The Works Of Charles and Mary Lamb, Miscellaneous Prose, A Project Gutenberg eBook, by Charles and Mary Lamb.

"Cooke in 'Richard the Third' is a perfect caricature. He gives you the monster Richard, but not the man Richard. Shakespear's bloody character impresses you with awe and deep admiration of his witty parts, his consummate hypocrisy, and indefatigable prosecution of purpose. You despise, detest, and loathe the cunning, vulgar, low and fierce Richard, which Cooke substitutes in his place. He gives you no other idea than of a vulgar villain, rejoycing in his being able to over reach, and not possessing that joy in silent consciousness, but betraying it, like a poor villain, in sneers and distortions of the face, like a droll at a country fair: not to add that cunning so self-betraying and manner so vulgar could never have deceived the politic Buckingham nor the soft Lady Anne: both bred in courts, would have turned with disgust from such a fellow. Not but Cooke has powers; but not of discrimination. His manner is strong, coarse, and vigorous, and well adapted to some characters. But the lofty imagery and high sentiments and high passions of Poetry come black and prose-smoked from his prose Lips.... I am possessed with an admiration of the genuine Richard, his genius, and his mounting spirit, which no consideration of his cruelties can depress. Shakespear has not made Richard so black a Monster as is supposed. Where-ever he is monstrous, it was to conform to vulgar opinion. But he is generally a Man. Read his most exquisite address to the Widowed Queen to court her daughter for him—the topics of maternal feeling, of a deep knowledge of the heart, are such as no monster could have supplied [see Act IV., Scene 4]. Richard must have felt before he could feign so well; tho' ambition choked the good seed. I think it the most finished piece of Eloquence in the world; of persuasive oratory far above Demosthenes, Burke, or any man, far exceeding the courtship of Lady Anne."

George Frederick Cooke who produced "Richard III." at Covent Garden on October 31, 1801, with great success, lived from 1756-1811.

I imagine that the following article on another performance of Cooke's, printed in the Morning Post for January 9, 1802, is also Lamb's, probably written on the "one occasion" referred to above and the last that he wrote. No other bears so many signs of his authorship:—

"Theatre
"Covent Garden

"Mr. Cooke performed Lear in the celebrated Tragedy of that name at this Theatre last night. It is a character little suited to his talents. In the expression of strong and turbulent passions, he will always find his forte; but he wants gentleness and softness for melting and melancholy scenes. Whatever, therefore, may be his excellence in the ambitious and heroic Richard, those who have duly weighed his peculiar powers could not expect much from his representation of the broken-hearted Lear. No principle can be more clear, than that cruelty and ingratitude are black in proportion to the weakness and helplessness of the object on which they are exercised. The great master of the human heart accordingly makes this good old King represent himself as a man standing upon the last verge of life—a man 'eighty years old and upwards.' It is from turning such a man as this out of doors, and by his ungrateful children, too, to 'bide the pelting of the pityless storm,' that the interest principally arises. In this line, so clearly marked by the poet, Mr. Cooke showed a total want of discrimination. His step was almost uniformly firm, and his whole deportment too vigorous for his years. The heart, therefore, could not feel that pity which the sight of a deserving object, physically unable to contend with unmerited hardships, never fails to produce. His enunciation also, which was clear and strong, had none of the tremulousness of feeble old age, and his voice seldom succeeded in the modulation of tones sufficiently plaintive and delicate to express the agonies of a broken heart. The scene where he imprecates a curse upon the undutiful Goneril was given with energy, but without that anguish which must wring a parent's bosom in such a situation. The mad scene with Edgar was also a very imperfect piece of acting, and few of the beautiful passages with which the piece abounds, received that excellent colouring and embellishment with which Mr. Kemble in the same character calls down such plaudits in the other House. Mr. Cooke having so evidently placed himself in the way of comparison, this allusion cannot be deemed invidious.—This new essay should, however, make him slow to venture beyond his depth, and justifies our apprehension that he does not possess an elasticity of mind, a pliancy of powers, to enable him to pursue his rival through all the variety of his characters with the same success that he encounters him on Bosworth field.

"Mr. H. Siddons was an excellent Edgar; his mad scenes displayed much chaste and natural acting, and several passages were marked with beauties peculiarly his own. His representation of the character would be still more interesting, were he to infuse into his manner more fondness for his mistress, Cordelia, and his unfortunate father, the Earl of Gloucester. Miss Murray, whose excellence in characters of simple pathos is so well known, was a most interesting portrait of Cordelia. She played the part with great delicacy and feeling, sweetness and simplicity.

