NOTES
Page 1. DEDICATION TO S.T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.
In 1818, when Lamb wrote these words, he was forty-three and Coleridge forty-six. The Works, in the first volume of which this dedication appeared, were divided into two volumes, the second, containing prose, being dedicated to Martin Burney, in the sonnet which I have placed on page 45. The publishers of the Works were Charles and James Ollier, who, starting business about 1816, had already published for Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Shelley.
For the allusion to the threefold cord, in the second paragraph, see the note on page 313.
The ****** Inn was the Salutation and Cat, in Newgate Street, since rebuilt, where Coleridge used to stay on his London visits when he was at Cambridge, and where the landlord is said to have asked him to continue as a free guest—if only he would talk and talk. Writing to Coleridge in 1796 Lamb recalls "the little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy;" and again, "I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking Oronooko (associated circumstances, which ever forcibly recall to my mind our evenings and nights at the Salutation)." Later he added to these concomitants of a Salutation evening, "Egg-hot, Welsh-rabbit, and metaphysics," and gave as his highest idea of heaven, listening to Coleridge "repeating one of Bowles's sweetest sonnets, in your sweet manner, while we two were indulging sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fire side at the Salutation."
The line—
Of summer days and of delightful years
is from Bowles—"Sonnet written at Ostend."
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Page 3. Lamb's Earliest Poem. Mille Vice Mortis.
In a MS. book that had belonged to James Boyer of Christ's Hospital, in which his best scholars inscribed compositions, are these lines signed Charles Lamb, 1789. All Lamb's Grecians are there too. The book was described by the late Dykes Campbell, Lamb's most accomplished and enthusiastic student, in the Illustrated London News, December 26, 1891.
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Page 4. POEMS IN COLERIDGE'S POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, 1796.
This book was published by Cottle, of Bristol, in 1796. Lamb contributed four poems, which were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: "The Effusions signed C.L. were written by Mr. CHARLES LAMB, of the India House—independently of the signature their superior merit would have sufficiently distinguished them." Lamb reprinted the first only once, in 1797, in the second edition of Coleridge's Poems, the remaining three again in his Works in 1818. I have followed in the body of this volume the text of these later appearances, the original form of the sonnets being relegated to the notes.
Page 4. As when a child on some long winter's night.
Some mystery attaches to the authorship of this sonnet. On December 1, 1794, Coleridge wrote to the editor of the Morning Chronicle saying that he proposed to send a series of sonnets ("as it is the fashion to call them") addressed to eminent contemporaries; and he enclosed one to Mr. Erskine. The editor, with almost Chinese politeness, inserted beneath the sonnet this note: "Our elegant Correspondent will highly gratify every reader of taste by the continuance of his exquisitely beautiful productions." The series continued with Burke, Priestley, Lafayette, Kosciusko, Chatham, Bowles, and, on December 29, 1794, Mrs. Siddons—the sonnet here printed—all signed S.T.C.
But the next appearance of the sonnet was as an effusion by Lamb in Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects, 1796, signed C.L.; and its next in the Poems, 1797, among Lamb's contributions. In 1803, however, we find it in Coleridge's Poems, third edition, with no reference to Lamb whatever. This probably means that Lamb and Coleridge had written it together, that Coleridge's original share had been the greater, and that Lamb and he had come to an arrangement by which Coleridge was to be considered the sole author; for Lamb did not reprint it in 1818 with his other early verse. Writing in 1796 to Coleridge concerning his treatment of other of Lamb's sonnets, Lamb says: "That to Mrs. Siddons, now, you were welcome to improve, if it had been worth it; but I say unto you again, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Such a distinction drawn between the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons and the others supports the belief that Lamb had not for it a deeply parental feeling.
This was not the only occasion on which Lamb and Coleridge wrote a sonnet in partnership. Writing to Southey in December, 1794, Coleridge says: "Of the following sonnet, the four last lines were written by Lamb, a man of uncommon genius…."
SONNET
O gentle look, that didst my soul beguile,
Why hast thou left me? Still in some fond dream
Revisit my sad heart, auspicious smile!
As falls on closing flowers the lunar beam;
What time in sickly mood, at parting day
I lay me down and think of happier years;
Of joys, that glimmered in Hope's twilight ray,
Then left me darkling in a vale of tears.
O pleasant days of Hope—for ever flown!
Could I recall one!—But that thought is vain,
Availeth not Persuasion's sweetest tone
To lure the fleet-winged travellers back again:
Anon, they haste to everlasting night,
Nor can a giant's arm arrest them in their flight.
Subsequently Coleridge rewrote the final couplet.
The same letter to Southey informs us that the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons was not Lamb's earliest poem, although it stands first in his poetical works; for Coleridge remarks: "Have you seen his [Lamb's] divine sonnet, 'O! I could laugh to hear the winter wind'?" (see page 5).
Lamb printed the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons twice—in 1796 and 1797.
Page 4. Was it some sweet device of Faery.
This sonnet passed through various vicissitudes. Lamb had sent it to Coleridge for his Poems on Various Subjects in 1796, and Coleridge proceeded to re-model it more in accordance with his own views. The following version, representing his modifications, was the one that found its way into print as Lamb's:—
Was it some sweet device of faery land
That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade,
And fancied wand'rings with a fair-hair'd maid?
Have these things been? Or did the wizard wand
Of Merlin wave, impregning vacant air,
And kindle up the vision of a smile
In those blue eyes, that seem'd to speak the while
Such tender things, as might enforce Despair
To drop the murth'ring knife, and let go by
His fell resolve? Ah me! the lonely glade
Still courts the footsteps of the fair-hair'd maid,
Among whose locks the west-winds love to sigh;
But I forlorn do wander, reckless where,
And mid my wand'rings find no ANNA there!
C.L.
Lamb naturally protested when the result came under his eyes. "I love my own feelings: they are dear to memory," he says in a letter in 1796, "though they now and then wake a sigh or a tear. 'Thinking on divers things foredone,' I charge you, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Later, when Coleridge's second edition was in preparation, Lamb wrote again (January 10, 1797): "I need not repeat my wishes to have my little sonnets printed verbatim my last way. In particular, I fear lest you should prefer printing my first sonnet [this one] as you have done more than once, 'Did the wand of Merlin wave?' It looks so like Mr. Merlin, the ingenious successor of the immortal Merlin, now living in good health and spirits, and flourishing in magical reputation in Oxford Street." The phrase "more than once" in the foregoing passage needs explanation. It refers to the little pamphlet of sonnets, entitled Sonnets from Various Authors, which Coleridge issued privately in 1796, and of which only one copy is now known to exist—that preserved in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington. The little pamphlet contains twenty-eight sonnets in all, of which three are by Bowles, four by Southey, four by Charles Lloyd, four by Coleridge, four by Lamb, and others by various writers: all of which were chosen for their suitability to be bound up with the sonnets of Bowles. Lamb's sonnets were: "We were two pretty babes" (see page 9), "Was it some sweet device" (printed with Coleridge's alterations), "When last I roved" (see page 8), and "O! I could laugh" (see page 5).
