The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Chapter 540 : _The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed .Page 180. VI.--[A TOWN RESIDENCE.]_The Exa

_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed .

Page 180. VI.--[A TOWN RESIDENCE.]

_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed .

This note is another contribution to Lamb's many remarks on London.

Allsop, in his reminiscences of Lamb in his _Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge_, 1836, remarks:--

Somerset House, Whitehall Chapel (the old Banqueting Hall), the church at Limehouse and the new church at Chelsea, with the Bell house at Chelsea College, which always reminded him of Trinity College, Cambridge, were the objects most interesting to him [Lamb]

in London.

Page 181. VII.--[GRAY'S "BARD."]

_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed . Reprinted by Leigh Hunt under the above t.i.tle in _The Indicator_, December 13, 1820. In the Appendix (pages 425-6) will be found other critical comments upon Gray, which I conjecture to be Lamb's.

Page 181, line 1 of essay. _The beard of Gray's bard._

Loose his beard, and h.o.a.ry hair Stream'd like a meteor, to the troubled air.

_The Bard._

Gray himself noted the Miltonic antic.i.p.ation of this line (see Gosse's edition, 1884). The lines Lamb quotes are from _Paradise Lost_, I., lines 536-537.

Page 181, line 6 of essay. _Heywood's old play._ "The Four 'Prentices of London," by Thomas Heywood. The speech is that of Turnus respecting the Persian Sophy. It is copied in one of Lamb's Commonplace Books.

Page 182. VIII.--[AN AMERICAN WAR FOR HELEN.]

_The Examiner_, September 26, 1813. Signed . Reprinted under the above t.i.tle by Leigh Hunt in _The Indicator_, January 3, 1821.

Page 182, line 1 of essay. _A curious volume._ Hazlitt's _Handbook to the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain_, 1867, gives the t.i.tle as _Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Epigrammatum Libri Quimque_.

Perth, 1679. 8vo.

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

Page 183. IX.--[DRYDEN AND COLLIER.]

_The Examiner_, September 26, 1813. Signed .

Page 183, line 3. _Jeremy Collier._ Jeremy Collier (1650-1726), the nonjuror and controversialist. His _Essays upon Several Moral Subjects_, Part II., were published in 1697. The pa.s.sage quoted is from that "On Musick," the second essay in Part II. I have restored his italics and capitals.

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

Page 184. X.--[PLAYHOUSE MEMORANDA.]

_The Examiner_, December 19, 1813. Signed . Leigh Hunt reprinted it in _The Indicator_, December 13, 1820.

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

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

Page 186, line 6. _The system of Lucretius._ Lucretius, in _De Rerum Natura_, imagined the G.o.ds to be above pa.s.sion or emotion, heedless of this world's concerns, figures of absolute peace.

Page 186, line 22. _It was "Artaxerxes."_ An opera by Thomas Augustine Arne, produced in 1762, founded upon Metastasio's "Artaserse." From the other particulars of Lamb's early play-going, given in the _Elia_ essay "My First Play," we know the date of this performance to be December 1, 1780, that being the only occasion in that or the next season when "Artaxerxes" was followed by "Harlequin's Invasion." But none of the singers named by Lamb were in the caste on that occasion. "Who played, or who sang in it, I know not," he says; merely setting down likely and well-known names at random. As a matter of fact Artaxerxes was played by Mrs. Baddeley, Arbaces by Miss Pruden, and Mandane by "a young lady."

Mr. Beard was John Beard (1716?-1791), the tenor. Leoni was the discoverer and instructor of Braham. He made his debut in "Artaxerxes"

in 1775. Mrs. Kennedy, formerly Mrs. Farrell, was a contralto. She died in 1793.

Page 186, line 10 from foot. _I was, with Uriel._

Th' archangel Uriel, one of the sev'n Who in G.o.d's presence, nearest to his throne, Stand ready at command.

_Paradise Lost_, III., lines 648-650.

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

Page 187. WORDSWORTH'S "EXCURSION."

The _Quarterly Review_, October, 1814. Not reprinted by Lamb.

