The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Chapter 7 : He was present with me at a scene--a _death-bed scene_--I shudder when I do but think of

He was present with me at a scene--a _death-bed scene_--I shudder when I do but think of it.

CHAPTER XIII

I was sent for the other morning to the a.s.sistance of a gentleman, who had been wounded in a duel,--and his wounds by unskilful treatment had been brought to a dangerous crisis.

The uncommonness of the name, which was _Matravis_ suggested to me, that this might possibly be no other than Allan's old enemy. Under this apprehension, I did what I could to dissuade Allan from accompanying me--but he seemed bent upon going, and even pleased himself with the notion, that it might lie within his ability to do the unhappy man some service. So he went with me.

When we came to the house, which was in Soho-Square, we discovered that it was indeed the man--the identical Matravis, who had done all that mischief in times past--but not in a condition to excite any other sensation than pity in a heart more hard than Allan's.

Intense pain had brought on a delirium--we perceived this on first entering the room--for the wretched man was raving to himself--talking idly in mad unconnected sentences,--that yet seemed, at times, to have a reference to _past facts_.

One while he told us his dream. "He had lost his way on a great heath, to which there seemed no end--it was cold, cold, cold--and dark, very dark--an old woman in leading-strings, _blind_, was groping about for a guide"--and then he frightened me,--for he seemed disposed to be _jocular_, and sang a song about "an old woman clothed in grey," and said "he did not believe in a devil."

Presently he bid us "not tell Allan Clare"--Allan was hanging over him at that very moment, sobbing.--I could not resist the impulse, but cried out, "_this_ is Allan Clare--Allan Clare is come to see you, my dear Sir."--The wretched man did not hear me, I believe, for he turned his head away, and began talking of _charnel houses_, and _dead men_, and "whether they knew anything that pa.s.sed in their coffins."

Matravis died that night.

CURIOUS FRAGMENTS,

_Extracted from a common-place book, which belonged to Robert Burton, the famous Author of The Anatomy of Melancholy_

(1800. FIRST PUBLISHED 1802. TEXT OF 1818)

EXTRACT I

I Democritus Junior have put my finis.h.i.+ng pen to a tractate _De Melancholia_, this day December 5, 1620. First, I blesse the Trinity, which hath given me health to prosecute my worthlesse studies thus far, and make supplication, with a _Laus Deo_, if in any case these my poor labours may be found instrumental to weede out black melancholy, carking cares, harte-grief, from the mind of man. _Sed hoc magis volo quam expecto._

I turn now to my book, _i nunc liber, goe forth, my brave Anatomy, child of my brain-sweat_, and yee, _candidi lectores_, lo! here I give him up to you, even do with him what you please, my masters. Some, I suppose will applaud, commend, cry him up (these are my friends) hee is a _flos rarus_, forsooth, a none-such, a Phnix, (concerning whom see _Plinius_ and _Mandeuille_, though _Fienus de monstris_ doubteth at large of such a bird, whom Montaltus confuting argueth to have been a man _malae scrupulositatis_, of a weak and cowardlie faith: _Christopherus a Vega_ is with him in this.) Others again will blame, hiss, reprehende in many things, cry down altogether, my collections, for crude, inept, putid, _post cnam scripta, Coryate could write better upon a full meal_, verbose, inerudite, and not sufficiently abounding in authorities, _dogmata_, sentences of learneder writers which have been before me, when as that first named sort clean otherwise judge of my labours to bee nothing else but a _messe of opinions_, a vortex attracting indiscriminate, gold, pearls, hay, straw, wood, excrement, an exchange, tavern, marte, for foreigners to congregate, Danes, Swedes, Hollanders, Lombards, so many strange faces, dresses, salutations, languages, all which _Wolfius_ behelde with great content upon the Venetian Rialto, as he describes diffusedly in his book the world's Epitome, which _Sannazar_ so bepraiseth, _e contra_ our Polydore can see nothing in it; they call me singular, a pedant, fantastic, words of reproach in this age, which is all too neoteric and light for my humour.

