The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 2 / Elia and The Last Essays of Elia

by Charles Lamb; Mary Lamb

GRACE BEFORE MEAT

Give us thankful hearts, O Lord God, for the Table which thou hast spread for us. Bless thy good Creatures to our use, and us to thy service, for Jesus Christ his sake. Amen.

GRACE AFTER MEAT

Blessed Lord, we yield thee hearty praise and thanksgiving for our Founders and Benefactors, by whose Charitable Benevolence thou hast refreshed our Bodies at this time. So season and refresh our Souls with thy Heavenly Spirit, that we may live to thy Honour and Glory. Protect thy Church, the King, and all the Royal Family. And preserve us in peace and truth through Christ our Saviour. Amen.

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Page 110. MY FIRST PLAY.

London Magazine, December, 1821.

Lamb had already sketched out this essay in the "Table Talk" in Leigh
Hunt's Examiner, December 9, 1813, under the title "Playhouse
Memoranda" (see Vol. I.). Leigh Hunt reprinted it in The Indicator,
December 13, 1820.

Page 111, line 1. Garrick's Drury. Garrick's Drury Lane was condemned in 1791, and superseded in 1794 by the new theatre, the burning of which in 1809 led to the Rejected Addresses. It has recently come to light that Lamb was among the competitors who sent in to the management the real addresses. The present Drury Lane Theatre dates from 1812.

Page 111, line 11. My godfather F. Lamb's godfather was Francis Fielde. The British Directory for 1793 gives him as Francis Field, oilman, 62 High Holborn. Whether or no he played the part in Sheridan's matrimonial comedy that is attributed to him, I do not know (Moore makes the friend a Mr. Ewart); but it does not sound like an invented story. Richard Brinsley Sheridan carried Miss Linley, the oratorio singer, from Bath and the persecutions of Major Mathews, in March, 1772, and placed her in France. They were married near Calais, and married again in England in April, 1773. Sheridan became manager of Drury Lane, in succession to Garrick, in 1776, the first performance under his control being on September 21. Lamb is supposed to have had some personal acquaintance with Sheridan. Mary Lamb speaks of him as helping the Sheridans, father and son, with a pantomime; but of the work we know nothing definite. I do not consider the play printed in part in the late Charles Kent's edition of Lamb, on the authority of P.G. Patmore, either to be by Lamb or to correspond to Mary Lamb's description.

Page 118, line 8. His testamentary beneficence. Lamb was not joking.
Writing to The Athenæum, January 5, 1901, Mr. Thomas Greg says:—

Three-quarters of a century after it passed out of Lamb's possession I am happy to tell the world—or that small portion of it to whom any fact about his life is precious—exactly where and what this landed property is. By indentures of lease and release dated March 23 and 24, 1779, George Merchant and Thomas Wyman, two yeomen of Braughing in the county of Hertford, conveyed to Francis Fielde, of the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, in the county of Middlesex, oilman, for the consideration of £20., all that messuage or tenement, with the orchard, gardens, yards, barns, edifices, and buildings, and all and singular the appurtenances therewithal used or occupied, situate, lying, and being at West Mill Green in the parish of Buntingford West Mill in the said county of Hertford, etc. On March 5, 1804, Francis Fielde, of New Cavendish Street, Esq., made his will, and, with the exception of two, annuities to female relatives, left all his residuary estate, real and personal, to his wife Sarah Fielde.

This will was proved on November 5, 1809. By indentures of lease and release dated August 20 and 21, 1812, Sarah Fielde conveyed the said property to Charles Lamb, of Inner Temple Lane, gentleman. By an indenture of feoffment dated February 15, 1815, made between the said Charles Lamb of the first part, the said Sarah Fielde of the second part, and Thomas Greg the younger, of Broad Street Buildings, London, Esq., the said property was conveyed to the said Thomas Greg the younger for £50.

The said Thomas Greg the younger died in 1839, and left the said property to his nephew, Robert Philips Greg, now of Coles Park, West Mill, in the same county; and the said Robert Philips Greg in 1884 conveyed it to his nephew, Thomas Tylston Greg, of 15 Clifford's Inn, London, in whose possession it now is in substantially the same condition as it was in 1815.

The evidence that the Charles Lamb who conveyed the property in 1815 is Elia himself is overwhelming.

1. The essay itself gives the locality correctly: it is about two and a half miles from Puckeridge.

2. The plot of land contains as near as possible three-quarters of an acre, with an old thatched cottage and small barn standing upon it. The barn, specially mentioned in all the deeds, is a most unusual adjunct of so small a cottage. The property, the deeds of which go back to 1708, appears to have been isolated and held by small men, and consists of a long narrow tongue of land jutting into the property now of the Savile family (Earls of Mexborough), but formerly of the Earls of Hardwicke.

3. The witness to Charles Lamb's signature on the deed of 1815 is William Hazlitt, of 19, York Street, Westminster.

4. Lamb was living in Inner Temple Lane in 1815, and did not leave the Temple till 1817.

5. The essay was printed in the London Magazine for December, 1821, six years after "the estate has passed into more prudent hands."

6. And lastly, the following letter in Charles Lamb's own handwriting, found with the deeds which are in my possession, clinches the matter:—

"MR. SARGUS,—This is to give you notice that I have parted with the Cottage to Mr. Grig Junr. to whom you will pay rent from Michaelmas last. The rent that was due at Michaelmas I do not wish you to pay me. I forgive it you as you may have been at some expences in repairs.

