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.
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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").
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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.
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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—
"Those Books kept by modern young Ladies for show,
Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know—
"or otherwise floating about in Periodicals; which you have chosen in this manner to embody. I feel little interest in their publication. They are simply—Advertisement Verses.
"It is not for me, nor you, to allude in public to the kindness of our honoured Friend, under whose auspices you are become a Bookseller. May that fine-minded Veteran in Verse enjoy life long enough to see his patronage justified! I venture to predict that your habits of industry, and your cheerful spirit, will carry you through the world.
"I am, Dear Moxon,
"Your Friend and sincere Well-wisher, CHARLES LAMB.
"ENFIELD, 1st June, 1830."
The reference to "Christmas" is to Moxon's poem of that name, published in 1829, and dedicated to Lamb.—The couplet concerning Albums is from one of Lamb's own pieces (see page 104).—The Veteran in Verse was Samuel Rogers, who, then sixty-seven, lived yet another twenty-five years. Moxon published the superb editions of his Italy and his Poems illustrated by Turner and Stothard.
Lamb's motives in issuing Album Verses were cruelly misunderstood by the Literary Gazette (edited by William Jerdan). In the number for July 10, 1830, was printed a contemptuous review beginning with this passage:—
If any thing could prevent our laughing at the present collection of absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved, and the conceit which has published.
Lamb himself probably was not much disturbed by Jerdan's venom, but Southey took it much to heart, and a few weeks later sent to The Times (of August 6, 1830) the following lines in praise of his friend:—
TO CHARLES LAMB
On the Reviewal of his Album Verses in the Literary Gazette.
Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear,
For rarest genius, and for sterling worth,
Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere,
And wit that never gave an ill thought birth,
Nor ever in its sport infix'd a sting;
To us who have admired and loved thee long,
It is a proud as well as pleasant thing
To hear thy good report, now borne along
Upon the honest breath of public praise:
We know that with the elder sons of song,
In honouring whom thou hast delighted still,
Thy name shall keep its course to after days.
The empty pertness, and the vulgar wrong,
The flippant folly, the malicious will,
Which have assailed thee, now, or heretofore,
Find, soon or late, their proper meed of shame;
The more thy triumph, and our pride the more,
When witling critics to the world proclaim,
In lead, their own dolt incapacity.
Matter it is of mirthful memory
To think, when thou wert early in the field,
How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee
A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield.
And now, a veteran in the lists of fame,
I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested
When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim,
Dulness hath thrown a jerdan at thy head.
SOUTHEY.
This was, I think, Southey's first public utterance concerning Lamb since Lamb's famous open letter to him of October, 1823 (see Vol. I.).
Lamb wrote to Bernard Barton in the same month: "How noble … in R.S. to come forward for an old friend who had treated him so unworthily," For the critics, Lamb said in the same letter, he did not care the "five hundred thousandth part of a half-farthing;" and we can believe him. On page 123 will be found, however, an epigram on the Literary Gazette.
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