One cometh to me sighing, complaining. He expected universal remedies in my Anatomy; so many cures as there are distemperatures among men. I have not put his affection in my cases. Hear you his case. My fine Sir is a lover, an _inamorato_, Pyramus, a Romeo; he walks seven years disconsolate, moping, because he cannot enjoy his miss, _insa.n.u.s amor_ is his melancholy, the man is mad; _delirat_, he dotes; all this while his Glycera is rude, spiteful, not to be entreated, churlish, spits at him, yet exceeding fair, gentle eyes, (which is a beauty,) hair l.u.s.trous and _smiling_, the trope is none of mine, _aeneas Sylvius_ hath _crines ridentes_--in conclusion she is wedded to his rival, a boore, a _Corydon_, a rustic, _omnino ignarus, he can scarce construe Corderius_, yet haughty, fantastic, _opiniatre_. The lover travels, goes into foreign parts, peregrinates, _amoris ergo_, sees manners, customs, not English, converses with pilgrims, lying travellers, monks, hermits, those cattle, pedlars, travelling gentry, _Egyptians_, natural wonders, unicorns (though _Aldobrandus_ will have them to be figments) satyrs, semi-viri, apes, monkeys, baboons, curiosities artificial, _pyramides_, Virgilius his tombe, relicks, bones, which are nothing but ivory as _Melancthon_ judges, though _Cornutus_ leaneth to think them bones of dogs, cats, (why not men?) which subtill priests vouch to have been saints, martyrs, _heu Pietas_! By that time he has ended his course, _fugit hora_, seven other years are expired, gone by, time is he should return, he taketh s.h.i.+p for Britaine, much desired of his friends, _favebant venti, Neptune is curteis_, after some weekes at sea he landeth, rides post to town, greets his family, kinsmen, _compotores, those jokers his friends that were wont to tipple with him at alehouses_; these wonder now to see the change, _quantum mutatus, the man is quite another thing_, he is disenthralled, manumitted, he wonders what so bewitched him, he can now both see, hear, smell, handle, converse with his mistress, single by reason of the death of his rival, a widow having children, grown willing, prompt, amorous, shewing no such great dislike to second nuptials, he might have her for asking, no such thing, his mind is changed, he loathes his former meat, had liever eat ratsbane, aconite, his humour is to die a bachelour; marke the conclusion. In this humour of celibate seven other years are consumed in idleness, sloth, world's pleasures, which fatigate, satiate, induce wearinesse, vapours, _taedium vitae_: When upon a day, behold a wonder, _redit Amor_, the man is as sick as ever, he is commenced lover upon the old stock, walks with his hand thrust in his bosom for negligence, moping he leans his head, face yellow, beard flowing and incomposite, eyes sunken, _anhelus, breath wheezy and asthmatical, by reason of overmuch sighing_: society he abhors, solitude is but a h.e.l.l, what shall he doe? all this while his mistresse is forward, coming, _amantissima, ready to jump at once into his mouth_, her he hateth, feels disgust when she is but mentioned, thinks her ugly, old, a painted Jesabeel, Alecto, Megara, and Tisiphone all at once, a Corinthian Lais, a strumpet, only not handsome; that which he affecteth so much, that which drives him mad, distracted, phrenetic, beside himself, is no beauty which lives, nothing in _rerum natura_, (so he might entertain a hope of a cure) but something which is not, can never be, a certain _fantastic opinion_ or _notional image_ of his mistresse, _that which she was_, and that which hee thought her to be, in former times, how beautiful! torments him, frets him, follows him, makes him that he wishes to die.

This Caprichio, _Sir Humourous_, hee cometh to me to be cured. I counsel marriage with his mistresse, according to Hippocrates his method, together with milk diet, herbs, aloes, and wild parsley, good in such cases, though Avicenna preferreth some sorts of wild fowl, teals, widgeons, becca ficos, which men in Suss.e.x eat. He flies out in a pa.s.sion, ho! ho; and falls to calling me names, dizzard, a.s.s, lunatic, moper, Bedlamite, Pseudo-Democritus. I smile in his face, bidding him be patient, tranquil, to no purpose, he still rages, I think this man must fetch his remedies from Utopia, Fairy Land, Islands in the Moone, &c.