The present sonnet belongs to the series of four love sonnets which is completed by the one that follows, "Methinks, how dainty sweet it were," and those on page 8 beginning, "When last I roved" and "A timid grace." Anna is believed to have been Ann Simmons, who lived at Blenheims, a group of cottages near Blakesware, the house where Mrs. Field, Lamb's grandmother, was housekeeper. Mrs. Field died in 1792, after which time Lamb's long visits to that part of the country probably ceased. He was then seventeen. Nothing is known of Lamb's attachment beyond these sonnets, the fact that when he lost his reason for a short time in 1795-1796 he attributed the cause to some person unmentioned who is conjectured to have been Anna, and the occasional references in the Ella essays to "Alice W——" and to his old passion for her (see "Dream Children" in particular, in Vol. II). The death of Mrs. Lamb in September, 1796, and the duty of caring for and nursing his sister Mary, which then devolved upon Charles, put an end to any dreams of private happiness that he may have been indulging; and his little romance was over. How deep his passion was we are not likely ever to know; but Lamb thenceforward made very light of it, except in the pensive recollections in the essays twenty-five years later. In November, 1796, when sending Coleridge poems for his second edition, he says: "Do not entitle any of my things Love Sonnets, as I told you to call 'em; 'twill only make me look little in my own eyes; for it is a passion of which I retain nothing…. Thank God, the folly has left me for ever. Not even a review of my love verses renews one wayward wish in me…." Again, in November, 1796, in another letter to Coleridge, about his poems in the 1797 edition, Lamb says: "Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those 'merrier days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a mother's fondness for her school-boy." Lamb printed this sonnet three times—in 1796, 1797 and 1818.
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Page 5. Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd.
When this sonnet was printed by Coleridge in 1796 the sestet was made to run thus:—
But ah! sweet scenes of fancied bliss, adieu!
On rose-leaf beds amid your faery bowers
I all too long have lost the dreamy hours!
Beseems it now the sterner Muse to woo,
If haply she her golden meed impart,
To realise the vision of the heart.
Lamb remonstrated: "I had rather have seen what I wrote myself, though they bear no comparison with your exquisite lines—
"On rose-leaf'd beds, amid your faery bowers, etc.
I love my sonnets because they are the reflected images of my Own feelings at different times." This sonnet was printed by Lamb three times—in 1796, 1797 and 1798.
Page 5. O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind,
This sonnet, written probably at Margate, was entitled, in 1796, "Written at Midnight, by the Seaside, after a Voyage." The last lines then ran:—
And almost wish'd it were no crime to die!
How Reason reel'd! What gloomy transports rose!
Till the rude dashings rock'd them to repose.
The couplet was Coleridge's, and Lamb protested (June 10, 1796), describing them as good lines, but adding that they "must spoil the whole with me who know it is only a fiction of yours and that the rude dashings did in fact not rock me to repose."
When reprinted in 1797, the final couplet was omitted, asterisks standing instead. The present sonnet was probably the earliest of Lamb's printed poems. In the Elia essay "The Old Margate Hoy," Lamb states that the first time he saw the sea was on a visit to Margate as a boy, by water—probably the voyage that suggested this sonnet. Lamb printed the sonnet three times—in 1796, 1797 and 1818.
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Page 6. LLOYD'S POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER, 1796.
Charles Lloyd (1775-1839), the son of Charles Lloyd, of Birmingham (a cultured and philanthropical Quaker banker), joined Coleridge at Bristol late in 1796 as his private pupil, and moved with the family to Nether Stowey. Priscilla Farmer was Lloyd's maternal grandmother, to whom he was much attached, and on her death he composed the sonnets that form this costly quarto, published for Lloyd by Coleridge's friend, Joseph Cottle, of Bristol, in the winter of 1796.
Page 6. The Grandame.
Lamb sent these lines in their first state to Coleridge in June, 1796, at, which time they were, I conjecture, part of a long blank-verse poem which he was then meditating, and of which "Childhood," "Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects," and "The Sabbath Bells" (see pages 9 and 10) were probably other portions. The poem was never finished. On June 13, 1796, he writes to Coleridge:—
"Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following lines are the only tolerably complete ones I have writ out of not more than one hundred and fifty. That I get on slowly you may fairly impute to want of practice in composition, when I declare to you that (the few verses which you have seen excepted) I have not writ fifty lines since I left school. It may not be amiss to remark that my grandmother (on whom the verses are written) lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or sixty last years of her life—that she was a woman of exemplary piety and goodness—and for many years before her death was terribly afflicted with a cancer in her breast, which she bore with true Christian patience. You may think that I have not kept enough apart the ideas of her heavenly and her earthly master; but recollect I have designedly given into her own way of feeling; and if she had a failing 'twas that she respected her master's family too much, not reverenced her Maker too little. The lines begin imperfectly, as I may probably connect 'em if I finish at all: and if I do, Biggs shall print 'em (in a more economical way than you yours), for, Sonnets and all, they won't make a thousand lines as I propose completing 'em, and the substance must be wire-drawn."
When Charles Lloyd joined Coleridge later in the year, and was preparing his Poems in Memory of Priscilla Farmer, Coleridge obtained Lamb's permission for "The Grandame" to be included with them. The lines were introduced by Lloyd in these words: "The following beautiful fragment was written by CHARLES LAMB, of the India-House.—Its subject being the same with that of my Poems, I was solicitous to have it printed with them: and I am indebted to a Friend of the Author's for the permission."
The poem differed then very slightly from its present form. When the book was sent to Lamb he remarked (in December, 1796) on "the odd coincidence of two young men, in one age, carolling their grandmothers…. I cannot but smile to see my Granny so gayly deck'd forth [the book was expensively produced by Lloyd], tho', I think, whoever altered 'thy' praises to 'her' praises—'thy' honoured memory to 'her' honoured memory [lines 27 and 28], did wrong—they best exprest my feelings. There is a pensive state of recollection, in which the mind is disposed to apostrophise the departed objects of its attachment; and, breaking loose from grammatical precision, changes from the 1st to the 3rd, and from the 3rd to the 1st person, just as the random fancy or feeling directs."
