The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Chapter 266 : Page 79. _In the Alb.u.m of Rotha Q----_.Rotha Quillinan, younger daughter of Edward Q

Page 79. _In the Alb.u.m of Rotha Q----_.

Rotha Quillinan, younger daughter of Edward Quillinan (1791-1851), Wordsworth's friend and, afterwards, son-in-law. His first wife, a daughter of Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, was burned to death in 1822 under the most distressing circ.u.mstances. Rotha Quillinan, who was Wordsworth's G.o.d-daughter, was so called from the Rotha which flows through Rydal, close to Quillinan's house.

Page 80. _To T. Stothard, Esq_.

First printed in _The Athenaeum_, December 21, 1833. In a letter to Rogers in December, 1833, Lamb alludes to his sonnet to the poet (see page 100), adding that for fear it might not altogether please Stothard he has "ventured at an antagonist copy of verses, in _The Athenaeum_, to _him_, in which he is as every thing, and you [Rogers] as nothing."

Thomas Stothard (1755-1834) was at that time seventy-eight. He had long been the friend of Rogers, having helped in the decoration of his house in 1803 and ill.u.s.trated the _Pleasures of Memory_ as far back as 1793.

Lamb's sonnet refers particularly to the edition of Rogers' _Poems_ that is dated 1834, which Stothard and Turner embellished. Stothard ill.u.s.trated very many of the standard novels for Harrison's _Novelists'

Magazine_ towards the end of the eighteenth century, among these being Richardson's, Fielding's, Smollett's and Sterne's. In Robert Paltock's _Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins_, 1751, a flying people are described, among whom the males were "Glums" and the females "Gawries."--t.i.tian lived to be ninety-nine.

Page 80. _To a Friend on His Marriage_.

First printed in _The Athenaeum_, December 7, 1833. The friend was Edward Moxon, whose marriage to Emma Isola, Lamb's adopted daughter, was solemnised on July 30, 1833. Lamb mentions more than once the absence of any dowry with Miss Isola. His own wedding present to them was the portrait of Milton which his brother, John Lamb, had left to him.

Page 81. _The Self-Enchanted_.

First printed in _The Athenaeum_, January 7, 1832.

Page 82. _To Louisa M---, whom I used to call "Monkey."_

First printed in Hone's _Year Book_ for December 30, 1831, under the t.i.tle "The Change." (See the verses "The Ape," on page 89, and note, the forerunner of the present poem, addressed also to Louisa Martin.)

Page 82. _Cheap Gifts: a Sonnet_.

First printed in _The Athenaeum_, February 15, 1834.

Page 83. _Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers_. Lamb was very fond of these lines, which he sent to more than one of his friends. The text varies in some of the copies, but I have not thought it necessary to indicate the differences. Its inspiration was attributed by him both to William Ayrton (1777-1858), the musical critic, and to Vincent Novello (1781-1861), the organist, composer and close friend of Lamb. In a letter to Sarah Hazlitt in 1830 Lamb copies the poem, remarking--"Having read Hawkins and Burney recently, I was enabled to talk [to Ayrton] of Names, and show more knowledge than he had suspected I possessed; and in the end he begg'd me to shape my thoughts upon paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him."

So Lamb wrote to Mrs. Hazlitt. But to Ayrton, when he sent the verses, he said:--"[Novello] desiring me to give him my real opinion respecting the distinct grades of excellence in all the eminent Composers of the Italian, German and English schools, I have done it, rather to oblige him than from any overweening opinion I have of my own judgment in that science."

Both these statements are manifestations of what Lamb called his "matter-of-lie" disposition. To Mrs. Hazlitt he thought that Ayrton's name would be more important; to Ayrton, Novello's.

The verses, whatever their origin, were written by Lamb in Novello's Alb.u.m, with this postscript, signed by Mary Lamb, added:--

The reason why my brother's so severe, Vincentio, is--my brother has no _ear_; And Caradori, his mellifluous throat Might stretch in vain to make him learn a note.

Of common tunes he knows not anything, Nor "Rule Britannia" from "G.o.d save the King."

He rail at Handel! He the gamut quiz!

I'd lay my life he knows not what it is.

His spite at music is a pretty whim-- He loves not it, because it loves not him.

M. LAMB.

UNCOLLECTED PIECES

Page 85. _Dramatic Fragment_.

_London Magazine_, January, 1822. An excerpt from Lamb's play, "Pride's Cure" (_John Woodvil_). See note below.

Page 86. _d.i.c.k Strype_.

Writing to John Rickman in January, 1802, Lamb says, "My editor [Dan Stuart of the _Morning Post_] uniformly rejects all that I do, considerable in length. I shall only do paragraphs with now and then a slight poem, such as d.i.c.k Strype, if you read it, which was but a long epigram." The verses, which appeared on January 6, 1802, may be compared with the story of Ephraim Wagstaff, on page 432 of Vol. I., written twenty-five years later. It has been pointed out that _Points of Misery_, 1823, by Charles Molloy Westmacott (Bernard Blackmantle of the _English Spy_), contains the poem with slight alterations. But Westmacott reaped where he could, and his book is confessedly not wholly original. Lamb seems to me to admit authors.h.i.+p by implication fairly completely. Westmacott was only thirteen when it was first printed.

Page 88. _Two Epitaphs on a young Lady, etc_.

_Morning Post_, February 7, 1804. Signed C.L. Lamb sends the poem both to Wordsworth and Manning in 1803. He says to Manning:--"Did I send you an epitaph I scribbled upon a poor girl who died at nineteen?--a good girl, and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, but strangely neglected by all her friends and kin.... Brief, and pretty, and tender, is it not? I send you this, being the only piece of poetry I have _done_ since the Muses all went with T.M. [Thomas Manning] to Paris."

The young lady was Mary Druitt of Wimborne who died of consumption in 1801. The verses are not on her tombstone. A letter from Lamb to his friend Rickman (see Canon Ainger's edition), shows that it was for Rickman that the lines were written. Lamb did not know Mary Druitt.

Writing to Rickman in February, 1802, Lamb sends the second epitaph:--"Your own prose, or nakedly the letter which you sent me, which was in some sort an epitaph, would do better on her gravestone than the cold lines of a stranger."

Page 89. _The Ape_.