The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
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Chapter 111 : A child's a plaything for an hour.Page 63, end of essay. "_Can I reproach he
A child's a plaything for an hour.
Page 63, end of essay. "_Can I reproach her for it_." After these words, in the _London Magazine_, came:--
"These kind of complaints are not often drawn from me. I am aware that I am a fortunate, I mean a prosperous man. My feelings prevent me from transcribing any further."
Page 63. VALENTINE'S DAY.
This essay first appeared in _The Examiner_, February 14 and 15, 1819, and again in _The Indicator_, February 14, 1821. Signed ***
Page 64, line 18. _Twopenny postman._ Hone computed, in his _Every-Day Book_, Vol. I., 1825, that "two hundred thousand letters beyond the usual daily average annually pa.s.s through the two-penny post-office in London on Valentine's Day." The Bishop's vogue is now (1911) almost over.
Page 65, line 15 from foot. E.B. Lamb's Key gives "Edward Burney, half brother of Miss Burney." This was Edward Francis Burney (1760-1848), who ill.u.s.trated many old authors, among them Richardson.
Page 66. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.
_London Magazine_, August, 1821, where the t.i.tle ran: "Jews, Quakers, Scotchmen, and other Imperfect Sympathies."
Page 69, line 18 from foot. _A print ... after Leonardo._ The Virgin of the Rocks. See Vol. IV. for Lamb's and his sister's verses on this picture. Crabb Robinson's MS. diary tells us that the Scotchman was one Smith, a friend of G.o.dwin. His exact reply to Lamb's remark about "my beauty" was: "Why, sir, from all I have heard of you, as well as from what I have myself seen, I certainly entertain a very high opinion of your abilities, but I confess that I have not formed any opinion concerning your personal pretensions."
Page 70, line 10. _The poetry of Burns._ "Burns was the G.o.d of my idolatry," Lamb wrote to Coleridge in 1796. Coleridge's lines on Burns, "To a Friend who had declared his intention of writing no more poetry," were addressed to Lamb. Barry Cornwall records seeing Lamb kiss his copy of the poet.
Page 70, line 17. _You can admire him_. In the _London Magazine_ Lamb added:--
"I have a great mind to give up Burns. There is certainly a bragging spirit of generosity, a swaggering a.s.sertion of independence, and _all that_, in his writings."
Page 70, line 18. _Smollett_. Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771), the novelist, came of a Dumbartons.h.i.+re family. Rory was Roderick Random's schoolboy name. His companion was Strap. See _Roderick Random_, Chapter XIII., for the pa.s.sage in question. Smollett continued the _History of England_ of David Hume (1711-1776), also a Scotchman, and one of the authors whom Lamb could not read (see "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," page 196).
Lamb's criticism of Scotchmen did not pa.s.s without comment. The pleasantest remark made upon it was that of Christopher North (John Wilson) some dozen years later (after he had met Lamb), in a _Blackwood_ paper ent.i.tled "Twaddle on Tweedside" (May, 1833), wherein he wrote:--
Charles Lamb ought really not to abuse Scotland in the pleasant way he so often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield; for Scotland loves Charles Lamb; but he is wayward and wilful in his wisdom, and conceits that many a c.o.c.kney is a better man even than Christopher North. But what will not Christopher forgive to Genius and Goodness? Even Lamb bleating libels on his native land. Nay, he learns lessons of humanity, even from the mild malice of Elia, and breathes a blessing on him and his household in their Bower of Rest.
Coleridge was much pleased by this little reference to his friend. He described it as "very sweet indeed" (see his _Table Talk_, May 14, 1833).
Page 70, line 14 from foot. _Hugh of Lincoln_. Hugh was a small Lincoln boy who, tradition states, was tortured to death by the Jews.
His dead body being touched by a blind woman, she received sight.
Many years earlier Lamb had spoken of the Jew in English society with equal frankness (see his note to the "Jew of Malta" in the _Dramatic Specimens_).
Page 71, line 18. _B----_. John Braham, _nee_ Abraham (1774?-1856), the great tenor. Writing to Manning in 1808, Lamb says:--"Do you like Braham's singing? The little Jew has bewitched me. I follow him like as the boys followed Tom the Piper. He cures me of melancholy as David cured Saul.... I was insensible to music till he gave me a new sense.... Braham's singing, when it is impa.s.sioned, is finer than Mrs.
Siddons's or Mr. Kemble's acting! and when it is not impa.s.sioned it is as good as hearing a person of fine sense talking. The brave little Jew!"
Two years later Lamb tells Manning of Braham's absence from London, adding: "He was a rare composition of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel; yet all these elements mixed up so kindly in him that you could not tell which preponderated." In this essay Lamb refers to Braham's singing in Handel's oratorio "Israel in Egypt." Concerning Braham's abandonment of the Jewish faith see Lamb's sarcastic essay "The Religion of Actors," Vol. I., page 338.
Page 73, line 17 from foot. _I was travelling_. Lamb did not really take part in this story. It was told him by Sir Anthony Carlisle (1768-1840), the surgeon, as he confessed to his Quaker friend, Bernard Barton (March 11, 1823), who seemed to miss its point. Lamb described Carlisle as "the best story-teller I ever heard."
Page 74. WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS.