Mrs. Mary Field, née Bruton, Lamb's maternal grandmother, was housekeeper at Blakesware house, near Widford, the seat of the Plumer family for very many years, during the latter part of her life being left in sole charge, for William Plumer had moved to his other seat, Gilston, a few miles distant (see "Blakesmoor in H—— shire," and notes, Vol. II). Lamb and his brother and sister visited their grandmother at Blakesware as though in her own house. Mrs. Field died of cancer in the breast, July 31, 1792, aged seventy-nine, and was buried in Widford churchyard.
Approached from the east the churchyard seems to be anything but on the hilltop, for one descends to it; but it stands on a ridge, and seen from the north, or, as at the old Blakesware house, from the west, it appears to crown an eminence. The present spire, though slender and tapering, is not that which Lamb used to see. Mrs. Field's plain stone, whose legibility was not long since threatened by overhanging branches, has now been saved from danger and may still be read. It merely records the name "Mary Feild" (a mistake of the stone-cutter) and the bare dates.
This poem was printed by Lamb three times—in 1796 (in Lloyd's book), in 1797 (with Coleridge) and in 1818.
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Page 8. COLERIDGE'S POEMS, 1797.
Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects, 1796, went into a second edition in 1797 under the title, Poems by S.T. Coleridge, Second Edition, to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd. Coleridge invented a motto from Groscollius for the title-page, bearing upon this poetical partnership: "Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitiae et similium junctarumque Camoenarum; quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas!" "Double is the bond which binds us—friendship, and a kindred taste in poetry. Would that neither death nor lapse of time could dissolve it!"
Lamb's contributions were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: "There were inserted in my former Edition, a few Sonnets of my Friend and old School-fellow, CHARLES LAMB. He has now communicated to me a complete Collection of all his Poems; quae qui non prorsus amet, illum omnes et Virtutes et Veneres odore." (Which things, whoever is not unreservedly in love with, is detested by all the Virtues and the Graces.) Lamb's poems came last in the book, an arrangement insisted upon in a letter from him to Coleridge in November, 1796:—"Do you publish with Lloyd, or without him? In either case my little portion may come last; and after the fashion of orders to a country correspondent, I will give directions how I should like to have 'em done. The title-page to stand thus:—
POEMS
BY
CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE
Under this leaf the following motto, which, for want of room, I put over leaf, I desire you to insert, whether you like it or no. May not a gentleman choose what arms, mottoes, or armorial bearings the Herald will give him leave, without consulting his republican friend, who might advise none? May not a publican put up the sign of the Saracen's Head, even though his undiscerning neighbour should prefer, as more genteel, the Cat and Gridiron?
"[MOTTO]
"This Beauty, in the blossom of my Youth,
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,
Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness,
In the best language my true tongue could tell me,
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me,
I sued and served. Long did I love this Lady.
"Massinger."
"THE DEDICATION THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS, CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING IN LIFE'S MORE VACANT HOURS, PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY LOVE IN IDLENESS; ARE, WITH ALL A BROTHER'S FONDNESS, INSCRIBED TO MARY ANN LAMB, THE AUTHOR'S BEST FRIEND AND SISTER"
The dedication was printed as Lamb wished, in the form I have followed above, and the book appeared.
Page 8. When last I roved these winding wood-walks green,
This was sent to Coleridge on June 1, 1796, in a letter containing also the sonnets, "The Lord of Life," page 16; "A timid grace," page 8; and "We were two pretty babes," page 9. It was written, said Lamb, "on revisiting a spot, where the scene was laid of my 1st sonnet"—"Was it some sweet device," page 4. Lamb printed this sonnet twice—in 1797 and 1818. Page 8. A timid grace sits trembling in her eye.
This, the last of the four love sonnets (see note on page 310), seems to be a survival of a discarded effort, for Lamb tells Coleridge, in the letter referred to in the preceding note, that it "retains a few lines from a sonnet of mine, which you once remarked had no 'body of thought' in it." Lamb printed this sonnet twice—in 1797 and 1818.
Page 9. If from my lips some angry accents fell,
Lamb sent this sonnet, which is addressed to his sister, to Coleridge in May, 1796. "The Sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry, but you will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my prison-house [an asylum] in one of my lucid Intervals." It is dated 1795 in Coleridge's Poems. Lamb printed the sonnet twice—in 1797 and 1818.
Page 9. We were two pretty babes, the youngest she.
First printed in the Monthly Magazine, July, 1796. "The next and last [wrote Lamb in the letter to Coleridge referred to in the notes on page 310] I value most of all. 'Twas composed close upon the heels of the last ['A timid grace,' page 8], in that very wood I had in mind when I wrote 'Methinks how dainty sweet' [page 5]." It is dated 1795 in Coleridge's Poems. In the same letter Lamb adds:—"Since writing it, I have found in a poem by Hamilton of Bangour [William Hamilton, 1704-1754, the Scotch poet, of Bangour, Linlithgowshire] these 2 lines to happiness:—
"Nun sober and devout, where art thou fled,
To hide in shades thy meek contented head.
Lines eminently beautiful, but I do not remember having re'd 'em previously, for the credit of my 10th and 11th lines. Parnell [Thomas Parnell, 1679-1718] has 2 lines (which probably suggested the above) to Contentment
"Whither ah whither art Thou fled,
To hide thy meek contented head.
"Cowley's exquisite Elegy on the death of his friend Harvey suggested the phrase of 'we two'
"Was there a tree [about] that did not know
The love betwixt us two?—"
When Coleridge printed the sonnet in the pamphlet described on page 310, he appended to the eleventh line the following note:—
Innocence, which, while we possess it, is playful as a babe, becomes AWFUL when it has departed from us. This is the sentiment of the line —a fine sentiment and nobly expressed.
Lamb printed this sonnet twice—in 1797 and 1818.
Page 9. Childhood.
See note to "The Grandame," page 312. The "turf-clad slope" in line 4 was probably at Blakesware. It is difficult to re-create the scene, for the new house stands a quarter of a mile west of the old one, the site of which is hidden by grass and trees. Where once were gardens is now meadow land.
Lamb printed this poem twice—in 1797 and 1818.
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Page 10. The Sabbath Bells.
Lamb printed this poem twice—in 1797 and 1818. Church bells seem always to have had charms for him (see the reference in John Woodvil, page 197, and in Susan Yates' story in Mrs. Leicester's School in Vol. III.). See note to "The Grandame."
