are not now the years that there used to be. The tale of the dwindled age of men, reported of successional mankind, is true of the same man only. We do not live a year in a year now. 'Tis a punctum stans. The seasons pass with indifference. Spring cheers not, nor winter heightens our gloom; autumn hath foregone its moralities. Let the sullen nothing pass. Suffice it, that after sad spirits, prolonged through many of its months, we have cast our skins; have taken a farewell of the pompous, troublesome trifle, called housekeeping, and are settled down into poor boarders and lodgers at next door, the Baucis and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our victuals but to eat them; with the garden but to see it grow; with the tax-gatherer but to hear him knock; with the maid but to hear her scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are things unknown to us, save as spectators of the pageant. We are fed we know not how; quieted – confiding ravens. Yet in the self-condemned obliviousness, in the stagnation, some molesting yearnings of life, not quite killed, rise, prompting me that there was a London, and that I was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleet Market, but I wake and cry to sleep again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this detestable Paraclete. What have I gained by health? Intolerable dulness. What by early hours and moderate meals? A total blank. Oh! let no native Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent occupation, interchange of converse sweet, and recreative study, can make the country anything better than altogether odious and detestable. A garden was the primitive prison, till man, with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it."

Any further summary than what we have already given, of the literary character of Lamb, would be only tedious. He is one who will be generally liked, who with a smaller class will be greatly admired, and who will never excite hostile criticism, unless his injudicious friends shall elevate him to a higher pedestal than is due to him, or than he is manifestly fit to occupy. Such is the cold and calm verdict with which criticism must dismiss him. But those who have thoroughly enjoyed the essays of Elia and the letters of Lamb, will feel a warmer, a more partial affection than Criticism knows well how to express: she becomes somewhat impatient of her own enforced gravity; she would willingly throw away those scales with which, like Justice, we suppose, she is symbolically supplied, and, embracing the man as he is, laugh and be pleased with the rest of the world, without further thought of the matter.