"Mr. Hull, in Glo'ster, was natural and impressive; and Mr. Waddy, though a little coarse as Earl of Kent, was a good picture of blunt honesty in his humble disguise as Caius. The other characters did not possess much merit, or deserve much notice."

Writing to Rickman about his Morning Post work, in January, 1802, Lamb says that in addition to certain other things it was he who made the Lord Mayor's bed. The reference is undoubtedly to this little article on January 4, 1802.

On January 6 (Twelfth Night), 1802, this fable was printed in the Morning Post. That Lamb was the author no one need have any doubt after reading the Elia essay, "Rejoicings on the New Year's Coming of Age."

This paper, although it is included in the Works among "Letters under assumed signatures, published in The Reflector," and although it is nominally addressed to the editor of that paper, did not, however, appear in it. It was first printed in the Morning Post for February 1, 1802, during Lamb's brief connection with that paper, the story of which is told in the note to the essay on "Newspapers" in Elia.

"The Londoner" in the Morning Post differed from the version subsequently reprinted. See notes to vol. I. of my large edition.

John Forster, in his memoir of Lamb in the New Monthly Magazine in 1835, has the following passage, which, applying to Lamb's later life (Forster was only twenty-two when Lamb died), rounds off, with certain ecstatic passages in the letters, the present London eulogium. The lines quoted by Forster are from "The Old Familiar Faces":—

"We recollect being once sent by her [Mary Lamb] to seek 'Charles,' who had rambled away from her. We found him in the Temple, looking up, near Crown-office-row, at the house where he was born. Such was his ever-touching habit of seeking alliance with the scenes of old times. They were the dearer to him that distance had withdrawn them. He wished to pass his life among things gone by yet not forgotten; we shall never forget the affectionate 'Yes, boy,' with which he returned our repeating his own striking lines:—

"'Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,
Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse.'"

Page 46, line 11. Great annual feast. In stating that he was born on Lord Mayor's Day, Lamb stretched a point. His birthday was February 10.

These notes are abridgments of the notes to Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 1808. The whole work is reproduced in my large edition, where such annotation as seems desirable may be found. The abridgment is printed here in order that the text of Lamb's own edition of his Works, 1818, may be preserved.

To the circumstance that Leigh Hunt edited The Reflector, which was founded by his brother in 1810 as a literary and political quarterly, may be attributed in a large measure the beginning of Lamb's career as an essayist. Leigh Hunt, himself a Christ's Hospitaller, sought his contributors among old scholars of that school; from whom, as he remarked in the little note prefixed to the two-volume edition of the periodical, came "the largest and most entertaining part." Among these contributors were Lamb, George Dyer, Thomas Barnes, afterwards editor of The Times, Thomes Mitchell, classical scholar, James Scholefield, afterwards Greek Professor at Cambridge, Hunt himself, and Barron Field, who, though not actually a Christ's Hospitaller, was through his father, Henry Field, apothecary to the school, connected with it.

Until Lamb received Hunt's invitation to let his fancy play to what extent he would in The Reflector's pages, he had received little or no encouragement as a writer; and he was naturally so diffident that without some external impulse he rarely brought himself to do his own work at all. Between John Woodvil (1802) and the first Reflector papers (1810) he had written "Mr. H.," performed his share in the children's books, and compiled the Dramatic Specimens: a tale of work which, considering that it was also a social period, and a busy period at the India House, is not trifling. But between the last Reflector paper (1811 or 1812) and the first Elia essay (1820) Lamb seems to have written nothing save the essays on Christ's Hospital, the "Confessions of a Drunkard," a few brief notes, reviews and dramatic criticisms, mainly at the instigation of Leigh Hunt, and some scraps of verse chiefly for The Champion. The world owes a great debt to Leigh Hunt for discerning Lamb's gifts and allowing him free rein. The comic letters to The Reflector may not be Lamb at his best, though they are excellent stepping-stones to that state; but upon the essays on Shakespeare's tragedies and Hogarth's genius it is doubtful if Lamb could have improved at any period.