Page 10. Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects.
In the letter of December 5, 1796, quoted below, Lamb remarks concerning this poem: "I beg you to alter the words 'pain and want,' to 'pain and grief' (line 10), this last being a more familiar and ear-satisfying combination. Do it, I beg of you." But the alteration either was not made, or was cancelled later. The reference in lines 6, 7 and 8 is to Revelation xxii. 1, 2. See note to "The Grandame." Lamb printed this poem twice—in 1797 and 1818.
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Page 11. The Tomb of Douglas.
The play on which this poem was founded was the tragedy of "Douglas" by John Home (1722-1808), produced in 1756. Young Norval, or Douglas, the hero, after killing the false Glenalvon, is slain by his stepfather, Lord Randolph, unknowing who he is. On hearing of Norval's death his mother, Lady Randolph, throws herself from a precipice. In the letter to Coleridge of December 5, 1796, quoted above, Lamb also copied out "The Tomb of Douglas," prefixing these remarks:—"I would also wish to retain the following if only to perpetuate the memory of so exquisite a pleasure as I have often received at the performance of the tragedy of Douglas, when Mrs. Siddons has been the Lady Randolph…. To understand the following, if you are not acquainted with the play, you should know that on the death of Douglas his mother threw herself down a rock; and that at that time Scotland was busy in repelling the Danes."
Coleridge told Southey that Lamb during his derangement at the end of 1795 and beginning of 1796 believed himself at one time to be Young Norval.
Lamb printed this poem, which differs curiously in character from all his other poetical works, only once—in 1797.
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Page 12. To Charles Lloyd.
Lamb copied these lines in a letter to Coleridge on January 18, 1797, remarking:—"You have learned by this time, with surprise, no doubt, that Lloyd is with me in town. The emotions I felt on his coming so unlooked for are not ill expressed in what follows, and what if you do not object to them as too personal, and to the world obscure, or otherwise wanting in worth I should wish to make a part of our little volume."
It must be remembered, in reading the poem, that Lamb was still in the shadow of the tragedy in which he lost his mother, and, for a while, his sister, and which had ruined his home. For other lines to Charles Lloyd see page 21. This poem was printed by Lamb twice—in 1797 and 1818.
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Page 13. A Vision of Repentance.
Writing to Coleridge on June 13, 1797, Lamb says of this Spenserian exercise:—"You speak slightingly. Surely the longer stanzas were pretty tolerable; at least there was one good line in it [line 5]:
"Thick-shaded trees, with dark green leaf rich clad.
To adopt your own expression, I call this a 'rich' line, a fine full line. And some others I thought even beautiful." Lamb printed the poem twice—in 1797 and 1818.
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Page 16. POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-1798, AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB.
Page 16. Sonnet: The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed.
The Monthly Magazine, December, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb.
Lamb sent the first draft of this sonnet to Coleridge in 1796, saying that it was composed "during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in last Summer." "The last line," he adds, "is a copy of Bowles's 'to the green hamlet in the peaceful plain.' Your ears are not so very fastidious—many people would not like words so prosaic and familiar in a sonnet as Islington and Hertfordshire." We must take Lamb's word for it; but the late W.J. Craig found for the last line a nearer parallel than Bowles'. In William Vallans' "Tale of the Two Swannes" (1590), which is quoted in Leland's Itinerary, Hearne's edition, is the phrase: "The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire." Lamb quotes his own line in the Elia essay "My Relations."
This sonnet is perhaps the only occasion on which Lamb, even in play, wrote anything against his beloved city.
It may be noted here that this was Lamb's last contribution to the Monthly Magazine, which had printed in the preceding number, November, 1797, Coleridge's satirical sonnets, signed Nehemiah Higginbottom, in which Lamb and Lloyd were ridiculed, and which had perhaps some bearing on the coolness that for a while was to subsist between Coleridge and Lamb (see Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, 1898, pages 44-47).
Page 16. To the Poet Cowper.
The Monthly Magazine, December, 1796. Signed C. Lamb.
Lamb wrote these lines certainly as early as July, 1796, for he sends them to Coleridge on the 6th of that month, adding:—
"I fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as exprest above, (perhaps scarcely just), but the poor Gentleman has just recovered from his Lunacies, and that begets pity, and pity love, and love admiration, and then it goes hard with People but they lie!"
Lamb admired Cowper greatly in those days—particularly his "Crazy Kate" ("Task," Book I., 534-556). "I have been reading 'The Task' with fresh delight," he says on December 5, 1796. "I am glad you love Cowper. I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that man my friend, who should be offended with the 'divine chit-chat of Cowper.'" And again a little later, "I do so love him."
Page 17. Lines addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol, in the Summer of 1796.
The Monthly Magazine, January, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb.
Lamb sent the lines in their original state to Coleridge in the letter of July 5, 1796, immediately before the words "Let us prose," at the head of that document as it is now preserved.
"Another minstrel" was Coleridge. Chatterton was the mysterious youth of line 16. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was baptised at St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol; he was the nephew of the sexton; he brooded for many hours a day in the church; he copied his antique writing from the parchment in its muniment room; one of his later dreams was to be able to build a new spire; and a cenotaph to his memory was erected by public subscription in 1840 near the north-east angle of the churchyard. Chatterton went to London on April 24, 1770, aged seventeen and a half, and died there by his own hand on August 25 of the same year.
The poem originated in an invitation to Lamb from the Coleridges at
Bristol, which he hoped to be able to accept; but to his request for the
necessary holiday from the India House came refusal. Lamb went to Nether
Stowey, however, in the following summer and met Wordsworth there.
Lamb at one time wished these lines to be included among his poems in the second edition of Coleridge's Poems, 1797. Writing on January 18, 1797, Lamb says: "I shall be sorry if that volume comes out, as it necessarily must do, unless you print those very school boyish verses I sent you on not getting leave to come down to Bristol last summer." At the end of the letter he adds: "Yet I should feel ashamed that to you I wrote nothing better. But they are too personal, almost trifling and obscure withal."
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Page 18. Sonnet to a Friend.
The Monthly Magazine, October, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb.
Lamb sent this sonnet to Coleridge on January 2, 1797, remarking: "If the fraternal sentiment conveyed in the following lines will atone for the total want of any thing like merit or genius in it, I desire you will print it next after my other Sonnet to my Sister." The other sonnet was, "If from my lips some peevish accents fall," printed with Coleridge's Poems in 1797 (see page 9), concerning which book Lamb was writing in the above letter. Coleridge apparently decided against the present sonnet, for it was not printed in that book.