"Yours

"CH. LAMB.

"Inner Temple Lane, London,

"23 Feb., 1815."

It is certainly not the fact that Lamb acquired the property, as he states, by the will of his godfather, for it was conveyed to him some three years after the latter's death by Mrs. Fielde. But strict accuracy of fact in Lamb's 'Essays' we neither look for nor desire. In all probability Mrs. Fielde conveyed him the property in accordance with an expressed wish of her husband in his lifetime. Reading also between the lines of the essay, it is interesting to notice that Francis Fielde, the Holborn oilman of 1779, in 1809 has become Francis Fielde, Esq., of New Cavendish Street. In the letter quoted above Lamb speaks of his purchaser as "Mr. Grig Junr.," more, I am inclined to think, from his desire to have his little joke than from mere inaccuracy, for he must have known the correct name of his purchaser. But Mr. Greg, Jun., was only just twenty-one when he bought the property, and the expression "as merry as a grig" running in Lamb's mind might have proved irresistible to him. Lastly, the property is now called, and has been so far back as I can trace, "Button Snap." No such name is found in any of the title-deeds, and it was impossible before to understand whence it arose. Now it is not: Lamb must have so christened his little property in jest, and the name has stuck.

THOMAS GREG.

Page 113, line 1. The maternal lap. With the exception of a brief mention on page 33—"the gentle posture of maternal tenderness"—this is Lamb's only reference to his mother in all the essays—probably from the wish not to wound his sister, who would naturally read all he wrote; although we are told by Talfourd that she spoke of her mother with composure. But it is possible to be more sensitive for others than they are for themselves.

Page 113, line 3. The play was Artaxerxes. The opera, by Thomas
Augustine Arne (1710-1778), produced in 1762, founded on Metastasio's
"Artaserse." The date of the performance was in all probability
December 1, 1780, although Lamb suggests that it was later; for that
was the only occasion in 1780-81-82 on which "Artaxerxes" was followed
by "Harlequin's Invasion," a pantomime dating from 1759, the work of
Garrick. It shows Harlequin invading the territory of Shakespeare;
Harlequin is defeated and Shakespeare restored.

Page 113, line 20. The Lady of the Manor. Here Lamb's memory, I fancy, betrayed him. This play (a comic opera by William Kenrick) was not performed at Drury Lane or Covent Garden in the period mentioned. Lamb's pen probably meant to write "The Lord of the Manor," General Burgoyne's opera, with music by William Jackson, of Exeter, which was produced in 1780. It was frequently followed in the bill by "Robinson Crusoe," but never by "Lun's Ghost," whereas Wycherley's "Way of the World" was followed by "Lun's Ghost" at Drury Lane on January 9, 1782. We may therefore assume that Lamb's second visit to the theatre was to see "The Lord of the Manor," followed by "Robinson Crusoe," some time in 1781, and his third to see "The Way of the World," followed by "Lun's Ghost" on January 9, 1782. "Lun's Ghost" was produced on January 3, 1782. Lun was the name under which John Rich (1682?-1761), the pantomimist and theatrical manager, had played in pantomime.

Page 113, last line. Round Church … of the Templars. This allusion to the Temple Church and its Gothic heads was used before by Lamb in his story "First Going to Church" in Mrs. Leicester's School (see Vol. III.). In that volume Mary Lamb had told the story of what we may take to be her first play (see "Visit to the Cousins"), the piece being Congreve's "Mourning Bride."

Page 114, line 1. The season 1781-2. Lamb was six on February 10, 1781. He says, in his "Play-house Memoranda," of the same occasion, "Oh when shall I forget first seeing a play, at the age of five or six?"

Page 114, line 3. At school. Lamb was at Christ's Hospital from 1782 to 1789.

Page 114, end. Mrs. Siddons in "Isabella." Mrs. Siddons first played this part at Drury Lane on October 10, 1782. The play was "Isabella," a version by Garrick of Southerne's "Fatal Marriage." Mrs. Siddons also appeared frequently as Isabella in "Measure for Measure;" but Lamb clearly says "in" Isabella, meaning the play. Lamb's sonnet, in which he collaborated with Coleridge, on Mrs. Siddons, which was printed in the Morning Chronicle in December, 1794 (see Vol. IV.), was written when he was nineteen. It runs (text of 1797):—

As when a child on some long winter's night
Affrighted clinging to its Grandam's knees
With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight
Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees
Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell;
Or of those hags, who at the witching time
Of murky midnight ride the air sublime,
And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell:
Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear
More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell
Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear,
Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell:
Ev'n such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart,
Ev'n so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart!

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Page 115. DREAM-CHILDREN.

London Magazine, January, 1822.

John Lamb died on October 26, 1821, leaving all his property to his brother. Charles was greatly upset by his loss. Writing to Wordsworth in March, 1822, he said: "We are pretty well save colds and rheumatics, and a certain deadness to every thing, which I think I may date from poor John's Loss…. Deaths over-set one, and put one out long after the recent grief." (His friend Captain Burney died in the same month.) Lamb probably began "Dream-Children,"—in some ways, I think, his most perfect prose work—almost immediately upon his brother's death. The essay "My Relations" may be taken in connection with this as completing the picture of John Lamb. His lameness was caused by the fall of a stone in 1796, but I doubt if the leg were really amputated.