The Reflector ran only to four numbers, which were very irregularly issued, and it then ceased. It ran nominally from October 1810 to December 1811. Crabb Robinson mentions reading No. I. on May 15, 1811.

Lamb, it may be remarked here, was destined to contribute to yet another Reflector. In 1832 Moxon started a weekly paper of that name in which part of Lamb's Elia essay on the "Defect of Imagination in Modern Paintings" was printed. The venture, however, quickly failed, and all trace of it seems to have vanished.

Lamb's first Reflector paper was entitled "On the Inconveniences Resulting from Being Hanged."

He made yet another use of the central idea of this essay. The farce, "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," written in 1825, turns upon the resuscitation of a hanged man, Jack Pendulous.

Page 68, line 6. Smoke his cravat. To smoke was old slang for to see, to notice. East-enders to-day would say "Pipe his necktie!"

First Clown. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

Second Clown. The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

Act V., Scene I, lines 46-50.

Page 72. Footnote. "The Spanish Tragedy." A play by Thomas Kyd (1557?-1595?), from which Lamb quoted largely in his Specimens, 1808. This line is in Act III., in Hieronimo's instructions to the painter: "And then at last, sir, starting, behold a man hanging, and tott'ring, and tott'ring, as you know the wind will wave a man...."

Pompey. Master Barnardine! you must rise and be hanged, Master Barnardine!

Abhorson. What, ho, Barnardine!

Bar. [Within.] A pox o' your throats! Who makes that noise there? What are you?

Pom. Your friends, sir; the hangman. You must be so good, sir, to rise and be put to death.

Bar. [Within.] Away, you rogue, away! I am sleepy.

Abhor. Tell him he must awake, and that quickly too.

Pom. Pray, Master Barnardine, awake till you are executed, and sleep afterwards.

Abhor. Go in to him, and fetch him out.

Pom. He is coming, sir, he is coming; I hear his straw rustle.

Abhor. Is the axe upon the block, sirrah?

Pom. Very ready, sir.

Act IV., Scene 3, lines 23-40.

Page 73, line 10. An ancestor. This punctilious hero may have been an ancestor of the Plumers, of Blakesware. See the Elia essay on "Blakesmoor, in H——shire."

Page 73, line 7 from foot. A waistcoat that had been mine. The clothes of his clients became the hangman's perquisites. In Lamb's letter to Bernard Barton concerning Thurtell (January 9, 1824) this subject is again played with.

The present essay led to some amusing speculation in the next number of The Reflector, signed M., as to the origin of Jack Ketch. Some of the questions propounded to Pensilis are almost in Lamb's own manner:—

Supposing the race of Ketches to be extinct, what cross does Pensilis think necessary to re-produce the breed? I have a very pretty knack myself at guessing what mixtures of different bloods will generate the ordinary professions of life; as a judge, an alderman, a bishop, &c., &c. but shall be happy to defer to his superior knowledge in this particular experiment of the art. Your correspondent, no doubt, is aware, how many generations it will frequently take a family, who value themselves upon their exterior, to wear out any little deformity; as, for instance, a snub nose, or a long chin. I could mention one noble family, whom it has cost a dozen intermarriages with the yeomanry, to introduce a stouter pair of legs among them; and another, which has been obliged to go through a course of milk-maids, to throw a little colour into their cheeks. Has your correspondent ever considered in what term of years a spirit of Ketchicism may be introduced into a family; and conversely, in how many generations the milk of human kindness may be instilled into, what Burke would call, a pure, unsophisticated dephlegmated, defecated Ketch?

Page 79, line 16. The tales of our nursery. In his Elia essay "Dream Children" Lamb recalls his grandmother's narration of the old story of the "Children in the Wood."

Page 79, lines 20-21. Mrs. Radcliffe ... Mr. Monk Lewis. The popularity of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), whose Mysteries of Udolpho appeared in 1794, and of Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), whose rival exercise in grisly romance, The Monk, was published in 1795, was then (1811) still considerable, although on the wane.

This paper is known to be Lamb's because he tells the story, in much the same words, in a letter to Wordsworth dated February 1, 1806. The young man who made the mistake of confusing Spencer and Spenser was a brother of Coleridge's Mary Evans. The Hon. William Robert Spencer (1769-1834), the second son of the third Duke of Marlborough, was a Society poet well enough known in his day—the first decade of the last century. His only poem that has survived is "Beth Gelert," a ballad often included in children's poetry books.