EXTRACT II

* * * * * Much disputacyons of fierce wits amongst themselves, in logomachies, subtile controversies, many dry blows given on either side, contentions of learned men, or such as would be so thought, as _Bodinus de Periodis_ saith of such an one, _arrident amici ridet mundus_, in English, this man his cronies they c.o.c.ker him up, they flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, meanwile the world thinks him no better than a dizzard, a ninny, a sophist. * * * * * Philosophy running mad, madness philosophizing, much idle-learned enquiries, what truth is? and no issue, fruit, of all these noises, only huge books are written, and who is the wiser? * * * * * Men sitting in the Doctor's chair, we marvel how they got there, being _homines intellectus pulverulenti_, as _Trincauellius_ notes; they care not so they may raise a dust to smother the eyes of their oppugners; _homines parvulissimi_ as _Lemnius_, whom _Alcuin_ herein taxeth of a crude Latinism; dwarfs, minims, the least little men, these spend their time, and it is odds but they lose their time and wits too into the bargain, chacing of nimble and retiring Truth: Her they prosecute, her still they wors.h.i.+p, _libant_, they make libations, spilling the wine, as those old Romans in their sacrificials, _Cerealia, May-games_: Truth is the game all these hunt after, to the extreme perturbacyon and drying up of the moistures, _humidum radicale exsiccant_, as _Galen_, in his counsels to one oft these wear-wits, brain-moppers, spunges, saith. * * * * and for all this _nunquam metam attingunt_, and how should they? they bowle awry, shooting beside the marke; whereas it should appear, that _Truth absolute_ on this planet of ours is scarcely to be found, but in her stede _Queene Opinion_ predominates, governs, whose s.h.i.+fting and ever mutable _Lampas_, me seemeth, is man's destinie to follow, she praecurseth, she guideth him, before his uncapable eyes she frisketh her tender lights, which entertayne the child-man, untill what time his sight be strong to endure the vision of _Very Truth_, which is in the heavens, the vision beatifical, as _Ania.n.u.s_ expounds in his argument against certain mad wits which helde G.o.d to be corporeous; these were dizzards, fools, _gothamites_. * * * * but and if _Very Truth_ be extant indeede on earth, as some hold she it is which actuates men's deeds, purposes, ye may in vaine look for her in the learned universities, halls, colleges. Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford, amongst great clerks, disputants, subtile Aristotles, men _nodosi ingenii, able to take Lully by the chin_, but oftentimes to such an one as myself, an _Idiota_ or common person, _no great things_, melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with _Natura_ her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or _Art_ her statelie gardens, parks, terraces, _Belvideres_, on a sudden the G.o.ddesse herself _Truth_ has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her * * * * *