The description in this essay of Blakesware, the seat of the Plumers, is supplemented by the essay entitled "Blakesmoor in H——shire." Except that Lamb substitutes Norfolk for the nearer county, the description is accurate; it is even true that there is a legend in the Plumer family concerning the mysterious death of two children and the loss of the baronetcy thereby—Sir Walter Plumer, who died in the seventeenth century, being the last to hold the title. In his poem "The Grandame" (see Vol. IV.), Lamb refers to Mrs. Field's garrulous tongue and her joy in recounting the oft-told tale; and it may be to his early associations with the old story that his great affection for Morton's play, "The Children in the Wood," which he so often commended—particularly with Miss Kelly in the caste—was due. The actual legend of the children in the wood belongs, however, to Norfolk.

William Plumer's newer and more fashionable mansion was at Gilston, which is not in the adjoining county, but also in Hertfordshire, near Harlow, only a few miles distant from Blakesware. Mrs. Field died of cancer in the breast in August, 1792, and was buried in Widford churchyard, hard by Blakesware.

According to Lamb's Key the name Alice W——n was "feigned." If by Alice W——n Lamb, as has been suggested, means Ann Simmons, of Blenheims, near Blakesware, he was romancing when he said that he had courted her for seven long years, although the same statement is made in the essay on "New Year's Eve." We know that in 1796 he abandoned all ideas of marriage. Writing to Coleridge in November of that year, in reference to his love sonnets, he says: "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." This was 1796. Therefore, as he was born in 1775, he must have begun the wooing of Alice W——n when he was fourteen in order to complete the seven long years of courtship. My own feeling, as I have stated in the notes to the love sonnets in Vol. IV., is that Lamb was never a very serious wooer, and that Alice W——n was more an abstraction around which now and then to group tender imaginings of what might have been than any tangible figure.

A proof that Ann Simmons and Alice W——n are one has been found in the circumstance that Miss Simmons did marry a Mr. Bartrum, or Bartram, mentioned by Lamb in this essay as being the father of Alice's real children. Bartrum was a pawnbroker in Princes Street, Coventry Street. Mr. W.C. Hazlitt says that Hazlitt had seen Lamb wandering up and down before the shop trying to get a glimpse of his old friend.

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Page 118. DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.

London Magazine, March, 1822.

The germ of this essay will be found in a letter to Barron Field, to whom the essay is addressed, of August 31, 1817. Barron Field was a son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital. His brother, Francis John Field, through whom Lamb probably came to know Barron, was a clerk in the India House.

Barron Field was associated with Lamb on Leigh Hunt's Reflector in 1810-1812. He also was dramatic critic for The Times for a while. In 1816 he was appointed judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, where he remained until 1824. For other information see the note, in Vol. I., to his First-Fruits of Australian Poetry, reviewed by Lamb. In the same number of the London Magazine which included the present essay was Field's account of his outward voyage to New South Wales.

Page 119, line 24. Our mutual friend P. Not identifiable: probably no one in particular. The Bench would be the King's Bench Prison. A little later one of Lamb's friends, William Hone, was confined there for three years.

Page 121, line 8. The late Lord C. This was Thomas Pitt, second Baron Camelford (1775-1804), who after a quarrelsome life, first in the navy and afterwards as a man about town, was killed in a duel at Kensington, just where Melbury Road now is. The spot chosen by him for his grave was on the borders of the Lake of Lampierre, near three trees; but there is a doubt if his body ever rested there, for it lay for years in the crypt of St. Anne's, Soho. Its ultimate fate was the subject of a story by Charles Reade.

Page 123, line 11. Bleach. Illegitimacy, according to some old authors, wears out in the third generation, enabling a natural son's descendant to resume the ancient coat-of-arms. Lamb refers to this sanction.

Page 123, line 20. Hare-court. The Lambs lived at 4 Inner Temple Lane (now rebuilt as Johnson's Buildings) from 1809 to 1817. Writing to Coleridge in June, 1809, Lamb says:—"The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going. Hare Court trees come in at the window, so that it's like living in a garden."

Barron Field was entered on the books of the Inner Temple in 1809 and was called to the Bar in 1814.

Page 123, last paragraph. Sally W——r. Lamb's Key gives "Sally
Winter;" but as to who she was we have no knowledge.

Page 123, end. J.W. James White. See next essay.

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Page 124. THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.

London Magazine, May, 1822, where it has a sub-title, "A May-Day Effusion."

This was not Lamb's only literary association with chimney-sweepers. In Vol. I. of this edition will be found the description of a sweep in the country which there is good reason to believe is Lamb's work. Again, in 1824, James Montgomery, the poet, edited a book—The Chimney-Sweepers' Friend and Climbing Boys' Album—with the benevolent purpose of interesting people in the hardships of the climbing boys' life and producing legislation to alleviate it. The first half of the book is practical: reports of committees, and so forth; the second is sentimental; verses by Bernard Barton, William Lisle Bowles, and many others; short stories of kidnapped children forced to the horrid business; and kindred themes. Among the "favourite poets of the day" to whom Montgomery applied were Scott, Wordsworth, Rogers, Moore, Joanna Baillie and Lamb. Lamb replied by copying out (with the alteration of Toddy for Dacre) "The Chimney-Sweeper" from Blake's Songs of Innocence, described by Montgomery as "a very rare and curious little work." In that poem it will be remembered the little sweep cries "weep, weep, weep." Lamb compares the cry more prettily to the "peep, peep" of the sparrow.