The Reflector, No. III., 1811. The title there ran: "On the Genius and Character of Hogarth; with some Remarks on a Passage in the Writings of the late Mr. Barry." The article was signed L. It was reprinted in the Works, 1818.

Many of Hogarth's pictures, framed in black, hung round Lamb's sitting-room in his various homes. In 1817 Mary Lamb, writing to Dorothy Wordsworth, says that the Hogarths have been taken down from the walls and pasted into a book, but there is proof that some at any rate were framed both at Islington and Enfield.

Hazlitt in his Sketches of the Principal Picture-galleries in England, 1824, wrote, "Of the pictures in the Rake's Progress we shall not here say anything ... because they have already been criticised by a writer, to whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English genius." The reference was to Lamb's essay.

Page 82, line 1. Old-fashioned house in ——shire. Lamb refers again to Blakesware, in Hertfordshire. In a letter to Southey, Oct. 31, 1799, Lamb mentions the Blakesware Hogarths. This would suggest that Hogarth was the first artist that he knew, so many of his recollections dating from the old Hertfordshire days.

Page 84, line 1. Kent, or Caius. See "Table Talk," pages 401-2 of the present volume, for an amplification of this passage many years later. Lamb's version of "Lear" in Tales from Shakespear, 1807, has similar praise of Kent.

Page 84, last line. Ferdinand Count Fathom. See Chapter XXVII. of Smollett's Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, 1754:—

When he beheld the white cliffs of Albion, his heart throbbed with all the joy of a beloved son, who, after a tedious and fatiguing voyage, reviews the chimnies of his father's house: he surveyed the neighbouring coast of England with fond and longing eyes, like another Moses reconnoitring the land of Canaan from the top of mount Pisgah; and to such a degree of impatience was he inflamed by the sight, that instead of proceeding to Calais, he resolved to take his passage directly from Boulogne, even if he should hire a vessel for the purpose.

Page 88. Footnote. Somewhere in his [Reynolds'] lectures. The passage is in the fourteenth of the Discourses on Painting—on Gainsborough:—

After this admirable artist [Hogarth] had spent the greater part of his life in an active, busy, and, we may add, successful attention to the ridicule of life; after he had invented a new species of dramatic painting, in which probably he will never be equalled, and had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain and illustrate the domestic and familiar scenes of common life, which were generally, and ought to have been always, the subject of his pencil; he very imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempted the great historical style, for which his previous habits had by no means prepared him: he was indeed so entirely unacquainted with the principles of this style, that he was not even aware that any artificial preparation was at all necessary. It is to be regretted, that any part of the life of such a genius should be fruitlessly employed. Let his failure teach us not to indulge ourselves in the vain imagination, that by a momentary resolution we can give either dexterity to the hand, or a new habit to the mind.

Page 95, line 10. Children's books. The Reflector version added, "or the tale of Carlo the Dog."

Page 97, line 8 from foot. With Dr. Swift. The page opposite the title of the Tale of a Tub contains a (fictitious) list of "Treatises writ by the same author." The fifth of these is "A Panegyric upon the World." It is probable that Lamb had this in mind.

Lamb omits to say that he joined in the hissing of his farce, "Mr. H.," on the unhappy night of December 10, 1806. In its ill fortune he seems always to have taken a kind of humorous sympathetic pride. When he printed the play at the end of his Works, 1818, he prefixed a quotation from Hazlitt's essay on "Great and Little Things," of which this is a portion:—

Mr. H.—— thou wert damned. Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announced thy appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of persons asking one another if they would go to see Mr. H.——, and answering that they would certainly; but before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his friends, and the town, was eclipsed, for thou wert damned!

Writing to Manning concerning the play's failure, Lamb said:—"Damn 'em, how they hissed! It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring sometimes, like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hiss'd me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God should give his favourite children, men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with, and that they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent labours of their fellow-creatures who are desirous to please them!"

Page 101, line 3 of essay. That memorable season, 1806-1807. Lamb here exaggerates. It is true that ten new pieces were tried at Drury Lane in the season mentioned; but five were successful, and Monk Lewis's "Adelgitha," the only tragedy, could hardly be called a failure. Of the remaining four plays which failed, Holcroft's "Vindictive Man" was the most notable.

Cade. Dost thou use to write thy name? or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest plain-dealing man?