Writing to Coleridge again a week later concerning the present poem,
Lamb said:—
"I am aware of the unpoetical caste of the 6 last lines of my last sonnet, and think myself unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into the book; only the sentiments of those 6 lines are thoroughly congenial to me in my state of mind, and I wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens of my affection to poor Mary."
It has to be borne in mind that only three months had elapsed since the death of Mrs. Lamb, and Mary was still in confinement.
Page 18. To a Young Lady. Signed C.L.
Monthly Magazine, March, 1797, afterwards copied into the Poetical Register for 1803, signed C.L. in both cases. We know these to be Lamb's from a letter to Coleridge of December 5, 1796. The identity of the young lady is not now known.
* * * * *
Page 19. Living without God in the World.
The Annual Anthology, Vol. I., 1799.
Vol. I. of the Annual Anthology, edited by Southey for Joseph Cottle, was issued in September, 1799; and that was, I believe, this poem's first appearance as a whole. Early in 1799, however, Charles Lloyd had issued a pamphlet entitled Lines suggested by the Fast appointed on Wednesday, February 27, 1799 (Birmingham, 1799), in which, in a note, he quotes a passage from Lamb's poem, beginning, "some braver spirits" (line 23), and ending, "prey on carcasses" (line 36), with the prefatory remark: "I am happy in the opportunity afforded me of introducing the following striking extract from some lines, intended as a satire on the Godwinian jargon."
Writing to Southey concerning this poem, Lamb says:-"I can have no objection to you printing 'Mystery of God' [afterwards called 'Living without God in the World'] with my name, and all due acknowledgments for the honour and favour of the communication: indeed, 'tis a poem that can dishonour no name. Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto vanitas."
* * * * *
Page 21. BLANK VERSE, BY CHARLES LLOYD AND CHARLES LAMB, 1798.
Charles Lloyd left Coleridge early in 1797, and was in the winter 1797-1798 living in London, sharing lodgings with James White (Lamb's friend and the author of Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff, 1796). It was then that the joint production of this volume was entered upon. Of the seven poems contributed by Lamb only "The Old Familiar Faces" (shorn of one stanza) and the lines "Composed at Midnight" were reprinted by him: on account, it may be assumed, of his wish not to revive in his sister, who would naturally read all that he published, any painful recollections. Not that she refused in after years to speak of her mother, but Lamb was, I think, sensitive for her and for himself and the family too. As a matter of fact the circumstances of Mrs. Lamb's death were known only to a very few of the Lambs' friends until after Charles' death. It must be remembered that when Blank Verse was originally published, in 1798, Mary Lamb was still living apart, nor was it known that she, would ever be herself again.
It was this little volume which gave Gillray an opportunity for introducing Lamb and Lloyd into his cartoon "The New Morality," published in the first number of The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine (which succeeded Canning's Anti-Jacobin), August 1, 1798. Canning's lines, "The New Morality," had been published in The Anti-Jacobin on July 9, 1798, containing the couplets:—
And ye five other wandering Bards that move
In sweet accord of harmony and love,
C——dge and S—th—y, L——d, and L——be and Co.,
Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux!
In the picture Gillray introduced "Coleridge" as a donkey offering a volume of "Dactylics," and Southey as another donkey, flourishing a volume of "Saphics." Behind them, seated side by side, poring over a manuscript entitled "Blank Verse, by Toad and Frog," are a toad and frog which the Key states to be Lloyd and Lamb. It was in reference to this picture that Godwin, on first meeting Lamb, asked him, "Pray, Mr. Lamb, are you toad or frog?"
Page 21. To Charles Lloyd.
The Monthly Magazine, October, 1797. Signed.
Lamb sent these lines to Coleridge in September, 1797, remarking: "The following I wrote when I had returned from Charles Lloyd, leaving him behind at Burton, with Southey. To understand some of it you must remember that at that time he was very much perplexed in mind." Lloyd throughout his life was given to religious speculations which now and then disturbed his mind to an alarming extent, affecting him not unlike the gloomy forebodings and fears that beset Cowper. On this particular occasion he was in difficulty also as to his engagement with Sophia Pemberton, with whom he was meditating elopement and a Scotch marriage.
Page 21. Written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral.
"This afternoon," Lamb wrote to Coleridge on February 13, 1797, "I attend the funeral of my poor old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own I am thankful that the good creature has ended all her days of suffering and infirmity. She was to me the 'cherisher of infancy.' …" Lamb's Aunt Hetty was his father's sister. Her real name was Sarah Lamb. All that we know of her is found in this poem, in the Letters, in the passages in "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," and "My Relations;" in the story of "The Witch Aunt," in Mrs. Leicester's School, and in a reference in one of Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart, where, writing of her aunt and her mother,—"the best creatures in the world,"—she speaks of Miss Lamb as being "as unlike a gentlewoman as you can possibly imagine a good old woman to be;" contrasting her with Mrs. Lamb, "a perfect gentlewoman." The description in "The Witch Aunt" bears out Mary Lamb's letter.
After the tragedy of September, 1796, Aunt Hetty was taken into the house of a rich relative. This lady, however, seems to have been of too selfish and jealous a disposition (see Lamb's letter to Coleridge, December 9, 1796) to exert any real effort to make her guest comfortable or happy. Hence Aunt Hetty returned to her nephew.
"My poor old aunt [Lamb wrote to Coleridge on January 5, 1797], whom you have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at school; who used to toddle there to bring me fag [food], when I, school-boy like, only despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you went into the old grammar-school, opend her apron, and bring out her bason with some nice thing she had caused to be saved for me—the good old creature is now lying on her death bed…. She says, poor thing, she is glad to come home to die with me. I was always her favourite."
Line 24. One parent yet is left. John Lamb, who is described as he was in his prime, as Lovel, in the Elia essay on "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," died in 1799.
Line 27. A semblance most forlorn of what he was. Lamb uses this line as a quotation, slightly altered, in his account of Lovel.
* * * * *
Page 22. Written a Year after the Events.
Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge in September, 1797, entitling it "Written a Twelvemonth after the Events," and adding, "Friday next, Coleridge, is the day on which my Mother died." Mrs. Lamb's death, at the hands of her daughter in a moment of frenzy, occurred on September 22, 1796. Lamb added that he wrote the poem at the office with "unusual celerity." "I expect you to like it better than anything of mine; Lloyd does, and I do myself." The version sent to Coleridge differs only in minor and unimportant points from that in Blank Verse.