Page 125, line 6. Shop … Mr. Thomas Read's Saloop Coffee House was at No. 102 Fleet Street. The following lines were painted on a board in Read's establishment:—

Come, all degrees now passing by,
My charming liquor taste and try;
To Lockyer come, and drink your fill;
Mount Pleasant has no kind of ill.
The fumes of wine, punch, drams and beer,
It will expell; your spirits cheer;
From drowsiness your spirits free.
Sweet as a rose your breath will be,
Come taste and try, and speak your mind;
Such rare ingredients here are joined,
Mount Pleasant pleases all mankind.

Page 127, line 12 from foot. The young Montagu. Edward Wortley Montagu (1713-1776), the traveller, ran away from Westminster School more than once, becoming, among other things, a chimney-sweeper.

Page 127, line 9 from foot. Arundel Castle. The Sussex seat of the Dukes of Norfolk. The "late duke" was Charles Howard, eleventh duke, who died in 1815, and who spent enormous sums of money on curiosities. I can find no record of the story of the sweep. Perhaps Lamb invented it, or applied it to Arundel.

Page 128, line 14 from foot. Jem White. James White (1775-1820), who was at Christ's Hospital with Lamb, and who wrote Falstaff's Letters, 1796, in his company (see Vol. I.). "There never was his like," Lamb told another old schoolfellow, Valentine Le Grice, in 1833; "we shall never see such days as those in which he flourished." See the essay "On Some of the Old Actors," for an anecdote of White.

Page 128, line 8 from foot. The fair of St. Bartholomew. Held on September 3 at Smithfield, until 1855. George Daniel, in his recollections of Lamb, records a visit they paid together to the Fair. Lamb took Wordsworth through its noisy mazes in 1802.

Page 129, line 14. Bigod. John Fenwick (see note to "The Two Races of Men").

Leigh Hunt, in The Examiner for May 5, 1822, quoted some of the best sentences of this essay. On May 12 a correspondent (L.E.) wrote a very agreeable letter supporting Lamb's plea for generosity to sweeps and remarking thus upon Lamb himself:—

I read the modicum on "Chimney-Sweepers," which your last paper contained, with pleasure. It appears to be the production of that sort of mind which you justly denominate "gifted;" but which is greatly undervalued by the majority of men, because they have no sympathies in common with it. Many who might partially appreciate such a spirit, do nevertheless object to it, from the snap-dragon nature of its coruscations, which shine themselves, but shew every thing around them to disadvantage. Your deep philosophers also, and all the laborious professors of the art of sinking, may elevate their nasal projections, and demand "cui bono"? For my part I prefer a little enjoyment to a great deal of philosophy. It is these gifted minds that enliven our habitations, and contribute so largely to those every-day delights, which constitute, after all, the chief part of mortal happiness. Such minds are ever active—their light, like the vestal lamp, is ever burning—and in my opinion the man who refines the common intercourse of life, and wreaths the altars of our household gods with flowers, is more deserving of respect and gratitude than all the sages who waste their lives in elaborate speculations, which tend to nothing, and which we cannot comprehend—nor they neither.

On June 2, however, "J.C.H." intervened to correct what he considered the "dangerous spirit" of Lamb's essay, which said so little of the hardships of the sweeps, but rather suggested that they were a happy class. J.C.H. then put the case of the unhappy sweep with some eloquence, urging upon all householders the claims of the mechanical sweeping machine.

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Page 130. A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS.

London Magazine, June, 1822.

The origin of this essay was the activity at that time of the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity, founded in 1818, of which a Mr. W.H. Bodkin was the Hon. Secretary. The Society's motto was "Benefacta male collocata, malefacta existima;" and it attempted much the same work now performed by the Charity Organisation Society. Perhaps the delight expressed in its annual reports in the exposure of impostors was a shade too hearty—at any rate one can see therein cause sufficient for Lamb's counter-blast. Lamb was not the only critic of Mr. Bodkin's zeal. Hood, in the Odes and Addresses, published in 1825, included a remonstrance to Mr. Bodkin.

The Society's activity led to a special commission of the House of Commons in 1821 to inquire into the laws relating to vagrants, concerning which Lamb speaks, the clergyman alluded to being Dr. Henry Butts Owen, of Highgate. The result of the commission was an additional stringency, brought about by Mr. George Chetwynd's bill.

It was this essay, says Hood, which led to his acquaintance with Charles Lamb. After its appearance in the London Magazine, of which Hood was then sub-editor, he wrote Lamb a letter on coarse paper purporting to come from a grateful beggar; Lamb did not admit the discovery of the perpetrator of the joke, but soon afterwards Lamb called on Hood when he was ill, and a friendship followed to which we owe Hood's charming recollections of Lamb—among the best that were written of him by any one.

Page 131, line 14. The Blind Beggar. The reference is to the ballad of "The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green." The version in the Percy Reliques relates the adventures of Henry, Earl of Leicester, the son of Simon de Montfort, who was blinded at the battle of Evesham and left for dead, and thereafter begged his way with his pretty Bessee. In the London Magazine Lamb had written "Earl of Flanders," which he altered to "Earl of Cornwall" in Elia. The ballad says Earl of Leicester.