EXTRACT III

This morning, May 2, 1662, having first broken my fast upon eggs and cooling salades, mellows, water-cresses, those herbes, according to _Villanovus_ his prescription, who disallows the use of meat in a morning as gross, fat, hebetant, _feral_, altogether fitter for wild beasts than men, _e contra_ commendeth this herb-diete for gentle, humane, active, conducing to contemplation in most men, I betook myselfe to the nearest fields. (Being in London I commonly dwell in the _suburbes_, as airiest, quietest, _loci musis propriores_, free from noises of caroches, waggons, mechanick, and base workes, workshoppes, also sights, pageants, spectacles of outlandlish birds, fishes, crocodiles, _Indians_, mermaids, adde quarrels, fightings, wranglings of the common sort, _plebs_, the rabble, duelloes with fists, _proper to this island_, at which the stiletto'd and secrete _Italian_ laughs.) Withdrawing myselfe from these buzzing and illiterate vanities, with a _bezo las manos_ to the city, I begin to inhale, draw in, snuff up, as horses _dilatis naribus_ snort the fresh aires, with exceeding great delight, when suddenly there crosses me a procession sad, heavy, dolourous, tristfull, melancholick, able to change mirth into dolour, and overcast a clearer atmosphere than possibly the neighbourhoods of so great a citty can afford. An old man, a poore man, deceased, is borne on men's shoulders to a poore buriall, without solemnities of hea.r.s.e, mourners, plumes, _mutae personae, those personate actors that will weep if yee skew them a piece of silver_; none of those customed civilities of children, kinsfolk, _dependants_, following the coffin; he died a poore man, his friends _a.s.sessores opum, those cronies of his that stuck by him so long as he had a penny_, now leave him, forsake him, shun him, desert him; they think it much to follow his putrid and stinking carcase to the grave; his children, if he had any, for commonly the case stands thus, this poore man his son dies before him, he survives, poore, indigent, base, dejected, miserable, &c. or if he have any which survive him, _sua negotia agunt_, they mind their own business, forsooth, cannot, will not, find time, leisure, _inclination, extremum munus perficere_, to follow to the pit their old indulgent father, which loved them, stroked them, caressed them, c.o.c.kering them up, _quantum potuit_, as farre as his means extended, while they were babes, chits, _minims_, hee may rot in his grave, lie stinking in the sun _for them_, have no buriall at all, they care not. _O nefas!_ Chiefly I noted the coffin to have been _without a pall_, nothing but a few planks, of cheapest wood that could be had, _naked_, having none of the ordinary _symptomata_ of a funerall, those _locularii_ which bare the body having on diversely coloured coats, _and none black_: (one of these reported the deceased to have been an almsman seven yeares, a pauper, harboured and fed in the workhouse of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, to whose proper burying-ground he was now going for interment). All which when I behelde, hardly I refrained from weeping, and incontinently I fell to musing: "If this man had been rich, a _Crsus_, a _Cra.s.sus, or as rich as Whittington_, what pompe, charge, lavish cost, expenditure, of rich buriall, _ceremoniall-obsequies, obsequious ceremonies_, had been thought too good for such an one; what store of panegyricks, elogies, funeral orations, &c. some beggarly poetaster, worthy to be beaten for his ill rimes, crying him up, hee was rich, generous, bountiful, polite, learned, _a Maecenas_, while as in very deede he was nothing lesse: what weeping, sighing, sorrowing, honing, complaining, kinsmen, friends, relatives, fortieth cousins, poor relatives, lamenting for the deceased; hypocriticall heirs, sobbing, striking their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, (they care not if he had died a year ago); so many clients, dependants, flatterers, _parasites, cunning Gnathoes_, tramping on foot after the hea.r.s.e, all their care is, who shall stand fairest with the successour; he mean time (like enough) spurns them from him, spits at them, treads them under his foot, will have nought to do with any such cattle. I think him in the right: _Haec sunt majora gravitate Herac.l.i.ti. The follies are enough to give crying Herac.l.i.tus a fit of the spleene._

EARLY JOURNALISM

I.--G. F. COOKE IN "RICHARD THE THIRD"

(1802)

Some few of us remember to have _seen_, and all of us have heard our fathers tell of Quin, and Garrick, and Barry, and some faint traditional notices are left us of their manner in particular scenes, and their stile of delivering certain emphatic sentences. Hence our curiosity is excited, when a _new Hamlet_ or a _new Richard_ makes his appearance, in the first place, to inquire, how he acted in the _Closet scene_, in the _Tent scene_; how he looked, and how he started, when the _Ghost_ came on, and how he cried

Off with his head. So much for Buckingham.

We do not reprehend this minute spirit of comparison. On the contrary, we consider it as a delightful artifice, by which we connect the recreations of the past with those of the present generation, what pleased our fathers with what pleases us. We love to witness the obstinate attachments, the unconquerable prejudices (as they seem to us), of the old men, our seniors, the whimsical gratification they appear to derive from the very refusal to be gratified; to hear them talk of the good _old_ actors, whose race is for ever extinct.