The second paragraph of the poem is very similar to a passage which Lamb had written in a letter to Coleridge on November 14, 1796:—
"Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those 'merrier days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a mother's fondness for her school-boy. What would I give to call her back to earth for one day!—on my knees to ask her pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to time, have given her gentle spirit pain!—and the day, my friend, I trust, will come. There will be 'time enough' for kind offices of love, if 'Heaven's eternal year' be ours. Here-after, her meek spirit shall not reproach me."
In the last paragraph of the poem is a hint of "The Old Familiar Faces," that was to follow it in the course of a few months.
Lines 52, 53. And one, above the rest. Probably Coleridge is meant.
Page 24. Written soon after the Preceding Poem.
The poem is addressed to Lamb's mother. Lamb seems to have sent a copy to Southey, although the letter containing it has not been perserved, for we find Southey passing it on to his friend C.W.W. Wynn on November 29, 1797, with a commendation: "I know that our tastes differ much in poetry, and yet I think you must like these lines by Charles Lamb."
The following passage in Rosamund Gray, which Lamb was writing at this time, is curiously like these poems in tone. It occurs in one of the letters from Elinor Clare to her friend—letters in which Lamb seems to describe sometimes his own feelings, and sometimes those of his sister, on their great sorrow:—
"Maria! shall not the meeting of blessed spirits, think you, be something like this?—I think, I could even now behold my mother without dread—I would ask pardon of her for all my past omissions of duty, for all the little asperities in my temper, which have so often grieved her gentle spirit when living. Maria! I think she would not turn away from me.
"Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than memory, brings her before me—I see her sit in her old elbow chair—her arms folded upon her lap—a tear upon her cheek, that seems to upbraid her unkind daughter for some inattention—I wipe it away and kiss her honored lips.
"Maria! when I have been fancying all this, Allan will come in, with his poor eyes red with weeping, and taking me by the hand, destroy the vision in a moment.
"I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but it is the prattle of the heart, which Maria loves. Besides, whom have I to talk to of these things but you—you have been my counsellor in times past, my companion, and sweet familiar friend. Bear with me a little—I mourn the 'cherishers of my infancy.'"
* * * * *
Page 25. Written on Christmas Day, 1797.
Mary Lamb, to whom these lines were addressed, after seeming to be on the road to perfect recovery, had suddenly had a relapse necessitating a return to confinement from the lodging in which her brother had placed her.
Page 25. The Old Familiar Faces.
This, the best known of all Lamb's poems, was written in January, 1798, following, it is suggested, upon a fit of resentment against Charles Lloyd. Writing to Coleridge in that month Lamb tells of that little difference, adding, "but he has forgiven me." Mr. J.A. Rutter, who, through Canon Ainger, enunciated this theory, thinks that Lloyd may be the "friend" of the fourth stanza, and Coleridge the "friend" of the sixth. The old—but untenable—supposition was that it was Coleridge whom Lamb had left abruptly. On the other hand it might possibly have been James White, especially as he was of a resolutely high-spirited disposition.
In its 1798 form the poem began with this stanza:—
Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?
I had a mother, but she died, and left me,
Died prematurely in a day of horrors—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
And the last stanza began with the word "For," and italicised the words
And some are taken from me.
I am inclined to think from this italicisation that it was Mary Lamb's new seizure that was the real impulse of the poem.
The poem was dated January, 1798. Lamb printed it twice—in 1798 and 1818.
* * * * *
Page 26. Composed at Midnight.
On the appearance of Lamb's Works, 1818, Leigh Hunt printed in The Examiner (February 7 and 8, 1819) the passage beginning with line 32, entitling it "A HINT to the GREATER CRIMINALS who are so fond of declaiming against the crimes of the poor and uneducated, and in favour of the torments of prisons and prison-ships in this world, and worse in the next. Such a one, says the poet,
'on his couch Lolling, &c.'"
* * * * *
Page 28. POEMS AT THE END OF JOHN WOODVIL, 1802.
The volume containing John Woodvil, 1802, which is placed in the present edition among Lamb's plays, on page 149, included also the "Fragments of Burton" (see Vol. I.) and two lyrics.
Page 28. Helen.
Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge on August 26, 1800, remarking:—"How do you like this little epigram? It is not my writing, nor had I any finger in it. If you concur with me in thinking it very elegant and very original, I shall be tempted to name the author to you. I will just hint that it is almost or quite a first attempt."
The author was, of course, Mary Lamb. In his Elia essay "Blakesmoor in H——shire" in the London Magazine, September, 1824, Lamb quoted the poem, stating that "Bridget took the hint" of her "pretty whimsical lines" from a portrait of one of the Plumers' ancestors. The portrait was the cool pastoral beauty with a lamb, and it was partly to make fun of her brother's passion for the picture that Mary wrote the lines.
The poem was reprinted in the Works, 1818.
* * * * *
Page 29. Ballad from the German.
This poem was written for Coleridge's translation of "The Piccolimini," the first part of Schiller's "Wallenstein," in 1800—Coleridge supplying a prose paraphrase (for Lamb knew no German) for the purpose. The original is Thekla's song in Act II., Scene 6:—
Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn,
Das Mägdlein wandelt an Ufers Grün,
Es bricht sich die Welle mit Macht, mit Macht,
Und sie singt hinaus in die finstre Nacht,
Das Auge von Weinen getrübet.
Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer,
Und welter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr.
Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück,
Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,
Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.
Coleridge's own translation of Thekla's song, which was printed alone in later editions of the play, ran thus:—
The cloud doth gather, the greenwood roar,
The damsel paces along the shore;
The billows they tumble with might, with might;
And she flings out her voice to the darksome night;
Her bosom is swelling with sorrow;
The world it is empty, the heart will die,
There's nothing to wish for beneath the sky:
Thou Holy One, call thy child away!
I've lived and loved, and that was to-day—
Make ready my grave-clothes to-morrow.
Barry Cornwall, in his memoir of Lamb, says: "Lamb used to boast that he supplied one line to his friend in the fourth scene [Act IV., Scene i] of that tragedy, where the description of the Pagan deities occurs. In speaking of Saturn, he is figured as 'an old man melancholy.' 'That was my line,' Lamb would say, exultingly." The line did not reach print in this form.
Lamb printed his translation twice—in 1802 and 1818.
Page 29. Hypochondriacus.
* * * * *
Page 30. A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor.