Page 131, line 28. Dear Margaret Newcastle. One of Lamb's recurring themes of praise (see "The Two Races of Men," "Mackery End in Hertfordshire," and "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading"). "Romancical," according to the New English Dictionary, is Lamb's own word. This is the only reference given for it.

Page 133, line 7. Spital sermons. On Monday of Easter week it was the custom for the Christ's Hospital boys to walk in procession to the Royal Exchange, and on Tuesday to the Mansion House; on each occasion returning with the Lord Mayor to hear a special sermon—a spital sermon, as it was called—and an anthem. The sermon is now preached only on Easter Tuesday.

Page 133, line 24. Overseers of St. L——. Lamb's Key states that both the overseers and the mild rector were inventions. In the London Magazine the rector's parish is "P——."

Page 133, line 27. Vincent Bourne. See Lamb's essay on Vincent
Bourne, Vol. I. This poem was translated by Lamb himself, and was
first published in The Indicator for May 3, 1820. See Vol. IV. for
Lamb's other translations from Bourne.

Page 135, line 2. A well-known figure. This beggar I take to be Samuel Horsey. He is stated to have been known as the King of the Beggars, and a very prominent figure in London. His mutilation is ascribed to the falling of a piece of timber in Bow Lane, Cheapside, some nineteen years before; but it may have been, as Lamb says, in the Gordon Riots of 1780.

There is the figure of Horsey on his little carriage, with several other of the more notable beggars of the day plying their calling, in an etching of old houses at the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, made by J.T. Smith in 1789 for his Ancient Topography of London, 1815. I give it in my large edition.

Page 137, end of essay. Feigned or not. In the London Magazine the essay did not end here. It continued thus:—

"'Pray God your honour relieve me,' said a poor beadswoman to my friend L—— one day; 'I have seen better days.' 'So have I, my good woman,' retorted he, looking up at the welkin which was just then threatening a storm—and the jest (he will have it) was as good to the beggar as a tester.

"It was at all events kinder than consigning her to the stocks, or
the parish beadle—

"But L. has a way of viewing things in rather a paradoxical light
on some occasions.

"ELIA.

"P.S.—My friend Hume (not MP.) has a curious manuscript in his possession, the original draught of the celebrated 'Beggar's Petition' (who cannot say by heart the 'Beggar's Petition?') as it was written by some school usher (as I remember) with corrections interlined from the pen of Oliver Goldsmith. As a specimen of the doctor's improvement, I recollect one most judicious alteration—

"A pamper'd menial drove me from the door.

"It stood originally—

"A livery servant drove me, &c.

"Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language properly substituted for the phrase of common conversation; against Wordsworth.

"I think I must get H. to send it to the LONDON, as a corollary to the foregoing."

The foregoing passage needs some commentary. Lamb's friend L—— was Lamb himself. He tells the story to Manning in the letter of January 2,1810.—Lamb's friend Hume was Joseph Hume of the victualling office, Somerset House, to whom letters from Lamb will be found in Mr. W.C. Hazlitt's Lamb and Hazlitt, 1900. Hume translated The Inferno of Dante into blank verse, 1812.—The "Beggar's Petition," a stock piece for infant recitation a hundred years ago, was a poem beginning thus:—

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;
Oh give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

In the reference to Wordsworth Lamb pokes fun at the statement, in his friend's preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, that the purpose of that book was to relate or describe incidents and situations from common life as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men.

Lamb's P.S. concerning the "Beggar's Petition" was followed in the London Magazine by this N.B.:—

"N.B. I am glad to see JANUS veering about to the old quarter. I
feared he had been rust-bound.

"C. being asked why he did not like Gold's 'London' as well as
ours—it was in poor S.'s time—replied—

"—Because there is no WEATHERCOCK
And that's the reason why."

The explanation of this note is that "Janus Weathercock"—one of the pseudonyms of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright—after a long absence from its pages, had sent to the previous month's London Magazine, May, 1822, an amusing letter of criticism of that periodical, commenting on some of its regular contributors. Therein he said: "Clap Elia on the back for such a series of good behaviour."—Who C. is cannot be said; possibly Lamb, as a joke, intends Coleridge to be indicated; but poor S. would be John Scott, the first editor of the London Magazine, who was killed in a duel. C.'s reply consisted of the last lines of Wordsworth's "Anecdote for Fathers; or, Falsehood Corrected." Accurately they run:—

At Kelve there was no weather-cock
And that's the reason why.

The hero of this poem was a son of Lamb's friend Basil Montagu.

Gold's London Magazine was a contemporary of the better known London magazine of the same name. In Vol. III. appeared an article entitled "The Literary Ovation," describing an imaginary dinner-party given by Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock & Joy in February, 1821, at which Lamb was supposed to be present and to sing a song by Webster, one of his old dramatists. Mr. Bertram Dobell conjectures that Wainewright may have written this squib.

* * * * *

Page 137. A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.

London Magazine, September, 1822.