With these impressions, we attended the first appearance of Mr. Cooke, in the character of _Richard the Third_, last winter. We thought that he "bustled" through the scenes with at least as much spirit and effect as any of his predecessors whom we remember in the part, and was not deficient in the delivery of any of those rememberable speeches and exclamations, which old prescription hath set up as _criteria_ of comparison. Now that the grace of freshness is worn off, and Mr. Cooke is no longer a novitiate candidate for public favour, we propose to enter into the question--whether that popular actor is right or wrong in his conception of the great outlines of the character; those strong essential differences which separate _Richard_ from all the other creations of Shakespeare. We say _of Shakespeare_; for though the Play, which pa.s.ses for _his_ upon the _Stage_, materially differs from _that_ which _he_ wrote under the same t.i.tle, being in fact little better than a compilation or a cento of pa.s.sages extracted from other of his Plays, and applied with gross violations of propriety (as we are ready at any time to point out), besides some miserable additions, which _he_ never could have written; all together producing an inevitable inconsistency of character, sufficient to puzzle and confound the _best Actor; yet_, in this chaos and perplexity, we are of opinion, that it becomes an Actor to shew his taste, by adhering, as much as possible, to the spirit and intention of the original Author, and to consult his _safety_ in _steering_ by the _Light_, which Shakespeare holds out to him, as by a great _Leading Star_. Upon these principles, we presume to censure Mr.

Cooke, while we are ready to acknowledge, that this Actor presents us with a very original and very forcible portrait (if not of the _man Richard_, whom Shakespeare drew, yet) of the _monster Richard_, as he exists in the _popular idea_, in _his own exaggerated_ and _witty self-abuse_, in the overstrained representations of the parties who were _sufferers_ by his _ambition_; and, above all, in the impertinent and wretched _scenes_, so absurdly foisted in by some, who have thought themselves capable of adding to what _Shakespeare wrote_.

But of Mr. Cooke's _Richard_:

1st. _His predominant and masterly simulation._

He has a tongue can wheedle with the DEVIL.

It has been the policy of that antient and grey simulator, in all ages, to hide his _horns_ and _claws_. The _Richard_ of Mr. Cooke perpetually obtrudes _his_. We see the effect of his deceit uniformly _successful_, but we do not comprehend _how_ it _succeeds_. We can put ourselves, by a very common fiction, into the place of the individuals upon whom it acts, and say, that, in the like case, we should not have been alike credulous. The hypocrisy is too glaring and visible. It resembles more the shallow cunning of a mind which is its own dupe, than the profound and practised art of so powerful an intellect as _Richard's_. It is too obstreperous and loud, breaking out into _triumphs_ and _plaudits_ at its own success, like an unexercised _noviciate_ in _tricks_. It has none of the silent confidence, and steady self-command of the _experienced politician_; it possesses none of that _fine address_, which was necessary to have betrayed the heart of _Lady Anne_, or even to have imposed upon the duller wits of the _Lord Mayor_ and _Citizens_.

2dly. _His habitual jocularity_, the effect of buoyant spirits, and an elastic mind, rejoicing in its own powers, and in the success of its machinations. This quality of unstrained mirth accompanies _Richard_, and is a prime feature in his character. It never leaves him; in plots, in stratagems, and in the midst of his b.l.o.o.d.y devices, it is perpetually driving him upon wit, and jests, and personal satire, fanciful allusions, and quaint felicities of phrase. It is one of the chief artifices by which the consummate master of dramatic effect has contrived to soften the horrors of the scene, and to make us contemplate a b.l.o.o.d.y and vicious character with delight. No where, in any of his plays, is to be found so much of sprightly colloquial dialogue, and soliloquies of genuine humour, as in _Richard_. This character of unlaboured mirth Mr. Cooke seems entirely to pa.s.s over, and subst.i.tutes in its stead the coa.r.s.e, taunting humour, and clumsy merriment, of a low-minded a.s.sa.s.sin.