These two poems formed, in the John Woodvil volume, 1802, portions of the "Fragments of Burton," which will be found in Vol. I. Lamb afterwards took out these poems and printed them separately in the Works, 1818, in the form here given. Originally "Hypochondriacus" formed Extract III. of the "Fragments," under the title "A Conceipt of Diabolical Possession." The body of the verses differed very slightly from the present state; but at the end the prayer ran: "Jesu Mariae! libera nos ab his tentationibus, oral, implorat, R.B. Peccator"—R.B. standing for Robert Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, the professed author of the poem.
"The Old and Young Courtier" may be found in the Percy Reliques. Lamb copied it into one of his Commonplace Books.
* * * * *
Page 32. THE WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB, 1818.
This book, in two volumes, was published by C. & J. Ollier in 1818: the first volume containing the dedication to Coleridge that is here printed on page 1, all of Lamb's poetry that he then wished to preserve, "John Woodvil," "The Witch," the "Fragments of Burton," "Rosamund Gray" and "Recollections of Christ's Hospital;" the second volume, dedicated to Martin Charles Burney in the sonnet on page 45, containing criticisms, essays and "Mr. H."
The scheme of the present volume makes it impossible to keep together the poetical portion of Lamb's Works. In order, however, to present clearly to the reader Lamb's mature selection, in 1818, of the poetry by which he wished to be known, I have indicated the position in his Works of those poems that have already been printed on earlier pages.
Page 32. Hester.
Lamb sent this poem to Manning in March, 1803—"I send you some verses I have made on the death of a young Quaker you may have heard me speak of as being in love with for some years while I lived at Pentonville, though I had never spoken to her in my life. She died about a month since."
Hester Savory was the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith in the
Strand. She was born in 1777 and was thus by two years Lamb's junior.
She married, in July, 1802, Charles Stoke Dudley, a merchant, and she
died in February of the following year, and was buried at Bunhill
Fields. Lamb was living in Pentonville from the end of 1796 until 1799.
* * * * *
Page 33. Dialogue between a Mother and Child. By Mary Lamb.
Charles Lamb, writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 2, 1804, says: "I send you two little copies of verses by Mary L—b." Then follow this "Dialogue" and the "Lady Blanch" verses on page 41. Lamb adds at the end: "I wish they may please you: we in these parts are not a little proud of them."
* * * * *
Page 34. A Farewell to Tobacco.
First printed in The Reflector, No. IV., 1811.
Lamb had begun to think poetically of tobacco as early as 1803. Writing to Coleridge in April 13 of that year, he says:—"What do you think of smoking? I want your sober, average, noon opinion of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. Morning is a girl, and can't smoke—she's no evidence one way or the other; and Night is so [? evidently] bought over, that he can't be a very upright judge. May be the truth is, that one pipe is wholesome; two pipes toothsome; three pipes noisome; four pipes fulsome; five pipes quarrelsome; and that's the sum on't. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason."
Writing to William and Dorothy Wordsworth on September 28, 1805, Lamb remarked regarding his literary plans:—"Sometimes I think of a farce—but hitherto all schemes have gone off,—an idle brag or two of an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and going off in the morning—but now I have bid farewell to my 'Sweet Enemy' Tobacco, as you will see in my next page, I perhaps shall set soberly to work. Hang work!"
On the next page Lamb copied the "Farewell to Tobacco," adding:—"I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to my 'Friendly Traitress.' Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my morning curse for these five years: and you know how difficult it is from refraining to pick one's lips even when it has become a habit. This Poem is the only one which I have finished since so long as when I wrote 'Hester Savory' [in March, 1803]…. The 'Tobacco,' being a little in the way of Withers (whom Southey so much likes), perhaps you will somehow convey it to him with my kind remembrances."
Mr. Bertram Dobell has a MS. copy of the poem, in Lamb's hand, inscribed
thus: "To his quondam Brethren of the Pipe, Capt. B[urney], and J[ohn]
R[ickman], Esq., the Author dedicates this his last Farewell to
Tobacco." At the end is a rude drawing of a pipe broken—"My Emblem."
It is perhaps hardly needful to say that Lamb's farewell was not final. He did not give up smoking for many years. When asked (Talfourd's version of the story says by Dr. Parr) how he was able to emit such volumes of smoke, he replied, "I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue;" and Macready records having heard Lamb express the wish to draw his last breath through a pipe and exhale it in a pun. Talfourd says that in late life Lamb ceased to smoke except very occasionally. But the late Mrs. Coe, who knew Lamb at Widford when she was a child, told me that she remembered Lamb's black pipe and his devotion to it, about 1830.
In his character sketch of the late Elia (see Vol. II.), written in 1822, Lamb describes the effect of tobacco upon himself. "He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry—as the friendly vapour ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments, which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist!"
* * * * *
Page 38. To T.L.H.
First printed in The Examiner, January 1, 1815.
The lines are to Thornton Leigh Hunt, Leigh Hunt's little boy, who was born in 1810, and, during his father's imprisonment for a libel on the Regent from February, 1813, to February, 1815, was much in the Surrey gaol. Lamb, who was among Hunt's constant visitors, probably first saw him there. Lamb mentions him again in his Elia essay "Witches and other Night Fears." See also note to the "Letter to Southey," Vol. I. Thornton Leigh Hunt became a journalist, and held an important post on the Daily Telegraph. He died in 1873.
When printed in Leigh Hunt's Examiner, signed C.L., the poem had these prefatory words by the editor:—
The following piece perhaps we had some personal reasons for not admitting, but we found more for the contrary; and could not resist the pleasure of contemplating together the author and the object of his address,—to one of whom the Editor is owing for some of the lightest hours of his captivity, and to the other for a main part of its continual solace.
* * * * *
Page 41. Lines Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by Lionardo da
Vinci. By Mary Lamb.
This was the "Lady Blanch" poem which Lamb sent to Dorothy Wordsworth in
the letter of June 2, 1804 (see page 325). There it was entitled
"Suggested by a Print of 2 Females, after Lionardo da Vinci, called
Prudence and Beauty, which hangs up in our room." The usual title is
"Modesty and Vanity."
Page 41. Lines on the Same Picture being Removed to make Place for a
Portrait of a Lady by Titian. By Mary Lamb.
Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 14, 1805, Lamb says: "You had her [Mary's] Lines about the 'Lady Blanch.' You have not had some which she wrote upon a copy of a girl from Titian, which I had hung up where that print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully interpreted two female figures from L. da Vinci) had hung, in our room. 'Tis light and pretty."
* * * * *
Page 42. Lines on the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, called
The Virgin of the Rocks.
This was the picture, one version of which hangs in the National Gallery, that was known to Lamb's friends as his "Beauty," and which led to the Scotchman's mistake in the Elia essay "Imperfect Sympathies."