There has been some discussion as to the origin of the central idea of this essay. A resemblance is found in a passage in The Turkish Spy, where, after describing the annual burnt-offering of a bull by the Athenians, The Spy continues:—

In process of time a certain priest, in the midst of his bloody sacrifice, taking up a piece of the broiled flesh which had fallen from the altar on the ground, and burning his fingers therewith, suddenly clapt them to his mouth to mitigate the pain. But, when he had once tasted the sweetness of the fat, not only longed for more of it, but gave a piece to his assistant; and he to others; who, all pleased with the new-found dainties, fell to eating of flesh greedily. And hence this species of gluttony was taught to other mortals.

"Este," a contributor to Notes and Queries, June 21, 1884, wrote:—

A quarto volume of forty-six pages, once in "Charles Lamb's library" (according to a pencilled note in the volume) is before me, entitled: Gli Elogi del Porco, Capitoli Berneschi di Tigrinto Bistonio P.A., E. Accademico Ducale de' Dissonanti di Modena. In Modena per gli Eredi di Bartolmeo Soliani Stampatori Ducali MDCCLXI. Con Licenza de' Superiori, [wherein] some former owner of the volume has copied out Lamb's prose with many exact verbal resemblances from the poem.

It has also been suggested that Porphyry's tract on Abstinence from Animal Food, translated by William Taylor, bears a likeness to the passage. Taylor's translation, however, was not published till 1823, some time after Lamb's essay.

These parallels merely go to show that the idea was a commonplace; at the same time it is not Lamb, but Manning, who told him the story, that must declare its origin. Not only in the essay, but in a letter to Barton in March, 1823, does Lamb express his indebtedness to his traveller friend. Allsop, indeed, in his Letters of Coleridge, claims to give the Chinese story which Manning lent to Lamb and which produced the "Dissertation." It runs thus:—

A child, in the early ages, was left alone by its mother in a house in which was a pig. A fire took place; the child escaped, the pig was burned. The child scratched and pottered among the ashes for its pig, which at last it found. All the provisions being burnt, the child was very hungry, and not yet having any artificial aids, such as golden ewers and damask napkins, began to lick or suck its fingers to free them from the ashes. A piece of fat adhered to one of his thumbs, which, being very savoury alike in taste and odour, he rightly judged to belong to the pig. Liking it much, he took it to his mother, just then appearing, who also tasted it, and both agreed that it was better than fruit or vegetables.

They rebuilt the house, and the woman, after the fashion of good wives, who, says the chronicle, are now very scarce, put a pig into it, and was about to set it on fire, when an old man, one whom observation and reflection had made a philosopher, suggested that a pile of wood would do as well. (This must have been the father of economists.) The next pig was killed before it was roasted, and thus

"From low beginnings,
We date our winnings."

Manning, by the way, contributed articles on Chinese jests to the New
Monthly Magazine in 1826.

A preliminary sketch of the second portion of this essay will be found in the letter to Coleridge dated March 9, 1822. See also the letters to Mr. and Mrs. Bruton, January 6, 1823, to Mrs. Collier, November 2, 1824, and to H. Dodwell, October 7, 1827, all in acknowledgment of pigs sent to Lamb probably from an impulse found in this essay.

Later, Lamb abandoned the extreme position here taken. In the little essay entitled "Thoughts on Presents of Game," 1833 (see Vol. I.), he says: "Time was, when Elia … preferred to all a roasted pig. But he disclaims all such green-sickness appetites in future."

Page 141, verse. "Ere sin could blight …" From Coleridge's "Epitaph on an Infant."

Page 142, line 7 from foot. My good old aunt. Probably Aunt Hetty. See the essay on "Christ's Hospital," for another story of her. The phrase, "Over London Bridge," unless an invention, suggests that before this aunt went to live with the Lambs—probably not until they left the Temple in 1792—she was living on the Surrey side. But it was possibly an Elian mystification. Lamb had another aunt, but of her we know nothing.

Page 143, line 11 from foot. St. Omer's. The French Jesuit College.
Lamb, it is unnecessary to say, was never there.

* * * * *

Page 144. A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE.

This is, by many years, the earliest of these essays. It was printed first in The Reflector, No. IV., in 1811 or 1812. When Lamb brought his Works together, in 1818, he omitted it. In September, 1822, it appeared in the London Magazine as one of the reprints of Lamb's earlier writings, of which the "Confessions of a Drunkard" (see Vol. I.)was the first. In that number also appeared the "Dissertation upon Roast Pig," thereby offering the reader an opportunity of comparing Lamb's style in 1811 with his riper and richer style of 1822. The germ of the essay must have been long in Lamb's mind, for we find him writing to Hazlitt in 1805 concerning Mrs. Rickman: "A good-natured woman though, which is as much as you can expect from a friend's wife, whom you got acquainted with as a bachelor."

Page 147, line 6. "Love me, love my dog." See "Popular Fallacies," page 302, for an expansion of this paragraph.

* * * * *

Page 150. ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.

In February, 1822, Lamb began a series of three articles in the London Magazine on "The Old Actors." The second was printed in April and the third in October of the same year. Afterwards, in reprinting them in Elia, he rearranged them into the essays, "On Some of the Old Actors," "On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," and "On the Acting of Munden," omitting a considerable portion altogether. The essay in its original tripart form will be found in the Appendix to this volume.

In one of his theatrical notices in The Examiner (see Vol. I.) Lamb remarks, "Defunct merit comes out upon us strangely," and certain critics believe that he praised some of the old actors beyond their deserts. But no one can regret any such excesses.