Clerk of Chatham. Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can write my name.

All. He hath confessed: away with him! he's a villain and a traitor.

Cade. Away with him, I say! hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck.

"II. Henry VI.," Act IV., Scene 2, lines 109-117.

Page 101, line 7 from foot. "The Vindictive Man." This was the comedy by Thomas Holcroft, Lamb's friend, the failure of which occurred a few nights before that of "Mr. H." Lamb describes the luckless performance in a letter to Manning dated December 5, 1806.

Page 102, line 5. "Our nonsense did not ... suit their nonsense." From Burnet's History of His Own Times, Vol. II.: "He [Charles II.] told me he had a chaplain that was a very honest man, but a very great blockhead, to whom he had given a living in Suffolk, that was full of that sort of people: he had gone about among them from house to house, though he could not imagine what he could say to them, for, he said, he was a very silly fellow, but that he believed his nonsense suited their nonsense; yet he had brought them all to church: and, in reward of his diligence, he had given him a bishopric in Ireland." (A note by Swift states the cleric to be Bishop Woolly of Clonfert.)

Page 102, line 25. A Syren Catalani. Angelica Catalani (1779-1849), one of the most beautiful of all singers.

Page 104, line 19. The O.P. differences. The O.P.—Old Prices—Riots raged in 1809. On September 18 of that year the new Covent Garden Theatre was opened under the management of John Philip Kemble and Charles Kemble, with a revised price list. The opposition to this revision was so determined that "Macbeth," with John Philip Kemble as Macbeth, and Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, was played practically in dumb show, and in the end the theatre was closed again for a while. The battle was waged not only by fists but by pamphlets. After two months' fighting a compromise was effected.

Page 105, line 17. Obstinate, in John Bunyan. At the beginning of the Pilgrim's Progress. It was not Obstinate, however, but Christian who put his fingers in his ears. Obstinate pursued and caught him. Lamb made the same mistake again in some verses to Bernard Barton.

A club of hissed authors existed in Paris in the 1870's. Flaubert, Daudet and Zola were members.

Reflector, No. III., 1811. The letter there begins "Sir." Printed again in part, in The Yellow Dwarf, January 17, 1818. Reprinted in the Works, 1818.

Page 110. The following short Essay. "The Character of an Undertaker" is, of course, Lamb's own. Sable is the undertaker in Sir Richard Steele's "Funeral; or, Grief à la Mode," 1702. Two of his remarks run thus: "There is often nothing more ... deeply Joyful than a Young Widow in her Weeds and Black Train," and "The poor Dead are deliver'd to my Custody ... not to do them Honour, but to satisfy the Vanity or Interest of their Survivors."

Printed in The Reflector, No. IV. (1811), under the title "Theatralia, No. I. On Garrick, and Acting; and the Plays of Shakespeare, considered with reference to their fitness for Stage-Representation." Reprinted in the Works, 1818.

At the close of the Reflector article Lamb wrote: "I have hitherto confined my observation to the Tragic parts of Shakespeare; in some future Number I propose to extend this inquiry to the Comedies." The Reflector ending with the fourth number, the project was not carried out. From time to time, however, throughout his life, Lamb returned incidentally to Shakespearian criticism, as in several essays in the present volume, and the Elia essay "The Old Actors," with its masterly analysis of the character of Malvolio. David Garrick died in 1779, just before Lamb's fourth birthday. Lamb's father often talked of him.

Page 113, line 6. "To paint fair Nature," etc. These lines on Garrick's monument, which have been corrected from the stone, were by Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749-1814), the same author whose Gleanings Lamb described in a letter to Southey in 1798 as "a contemptible book, a wretched assortment of vapid feelings." Pratt's lines on Garrick were chosen in place of a prose epitaph written by Edmund Burke.

Page 114, line 23. Mr. K. John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), who first appeared as Hamlet in London at Drury Lane, September 30, 1783.

Page 114, line 24. Mrs. S. Mrs. Siddons, John Philip Kemble's sister (1755-1831). Her regular stage career ended on June 29, 1812, when she played Lady Macbeth. Her first part in London was Portia on December 29, 1775. Lamb admired her greatly. As early as 1794 he wrote, with Coleridge's collaboration, a sonnet on the impression which Mrs. Siddons made upon him.