_London Magazine_, October, 1821.
Compare with this essay Maria Howe's story of "The Witch Aunt," in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see Vol. III.), which Lamb had written thirteen years earlier.
Page 75, line 12 from foot. _History of the Bible, by Stackhouse_.
Thomas Stackhouse (1677-1752) was rector of Boldon, in Durham; his _New History of the Holy Bible from the Beginning of the World to the Establishment of Christianity_--the work in question--was published in 1737.
Page 75, line 6 from foot. _The Witch raising up Samuel_. This paragraph was the third place in which Lamb recorded his terror of this picture of the Witch of Endor in Stackhouse's _Bible_, but the first occasion in which he took it to himself. In one draft of _John Woodvil_ (see Vol. IV.), the hero says:--
I can remember when a child the maids Would place me on their lap, as they undrest me, As silly women use, and tell me stories Of Witches--make me read "Glanvil on Witchcraft,"
And in conclusion show me in the Bible, The old Family Bible, with the pictures in it, The 'graving of the Witch raising up Samuel, Which so possest my fancy, being a child, That nightly in my dreams an old Hag came And sat upon my pillow.
Then again, in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, in the story of Maria Howe, called "The Witch Aunt," one of the three stories in that book which Lamb wrote, Stackhouse's _Bible_ is found once more. In my large edition I give a reproduction of the terrible picture. Page 77, foot.
_Dear little T.H._ This was the unlucky pa.s.sage which gave Southey his chief text in his criticism of _Elia_ as a book wanting "a sounder religious feeling," and which led to Lamb's expostulatory "Letter"
(see Vol. I.). Southey commented thus:--
This poor child, instead of being trained up in the way in which he should go, had been bred in the ways of modern philosophy; he had systematically been prevented from knowing anything 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 G.o.d, nor lie down at night in reliance upon His good Providence!
T.H. was Thornton Hunt, Leigh Hunt's eldest son and Lamb's "favourite child" (see verses to him in Vol. IV.).
Page 79, line 18 from foot. _Barry Cornwall_. Bryan Waller Procter (1787-1874), Lamb's friend. The reference is to "A Dream," a poem in Barry Cornwall's _Dramatic Scenes_, 1819, which Lamb greatly admired.
See his sonnet to the poet in Vol. IV., where it is mentioned again.
Page 80, last paragraph of essay. In the original MS. of this essay (now in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington) the last paragraph ran thus:--
"When I awoke I came to a determination to write prose all the rest of my life; and with submission to some of our young writers, who are yet diffident of their powers, and balancing perhaps between verse and prose, they might not do unwisely to decide the preference by the texture of their natural dreams. If these are prosaic, they may depend upon it they have not much to expect in a creative way from their artificial ones. What dreams must not Spenser have had!"
Page 80. MY RELATIONS.
_London Magazine_, June, 1821.
Page 80, beginning. _At that point of life_. Lamb was forty-six on February 10, 1821.
Page 80, line 12 of essay. _I had an aunt_. Aunt Hetty, who died in 1797 (see the essay on "Christ's Hospital").
Page 81, line 6. _The chapel in Ess.e.x-street_. The headquarters of "that heresy," Unitarianism. Lamb was at first a Unitarian, but afterwards dropped away from all sects.
Page 81, line 23. _Brother, or sister, I never had any--to know them_.
Lamb is writing strictly as the imagined Elia, Elia being Lamb in mind rather than Lamb in fact. It amused him to present his brother John and his sister Mary as his cousins James and Bridget Elia. We have here an excellent example of his whimsical blending of truth and invention: brothers and sisters he denies, yet admits one sister, Elizabeth, who died in both their infancies. Lamb had in reality two sisters named Elizabeth, the former of whom he never knew. She was born in 1762. The second Elizabeth, his parents' fifth child, was born in 1768, seven years before Charles. Altogether the Lambs had seven children, of whom only John (born 1763), Mary Anne (born 1764) and Charles (born 1775) grew up. Again Lamb confesses to several cousins in Hertfords.h.i.+re, and to two others. The two others were fict.i.tious, but it was true that he had Hertfords.h.i.+re relations (see the essay "Mackery End, in Hertfords.h.i.+re").
John Lamb's character is perhaps sufficiently described in this essay and in "Dream-Children." He was a well-to-do official in the South-Sea House, succeeding John Tipp as accountant. Crabb Robinson found him too bluff and noisy to be bearable; and he once knocked Hazlitt down in a dispute about painting. He died on October 26, 1821, to his brother's great grief, leaving Charles everything. He married late in life a Mrs. Dowden. Probably she had her own money and needed none of her second husband's. Hence the peculiarity of the will. Mrs. John Lamb died in 1826.
John Lamb's sympathy with animals led him to write in 1810 a pamphlet ent.i.tled _A Letter to the Right Hon. William Windham, on his opposition to Lord Erskine's Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals_--Mr. Windham having expressed it as his opinion that the subject was not one for legislation. Lamb sent the pamphlet to Crabb Robinson on February 7, 1810, saying:--"My Brother whom you have met at my rooms (a plump good looking man of seven and forty!) has written a book about humanity, which I transmit to you herewith. Wilson the Publisher has put it in his head that you can get it Reviewed for him.