Page 150, beginning. Twelfth Night. When recalling early playgoing days in "Old China," Lamb refers again to this play—Viola in Illyria.

Page 150, foot. Whitfield, Packer, Benson, Burton, Phillimore and Barrymore. Whitfield, who made his London début as Trueman in "George Barnwell" about 1776, was a useful man at Covent Garden and Drury Lane.—John Hayman Packer (1730-1806), known in Lamb's time for his old men. He acted at Drury Lane until 1805.—Benson, who married a sister of Mrs. Stephen Kemble, wrote one or two plays, and was a good substitute in emergencies. He committed suicide during brain fever in 1796.—Burton was a creditable utility actor at Covent Garden and Drury Lane.—Phillimore filled small parts at Drury Lane.—Barrymore was of higher quality, a favourite character actor both at Drury Lane and the Haymarket.

Page 151, line 6. Mrs. Jordan. Mrs. Jordan, born in 1762, ceased to act in England in 1814 and died in 1816. Nell was her famous part, in Coffey's "The Devil to Pay." Miss Hoyden is in Vanbrugh's "Relapse." Lamb is referring to Viola in Act I., Scene 5, and Act II., Scene 4, of "Twelfth Night."

Page 151, line 8 from foot. Mrs. Powel. Mrs. Powel, previously known as Mrs. Farmer, and afterwards Mrs. Renaud, was at Drury Lane from 1788 to 1811. She ended her London career in 1816 and died in 1829.

Page 152, line 8. Of all the actors. The London Magazine article began at this point. Robert Bensley (1738?-1817?) was at Drury Lane from 1775 to 1796, when he retired (alternating it with the Haymarket). G.H. Boaden and George Colman both bear out Lamb's eulogy of Bensley as Malvolio; but otherwise he is not the subject of much praise.

Page 152, line 15. Venetian incendiary. Pierre in Otway's "Venice
Preserved." Lamb appended the passage in a footnote in the London
Magazine.

Page 153, line 12. Baddeley … Parsons … John Kemble. Robert Baddeley (1733-1794), the husband of Mrs. Baddeley, and the original Moses in the "School for Scandal." William Parsons (1736-1795), the original Crabtree in the "School for Scandal," and a favourite actor of Lamb's. John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), who managed Drury Lane from 1788 to 1801.

Page 153, line 11 from foot. Of birth and feeling. In the London
Magazine a footnote came here (see page 316).

Page 153, line 6 from foot. Length of service. In the London
Magazine a footnote came here (see page 316).

Page 154, line 24. House of misrule. A long passage came here in the London Magazine (see page 317).

Page 154, line 8 from foot. Hero of La Mancha. Compare a similar analysis of Don Quixote's character on page 264.

Page 155, line 23. Dodd. James William Dodd (1740?-1796).

Page 155, line 24. Lovegrove. William Lovegrove (1778-1816), famous in old comedy parts and as Peter Fidget in "The Boarding House."

Page 155, foot. The gardens of Gray's Inn. These gardens are said to have been laid out under the supervision of Bacon, who retained his chambers in the Inn until his death. As Dodd died in 1796 and Lamb wrote in 1822, it would be fully twenty-six years and perhaps more since Lamb met him.

Page 156, lines 26-29. Foppington, etc. Foppington in Vanbrugh's
"Relapse," Tattle in Congreve's "Love for Love," Backbite in
Sheridan's "School for Scandal," Acres in "The Rivals" by the same
author, and Fribble in Garrick's "Miss in her Teens."

Page 157, line 13. If few can remember. The praise of Suett that follows is interpolated here from the third part of Lamb's original essay (see page 332). Richard Suett, who had been a Westminster chorister (not St. Paul's), left the stage in June, 1805, and died in July.

Page 157, footnote, Jem White. See note above.

Page 158, line 22. His friend Mathews. Charles Mathews (1776-1835), whom Lamb knew.

Page 159, line 1. Jack Bannister. John Bannister retired from the stage in 1815. He died in 1836.

Page 159, line 7. Children in the Wood. Morton's play, of which Lamb was so fond. It is mentioned again in "Barbara S——" and "Old China."

Page 159, line 19. The elder Palmer. The first part of the essay is here resumed again. The elder Palmer was John Palmer, who died on the stage, in 1798, when playing in "The Stranger." Lamb's remarks tend to confuse him with Gentleman Palmer, who died before Lamb was born. Robert Palmer, John's brother, died about 1805.

Page 159, line 22. Moody. John Moody (1727?-1812), famous as Teague in "The Committee."

Page 159, lines 31 to 36. The Duke's Servant, etc. The Duke's servant in Garrick's "High Life below Stairs," Captain Absolute in Sheridan's "Rivals," Dick Amlet in Vanbrugh's "Confederacy."

Page 160, line 1. Young Wilding … Joseph Surface. In Foote's
"Liar" and Sheridan's "School for Scandal."

* * * * *

Page 161. ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY.

See note to the essay "On Some of the Old Actors."

See also "A Vision of Horns" (Vol. I.) for, as it seems to me, a whimsical extension to the point of absurdity of the theory expressed in this essay—a theory which Lord Macaulay, in his review of Leigh Hunt's edition of the Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, etc., in 1840, opposed with characteristic vigour.