Page 118, line 4. Banks and Lillo. John Banks, a very inferior Restoration melodramatist. George Lillo (1693-1739), the author among other plays of "George Barnwell—The London Merchant; or The History of George Barnwell," 1731 (mentioned a little later), which held the stage for a century. The story, the original of which is to be found in the Percy Reliques, tells how George, an apprentice, robs his master and kills his uncle at the instigation of Millwood, an adventuress. Lamb's footnote (page 118) refers to the custom, which was of long endurance, of playing "George Barnwell" in the Christmas and Easter holidays as an object-lesson to apprentices.

Page 121, line 25. The Hills and the Murphys and the Browns. Dr. John Hill (1716?-1775), the herbalist, controversialist, and miscellaneous writer, who quarrelled with Garrick. In The Reflector Lamb had written the Hooles. It was changed to Hills afterwards. Hoole would be John Hoole (1727-1803), translator of Tasso and the author of some turgid tragedies, who had been in his time an India House clerk. Arthur Murphy (1727-1805), actor and author, who wrote, in addition to many plays and books, a Life of Garrick (1801). The Rev. John Brown (1715-1766), the author of "Barbarossa" and "Athelstane," in both of which Garrick acted.

Page 123, line 25. Glenalvon. In Home's "Douglas." Lamb wrote an early poem on this tragedy, which seems to have so dominated his youthful imagination that when in 1795-1796 he was for a while in confinement he believed himself at times to be young Norval.

Page 127, line 12. A ghost by chandelier light ... It should perhaps be borne in mind that in 1811, and for many years after, the stage was still lighted by candles, so that the regulation of light, which can be effected with such nicety on the modern stage, was then impossible. This is especially to be remembered with regard to such details as the presentation of the Witches in "Macbeth." It would be simple enough, with our electric switchboard, to frighten a nervous child in that scene to-day.

The Reflector, No. IV., 1812. Works, 1818. In The Reflector the signature Y was appended to the introductory paragraphs.

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), the divine and historian. The passages selected by Lamb are identified in the notes to my large edition, the references being to The Holy State, 1642; The History of the Worthies of England, 1662; A Pisgah-sight of Palestine and the Confines thereof, with the Histories of the Old and New Testaments acted thereon, 1650; and The Church History of Britain from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the year MDCXLVIII., 1655. Lamb's transcriptions are, of course, not exact.

Page 135. Footnote. Fuller's bird. Lamb's friend Procter (Barry Cornwall) was also greatly impressed by this legend. His English Songs, 1832, contains a poem on the subject.

Page 137. Footnote. Wickliffe's ashes. Landor has a passage on this subject in his poem "On Swift joining Avon near Rugby." Wordsworth's fine sonnet, in the Ecclesiastical Sketches, Part II., may have been suggested by this very quotation in Lamb's essay:—

WICLIFFE

Once more the Church is seized with sudden fear,
And at her call is Wicliffe disinhumed;
Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed,
And flung into the brook that travels near;
Forthwith that ancient Voice which streams can hear,
Thus speaks (that Voice which walks upon the wind,
Though seldom heard by busy human kind)—
"As thou these ashes, little Brook! wilt bear
Into the Avon, Avon to the tide
Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,
Into main Ocean they, this deed accurst
An emblem yields to friends and enemies
How the bold Teacher's Doctrine, sanctified
By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed."

"We are too apt to indemnify ourselves for some characteristic excellence we are kind enough to concede to a great author, by denying him every thing else. Thus Donne and Cowley, by happening to possess more wit and faculty of illustration than other men, are supposed to have been incapable of nature or feeling; they are usually opposed to such writers as Shenstone and Parnel; whereas in the very thickest of their conceits,—in the bewildering maze of their tropes and figures, a warmth of soul and generous feeling shines through, the 'sum' of which 'forty thousand' of those natural poets, as they are called, 'with all their quantity, could not make up.'—Without any intention of setting Fuller on a level with Donne or Cowley, I think the injustice which has been done him in the denial that he possesses any other qualities than those of a quaint and conceited writer, is of the same kind as that with which those two great Poets have been treated."

Page 138, line 14 from foot. The best of parents. Lamb, of course, is not here autobiographical. His father was no clergyman.

Page 139, line 21. Ventri natus, etc. These nicknames may be roughly translated: Ventri natus, glutton-born; ventri deditus, gluttony-dedicated; vesana gula, greedy gullet; escarum gurges, sink of eatables; dapibus indulgens, feast-lover; non dans fræna gulæ, not curbing the gullet; sectans lautæ fercula mensæ, dainty-hunting.