3dly. _His personal deformity._--When the _Richard_ of Mr. Cooke makes allusions to his own _form_, they seem accompanied with _unmixed distaste_ and _pain_, like some obtrusive and _haunting_ idea--But surely the _Richard_ of Shakespeare mingles in these allusions a perpetual reference to his own powers and capacities, by which he is enabled to surmount these petty objections; and the joy of a defect _conquered_, or _turned_ into an advantage, is one cause of these very allusions, and of the satisfaction, with which his mind recurs to them.

These allusions themselves are made in an ironical and good humoured spirit of exaggeration--the most bitter of them are to be found in his self-congratulating soliloquy spoken in the very moment and crisis of joyful exultation on the success of his unheard of courts.h.i.+p.--No _partial excellence_ can satisfy for this absence of a _just general conception_--otherwise we are inclined to admit, that, in the delivery of _single sentences_, in a _new_ and often _felicitous_ light thrown upon _old_ and _hitherto misconstrued_ pa.s.sages, no actor that we have seen has gone beyond Mr. Cooke. He is always _alive_ to the scene before him; and by the _fire_ and _novelty_ of his manner, he seems likely to infuse some _warm blood_ into the _frozen declamatory stile_, into which our theatres have for some time past been degenerating.

II.--GRAND STATE BED

Ever since an account of the Marquis of Exeter's Grand State Bed appeared in the fas.h.i.+onable world, grandeur in this article of furniture has become quite the rage. Among others the Lord Mayor feeling for the dignity of the city of London, has pet.i.tioned the Corporation for one of great splendour to be placed in the Mansion-house, _at the City's expence_.

We have been favoured with a description of this magnificent state bed, the choice of his Lords.h.i.+p. The body is formed by the callipee, or under sh.e.l.l of a large turtle, carved in mahogany, and sufficiently capacious to receive two well-fed people. The callipash, or upper sh.e.l.l, forms the canopy. The posts are four gigantic figures richly gilt: two of them accurate copies of Gog and Magog; the other two represent Sir William Walworth and the last man in armour. Cupids with custards are the supporters. The curtains are of mazarine purple, and curiously wrought with the series of the idle and industrious apprentice from Hogarth, in gold embroidery: but the vallens exceed description; _there_, the various incidents in the life of Whittington are painted. The mice in one of the compartments are done so much to the life, that his Lords.h.i.+p's cat, who is an accurate judge of mice, was deceived. The quilt is of fas.h.i.+onable patchwork figures, the description of which we shall not antic.i.p.ate, as, we understand, Mr. Birch has obtained a sketch of it for his large Twelfth Cake. The whole is worthy of the taste of the first Magistrate of the first City in the world.

III.--FABLE FOR TWELFTH DAY

Once upon a high and solemn occasion all the great _fasts_ and _festivals_ in the year presented themselves before the throne of _Apollo, G.o.d of Days_.--Each brought an offering in his hand, as is the custom all over the _East_, that no man shall appear before the presence of the King empty-handed. _Shrove-Tuesday_ was there with his _pan-cakes_, and _Ash-Wednesday_ with his oblation of _fish_.

_Good-Friday_ brought the mystical _bun_. _Christmas-Day_ came bending underneath an intolerable load of _turkeys_ and _mince-pies_, his snow-white temples shaded with _holly_ and the sacred _misletoe_, and _singing_ a _carol_ as he advanced. Next came the _Thirtieth_ of _January_, bearing a _calf's-head_ in a charger; but _Apollo_ no sooner understood the emblematical meaning of the offering, than the stomach of the _G.o.d_ turned sick, and with visible indignation and abhorrence he ordered the unfortunate _Day_ out of his presence--the contrite _Day_ returned in a little time, bearing in his hands a _Whig_ (a sort of cake well-tempered and delicious)--the _G.o.d_ with smiles accepted the atonement, and the happy _Day_ understood that his peace was made, he promising never to bring such a dish into the presence of a _G.o.d_ again.