Hartley Coleridge, in a letter to Edward Moxon concerning Leigh Hunt's edition of Wycherley and Congreve, happily remarked: "Nothing more or better can be said in defence of these writers than what Lamb has said in his delightful essay … which is, after all, rather an apology for the audiences who applauded and himself who delighted in their plays, than for the plays themselves…. But Lamb always took things by the better handle."

Page 163, line 16. The Fainalls, etc. Fainall in Congreve's "Way
of the World," Mirabel in Farquhar's "Inconstant," Dorimant in
Etheredge's "Man of Mode," and Lady Touchstone in Congreve's "Double
Dealer."

Page 163, line 12 from foot. Angelica. In "Love for Love."

Page 164, line 26, etc. Sir Simon, etc. All these characters are in
Wycherley's "Love in a Wood."

Page 166, line 21. King. Thomas King (1730-1805), at one time manager of Drury Lane, the original Sir Peter Teazle, on May 8, 1777, the first night of the "School for Scandal," and the most famous actor in the part until he retired in 1802.

Page 167, line 14. Miss Pope. Jane Pope (1742-1818), the original
Mrs. Candour, left the stage in 1808.

Page 167, line 15 from foot. Manager's comedy. Sheridan was manager of Drury Lane when the "School for Scandal" was produced.

Page 167, same line. Miss Farren … Mrs. Abingdon. Elizabeth Farren, afterwards Countess of Derby, played Lady Teazle for the last time in 1797. Mrs. Abingdon had retired from Drury Lane in 1782.

Page 167, line 10 from foot. Smith. "Gentleman" Smith took his farewell of the stage, as Charles Surface, in 1788.

Page 168, end of essay. Fashionable tragedy. See page 328, line 21, for the continuation of this essay in the London Magazine.

* * * * *

Page 168. ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN.

See note to the essay "On Some of the Old Actors" above. Lamb lifted this essay into the London Magazine from The Examiner, where it had appeared on November 7 and 8, 1819, with slight changes.

Page 168, title. Munden. Joseph Shepherd Munden (1758-1832) acted at Covent Garden practically continuously from 1790 to 1811. He moved to Drury Lane in 1813, and remained there till the end. His farewell performance was on May 31, 1824. We know Lamb to have met Munden from Raymond's Memoirs of Elliston.

Page 168, line 2 of essay. Cockletop. In O'Keeffe's farce "Modern Antiques." This farce is no longer played, although a skilful hand might, I think, make it attractive to our audiences. Barry Cornwall in his memoir of Lamb has a passage concerning Munden as Cockletop, which helps to support Lamb's praise. Support is not necessary, but useful; it is one of the misfortunes of the actor's calling that he can live only in the praise of his critics.

In the Drama of "Modern Antiques," especially, space was allowed him for his movements. The words were nothing. The prosperity of the piece depended exclusively on the genius of the actor. Munden enacted the part of an old man credulous beyond ordinary credulity; and when he came upon the stage there was in him an almost sublime look of wonder, passing over the scene and people around him, and settling apparently somewhere beyond the moon. What he believed in, improbable as it was to mere terrestrial visions, you at once conceived to be quite possible,—to be true. The sceptical idiots of the play pretend to give him a phial nearly full of water. He is assured that this contains Cleopatra's tear. Well; who can disprove it? Munden evidently recognised it. "What a large tear!" he exclaimed. Then they place in his hands a druidical harp, which to vulgar eyes might resemble a modern gridiron. He touches the chords gently: "pipes to the spirit ditties of no tone;" and you imagine Æolian strains. At last, William Tell's cap is produced. The people who affect to cheat him, apparently cut the rim from a modern hat, and place the scull-cap in his hands; and then begins the almost finest piece of acting that I ever witnessed. Munden accepts the accredited cap of Tell, with confusion and reverence. He places it slowly and solemnly on his head, growing taller in the act of crowning himself. Soon he swells into the heroic size; a great archer; and enters upon his dreadful task. He weighs the arrow carefully; he tries the tension of the bow, the elasticity of the string; and finally, after a most deliberate aim, he permits the arrow to fly, and looks forward at the same time with intense anxiety. You hear the twang, you see the hero's knitted forehead, his eagerness; you tremble;—at last you mark his calmer brow, his relaxing smile, and are satisfied that the son is saved!—It is difficult to paint in words this extraordinary performance, which I have several times seen; but you feel that it is transcendent. You think of Sagittarius, in the broad circle of the Zodiac; you recollect that archery is as old as Genesis; you are reminded that Ishmael, the son of Hagar, wandered about the Judæan deserts and became an archer.

Page 169, line 16. Edwin. This would probably be John Edwin the Elder (1749-1790). But John Edwin the Younger (1768-1805) might have been meant. He was well known in Nipperkin, one of Munden's parts.

Page 169, line 21. Farley…Knight…Liston. Charles Farley (1771-1859), mainly known as the deviser of Covent Garden pantomimes; Edward Knight (1774-1826), an eccentric little comedian; John Listen (1776?-1846), whose mock biography Lamb wrote (see Vol. I.).

Page 169, line 7 from foot. Sir Christopher Curry…Old Dornton. Sir Christopher in "Inkle and Yarico," by the younger Colman; Old Dornton in Holcroft's "Road to Ruin."

Page 170, line 6. The Cobbler of Preston. A play, founded on "The
Taming of the Shrew," by Charles Johnson, written in 1716.