Page 42. On the Same. By Mary Lamb.
In the letter to Dorothy Wordsworth of June 14, 1805, quoted just above, Lamb says: "I cannot resist transcribing three or four Lines which poor Mary [she was at this time away from home in one of her enforced absences] made upon a Picture (a Holy Family) which we saw at an Auction only one week before she left home…. They are sweet Lines, and upon a sweet Picture."
Mary Lamb wrote little verse besides the Poetry for Children (see Vol. III. of this edition). To the pieces that are printed in the present volume I would add the lines suggested by the death of Captain John Wordsworth, the poet's brother, in the foundering of the Abergavenny in February, 1805, when Coleridge was in Malta, which were sent by Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth, May 7, 1805:—
Why is he wandering on the sea?
Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be.
By slow degrees he'd steal away
Their woe, and gently bring a ray
(So happily he'd time relief)
Of comfort from their very grief.
He'd tell them that their brother dead,
When years have passed o'er their head,
Will be remember'd with such holy,
True, and perfect melancholy,
That ever this lost brother John
Will be their hearts' companion.
His voice they'll always hear, his face they'll always see;
There's nought in life so sweet as such a memory.
* * * * *
SONNETS
Page 43. To Miss Kelly.
Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882)—or Fanny Kelly, as she was usually called—was Lamb's favourite actress of his middle and later life and a personal friend of himself and his sister: so close that Lamb proposed marriage to her. See Lamb's criticisms of Miss Kelly's acting in Vol. I., and notes. Another sonnet addressed by Lamb to Miss Kelly will be found on page 59 of the present volume.
Page 43. On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden. This is, I think,
Lamb's only poem the inspiration of which was drawn from nature.
* * * * *
Page 44. The Family Name.
John Lamb, Charles's father, came from Lincoln. A recollection of his boyhood there is given in the Elia essay "Poor Relations." The "stream" seems completely to have ended with Charles Lamb and his sister Mary: at least, research has yielded no descendants.
Crabb Robinson visited Goethe in the summer of 1829. The Diary has this entry: "I inquired whether he knew the name of Lamb. 'Oh, yes! Did he not write a pretty sonnet on his own name?' Charles Lamb, though he always affected contempt for Goethe, yet was manifestly pleased that his name was known to him."
In the little memoir of Lamb prefixed by M. Amédée Pichot to a French edition of the Tales from Shakespeare in 1842 the following translation of this sonnet is given:—
MON NOM DE FAMILLE
Dis-moi, d'où nous viens-tu, nom pacifique et doux,
Nom transmis sans reproche?… A qui te devons-nous,
Nom qui meurs avec moi? mon glason de poëte
A l'aïeul de mon père obscurément s'arrête.
—Peut-être nous viens-tu d'un timide pasteur,
Doux comme ses agneaux, raillé pour sa douceur.
Mais peut-être qu'aussi, moins commune origine,
Nous viens-tu d'un héros, d'un pieux paladin,
Qui croyant honorer ainsi l'Agneau divin,
Te prit en revenant des champs de Palestine.
Mais qu'importe après tout … qu'il soit illustre ou non,
Je ne ferai jamais une tache à ce nom.
Page 44. To John Lamb, Esq.
John Lamb, Charles's brother, was born in 1763 and was thus by twelve years his senior. At the time this poem appeared, in 1818, he was accountant of the South-Sea House. He died on October 26, 1821 (see the Elia essays "My Relations" and "Dream Children").
* * * * *
Page 45. To Martin Charles Burney, Esq.
Lamb prefixed this sonnet to Vol. II. of his Works, 1818. In Vol. I. he had placed the dedication to Coleridge which we have already seen. Martin Charles Burney was the son of Rear-Admiral James Burney, Lamb's old friend, and nephew of Madame d'Arblay. He was a barrister by profession; dabbled a little in authorship; was very quaint in some of his ways and given to curiously intense and sudden enthusiasms; and was devoted to Mary Lamb and her brother. When these two were at work on their Tales from Shakespear Martin Burney would sit with them and attempt to write for children too. Lamb's letter of May 24, 1830, to Sarah Hazlitt has some amusing stories of his friend, at whom (like George Dyer) he could laugh as well as love. Lamb speaks of him on one occasion as on the top round of his ladder of friendship. Writing to Sarah Hazlitt, Lamb says:—"Martin Burney is as good, and as odd as ever. We had a dispute about the word 'heir,' which I contended was pronounced like 'air'; he said that might be in common parlance; or that we might so use it, speaking of the 'Heir at Law,' a comedy; but that in the law courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say hayer; he thought it might even vitiate a cause, if a counsel pronounced it otherwise. In conclusion, he 'would consult Serjeant Wilde,' who gave it against him. Sometimes he falleth into the water; sometimes into the fire. He came down here, and insisted on reading Virgil's 'Eneid' all through with me (which he did), because a Counsel must know Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of Justice. A third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favouredly, because 'we did not know how indispensable it was for a barrister to do all those sort of things well? Those little things were of more consequence than we supposed.' So he goes on, harassing about the way to prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat a wrong one——harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He deserves one: may be, he has tired him out."
Martin Burney, of whom another glimpse is caught in the Elia essay "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," died in 1860. At Mary Lamb's funeral he was inconsolable.
* * * * *
Page 46. CHARLES LAMB'S ALBUM VERSES, 1830.
The publication of this volume, in 1830, was due more to Lamb's kindness of heart than to any desire to come before the world again as a poet. But Edward Moxon, Lamb's young friend, was just starting his publishing business, with Samuel Rogers as a financial patron; and Lamb, who had long been his chief literary adviser, could not well refuse the request to help him with a new book. Album Verses became thus the first of the many notable books of poetry which Moxon was to issue between 1830 and 1858, the year of his death. Among them Tennyson's Poems, 1833 and 1842; The Princess, 1847; In Memoriam, 1850; Maud, 1855; and Browning's Sordello, 1840, and Bells and Pomegranates, 1843-1846.
The dedication of Album Verses tells the story of its being:—
"DEDICATION
"TO THE PUBLISHER
"DEAR MOXON,
"I do not know to whom a Dedication of these Trifles is more properly due than to yourself. You suggested the printing of them. You were desirous of exhibiting a specimen of the manner in which Publications, entrusted to your future care, would appear. With more propriety, perhaps, the 'Christmas,' or some other of your own simple, unpretending Compositions, might have served this purpose. But I forget—you have bid a long adieu to the Muses. I had on my hands sundry Copies of Verses written for Albums—