Page 141, line 15. Mandeville. Bernard Mandeville (1670?-1733), whose Fable of the Bees, 1714, was one of Lamb's favourite books.

The Reflector, No. IV., 1811. Works, 1818. In The Reflector this letter followed immediately upon that of Edax (see page 138). In his Works Lamb reversed this order. In The Reflector the following footnote was appended, signed Ref.:—

To all appearance, the obnoxious visitor of Hospita can be no other than my inordinate friend Edax, whose misfortunes are detailed, ore rotundo, in the preceding article. He will of course see the complaint that is made against him; but it can hardly be any benefit either to himself or his entertainers. The man's appetite is not a bad habit but a disease; and if he had not thought proper to relate his own story, I do not know whether it would have been altogether justifiable to be so amusing upon such a subject.

Page 147, second paragraph. Mr. Malthus. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), author of the Essay on Population, 1798. He wrote On the High Price of Provisions in 1800.

The Reflector, No. IV., 1811. Signed L. B., possibly as the first and last letters of Lamb. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Page 153, line 12. As Solomon says. Defoe seems to be remembering Proverbs XXII. 7, and possibly Isaiah XXIV. 2.

Sixteen years later, in 1827, William Hone reprinted "The Good Clerk" in his Table Book, I., columns 562-567. The first half was given under its own title; the second half under this title, "Defoeana, No. I., The Tradesman;" followed by a kindred passage from The Fable of the Bees, to which the following note was appended, signed L.:—

"We have copied the above from Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, Edition 1725. How far, and in what way, the practice between the same parties differs at this day, we respectfully leave to our fair shopping friends, of this present year 1827, to determine."

Robert Lloyd (1778-1811) was a younger brother of Charles Lloyd, for a while Coleridge's pupil and Lamb's friend of the later nineties, with whom he collaborated in Blank Verse, 1798. They were sons of Charles Lloyd, of Birmingham (1748-1828), the Quaker banker, philanthropist, and, in a quiet private way, a writer of verse (see Charles Lamb and the Lloyds).

Robert Lloyd first met Lamb in 1797; he was then nineteen years old, an apprentice at Saffron Walden. He was inclined to morbidness, though not to the same extent as his brother Charles, and Lamb did what he could to get more health and contentment into him. In 1799 Robert Lloyd seems to have left his father's roof in a state of revolt, and to have settled with Lamb for a while. He returned home, however, and met Manning (who was then teaching Charles Lloyd mathematics at Cambridge), and, after drawing from Lamb several fine letters—notably upon Jeremy Taylor, and that upon Cooke from which I have quoted in the notes above—he passed out of his life until 1809, when, paying a short visit to London, he saw the Lambs again several times.

The autumn of 1811 was a sad one for the Lloyd family. Thomas Lloyd died on September 12, Caroline on October 15, and Robert on October 26. The Gentleman's Magazine obituary just mentions Thomas and Caroline, and passes on to Robert. We know the article to be Lamb's from a letter from Charles Lloyd to Robert's widow, enclosing the memoir (which Lamb had sent to him), and adding, "If I loved him for nothing else, I should now love [Charles Lamb] for the affecting interest that he has taken in the memory of my dearest Brother and Friend."

The Philanthropist, No. IX., 1813. Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors, 1814; second edition, 1818. London Magazine, August, 1822. Last Essays of Elia, second edition, 1835.

The first appearance of this paper was in a quarterly magazine entitled The Philanthropist; or, Repository for Hints and Suggestions calculated to promote the Comfort and Happiness of Man. Vol. III., No. IX., 1813. It was there unsigned and addressed "To the Editor of The Philanthropist." The editor of this magazine was William Allen (1770-1843), the Quaker, and his chief associate was James Mill, the Father of John Stuart Mill. Lamb's friend, Basil Montagu (1770-1851), was among the contributors; and another prominent name was that of Benjamin Meggot Forster (1764-1829), who, like Montagu, opposed capital punishment, and was zealous in the cause of chimney-sweepers.

In its original Philanthropist form the essay differs from its later appearances. Concerning the differences I should like to quote from an interesting article by Mr. Thomas Hutchinson in The Athenæum of August 16, 1902:—