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

"DEAR WORDSWORTH,--I told you my Review was a very imperfect one. But what you will see in the Quarterly is a spurious one which Mr. Baviad Gifford has palm'd upon it for mine. I never felt more vexd in my life than when I read it. I cannot give you an idea of what he has done to it out of spite at me because he once sufferd me to be called a lunatic in his Thing. The _language_ he has alterd throughout. Whatever inadequateness it had to its subject, it was in point of composition the prettiest piece of prose I ever writ, and so my sister (to whom alone I read the MS.) said. That charm if it had any is all gone: more than a third of the substance is cut away and that not all from one place, but _pa.s.sim_, so as to make utter nonsense. Every warm expression is changed for a nasty cold one. I have not the cursed alteration by me, I shall never look at it again, but for a specimen I remember--I had said the Poet of the Excurs^n 'walks thro' common forests as thro' some Dodona or enchanted wood and every casual bird that flits upon the boughs, like that miraculous one in Ta.s.so, but in language more piercing than any articulate sounds, reveals to him far higher lovelays.' It is now (besides half a dozen alterations in the same half dozen lines) 'but in language more _intelligent_ reveals to him'--that is one I remember. But that would have been little, putting his d.a.m.nd Shoemaker phraseology (for he was a shoemaker) in stead of mine which has been tinctured with better authors than his ignorance can comprehend--for I reckon myself a dab at _Prose_--verse I leave to my betters--G.o.d help them, if they are to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter. I have read 'It won't do.'[65] But worse than altering words, he has kept a few members only of the part I had done best which was to explain all I could of your 'scheme of harmonies' as I had ventured to call it between the external universe and what within us answers to it. To do this I had acc.u.mulated a good many short pa.s.sages, rising in length to the end, weaving in the Extracts as if they came in as a part of the text, naturally, not obtruding them as specimens. Of this part a little is left, but so as without conjuration no man could tell what I was driving it [? at]. A proof of it you may see (tho' not judge of the whole of the injustice) by these words--I had spoken something about 'natural methodism--' and after follows 'and therefore the tale of Margaret sh^d have been postponed' (I forget my words, or his words): now the reasons for postponing it are as deducible from what goes before, as they are from the 104th psalm. The pa.s.sage whence I deduced it, has vanished, but clapping a colon before a _therefore_ is always reason enough for Mr. Baviad Gifford to allow to a reviewer that is not himself. I a.s.sure you my complaints are founded. I know how sore a word alterd makes one, but indeed of this Review the whole complexion is gone. I regret only that I did not keep a copy. I am sure you would have been pleased with it, because I have been feeding my fancy for some months with the notion of pleasing you. Its imperfection or inadequateness in size and method I knew, but for the _writing part_ of it, I was fully satisfied. I hoped it would make more than atonement.

Ten or twelve distinct pa.s.sages come to my mind which are gone, and what is left is of course the worse for their having been there, the eyes are pulld out and the bleeding sockets are left. I read it at Arch's shop with my face burning with vexation secretly, with just such a feeling as if it had been a review written against myself, making false quotations from me. But I am ashamd to say so much about a short piece. How are _you_ served! and the labors of years turn'd into contempt by scoundrels.

"But I could not but protest against your taking that thing as mine.

Every _pretty_ expression, (I know there were many) every warm expression, there was nothing else, is vulgarised and frozen--but if they catch me in their camps again let them spitchc.o.c.k me. They had a right to do it, as no name appears to it, and Mr. Shoemaker Gifford I suppose never waved a right he had since he commencd author. G.o.d confound him and all caitiffs.

"C. L."

[65] "This will never do"--the beginning of the review in the _Edinburgh_.--ED.

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

Had Gifford merely called Lamb a "fool" or a "madman," the epithet would have been mere "common form" as addressed by the _Quarterly_ of those days to a wretch who was a friend of other wretches such as Hunt and Hazlitt; but he went far beyond such common form and used language of the utmost precision. Weber, wrote Gifford, "has polluted his pages with the blasphemies of a poor maniac, who it seems once published some detached scenes from the 'Broken Heart.'

For this unfortunate creature every feeling mind will find an apology in his calamitous situation." This pa.s.sage has no meaning at all if it is not to be taken as a positive statement that Lamb suffered from chronic mental derangement; yet Gifford when challenged confessed that when he wrote it he had known absolutely nothing of Lamb, except his name! It seems to have struck neither Gifford nor Southey that this was no excuse at all, and something a good deal worse than no excuse--that even as an explanation it was not such as an honourable man would have cared to offer. Gifford added a strongly-worded expression of his feeling of remorse on learning that his blows had fallen with cruel effect on a sore place. Both feeling and expression may have been sincere, for, under the circ.u.mstances, only a fiend would be incapable of remorse. But the excuse or explanation is open to much suspicion, owing to the fact (revealed in the Murray "Memoirs") that Lamb's friend Barron Field had been Gifford's collaborator in the preparation of the article in which the offending pa.s.sage occurs.

Field was well acquainted with Lamb's personal and family history, and while the article was in progress the collaborators could hardly have avoided some exchange of ideas on a subject which stirred one of them so deeply. Gifford may have said honestly enough, according to his lights, that only a maniac could have written the note quoted by Weber, a remark which would naturally draw from Field some confidences regarding Lamb's history. This is, of course, pure a.s.sumption, but it is vastly more reasonable and much more likely to be in substantial accordance with the facts than Gifford's statement that when he called Lamb a poor maniac, whose calamitous situation offered a sufficient apology for his blasphemies, he was imaginatively describing a man of whom he knew absolutely nothing, except that he was "a thoughtless scribbler."

If, as seems only too possible, Gifford deliberately poisoned his darts, it is also probable that he did not realize what he was doing. It would be unfair to accept Hazlitt's picture of him as a true portrait; but Lamb's apology for Hazlitt himself applies with at least equal force to the first editor of the _Quarterly_. "He does bad actions without being a bad man." Perhaps it is too lenient, for though Gifford's attack on Lamb was undoubtedly one of the bad actions of his life, it was, after all, a matter of conduct. The apology, whether truthful or the opposite, reveals deep-seated corruption of principle if not of character.

Lamb's phrase, "Mr. Shoemaker Gifford," had reason for its existence.

William Gifford (1756-1826) was apprenticed to a shoemaker in 1772. Lamb later repaid some of his debt in the sonnet "St. Crispin to Mr.

Gifford," which appeared in _The Examiner_, October 3, 1819, and was reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ in 1822.

Gifford, who was editor of the _Quarterly_ on its establishment in 1809, held the post until his death, in 1826.

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

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