SONNETS
Page 58. Harmony in Unlikeness.
The two lovely damsels were Emma Isola and her friend Maria.
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Page 59. Written at Cambridge.
This sonnet was first printed in The Examiner, August 29 and 30, 1819, and was dated August 15. Lamb, we now know, from a letter recently discovered, was in Cambridge in August, 1819, just after being refused by Miss Kelly. Hazlitt in his essay "On the Conversation of Authors" in the London Magazine for September, 1820, referred to Lamb's visit to him some years before, and his want of ease among rural surroundings, adding: "But when we cross the country to Oxford, then he spoke a little. He and the old collegers were hail-fellow-well-met: and in the quadrangle he 'walked gowned.'"
Page 59. To a Celebrated Female Performer in the "Blind Boy."
First printed in the Morning Chronicle, 1819. "The Blind Boy," "attributed," says Genest, "to Hewetson," was produced in 1807. It was revived from time to time. Miss Kelly used to play Edmond, the title rôle.
Page 59. Work.
First printed in The Examiner, June 20 and 21, 1819, under the title
"Sonnet."
Many years earlier we see the germ of this sonnet in Lamb's mind, as indeed we see the germ of so many ideas that were not fully expressed till later, for he always kept his thoughts at call. Writing to Wordsworth in September, 1805, he says:—"Hang work! I wish that all the year were holyday. I am sure that Indolence indefeasible Indolence is the true state of man, and business the invention of the Old Teazer who persuaded Adam's Master to give him an apron and set him a-houghing. Pen and Ink and Clerks, and desks, were the refinements of this old torturer a thousand years after…."
Lamb probably was as fond of this sonnet as of anything he wrote in what might be called his second poetical period. He copied it into his first letter to Bernard Barton, in September, 1822, and he drew attention to it in his Elia essay "The Superannuated Man."
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Page 60. Leisure.
First printed in the London Magazine for April, 1821, probably, I think, as a protest against the objection taken by some persons to the opinions expressed by Lamb in his essay on "New Year's Eve" in that magazine for January (see Vol. II., and notes). Lamb had therein said, speaking of death:—"I am not content to pass away 'like a weaver's shuttle.' Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends. To be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave."
Such sentiments probably called forth some private as well as public protests; and it was, as I imagine, in a whimsical wish to emphasise the sincerity of his regard for life that Lamb reiterated that devotion in the emphatic words of "Leisure" in the April number. This sonnet was a special favourite with Edward FitzGerald.
It is sad to think that Lamb, when his leisure came, had too much of it. Writing to Barton on July 25, 1829, during one of his sister's illnesses, he says: "I bragg'd formerly that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit…. I am a sanguinary murderer of time, that would kill him inchmeal just now."
Page 60. To Samuel Rogers, Esq.
Daniel Rogers, the poet's elder brother, died in 1829. In acknowledging Lamb's sonnet, Samuel Rogers wrote the following letter, which Lamb described to Barton (July 3, 1829) as the prettiest he ever read.
Many, many thanks. The verses are beautiful. I need not say with
what feelings they were read. Pray accept the grateful
acknowledgements
of us all, and believe me when I say that nothing could have been
a greater cordial to us in our affliction than such a testimony from such
a quarter. He was—for none knew him so well—we were born within a
year or two of each other—a man of a very high mind, and with less
disguise than perhaps any that ever lived. Whatever he was, that we
saw. He stood before his fellow beings (if I may be forgiven for saying
so) almost as before his Maker: and God grant that we may all bear
as severe an examination. He was an admirable scholar. His Dante
and his Homer were as familiar to him as his Alphabets: and he had
the tenderest heart. When a flock of turkies was stolen from his farm,
the indignation of the poor far and wide was great and loud. To me he
is the greatest loss, for we were nearly of an age; and there is now no
human being alive in whose eyes I have always been young.
Yours most gratefully,
SAMUEL ROGERS.
Another sonnet to Rogers will be found on p. 100.
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Page 61. The Gipsy's Malison.
First printed in Blackwood's Magazine, January, 1829. Lamb had sent it to The Gem, but, as he told Procter in a letter on January 22, 1829: "The editors declined it, on the plea that it would shock all mothers; so they published the 'Widow' [Hood's parody of Lamb] instead. I am born out of time. I have no conecture about what the present world calls delicacy. I thought Rosamund Gray was a pretty modest thing. Hessey assures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Hang[27] the age, I will write for Antiquity!'"
In another letter to Procter, Lamb tells the sonnet's history:—
"January 29, 1829.
"When Miss Ouldcroft (who is now Mrs. Beddam [Badams], and Bed-dam'd to her!) was at Enfield, which she was in summer-time, and owed her health to its suns and genial influences, she visited (with young lady-like impertinence) a poor man's cottage that had a pretty baby (O the yearnling!), gave it fine caps and sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the parlour our two maids uproarious. 'O ma'am, who do you think Miss Ouldcroft (they pronounce it Holcroft) has been working a cap for?' 'A child," answered Mary, in true Shandean female simplicity.' 'Tis the man's child as was taken up for sheep-stealing.' Miss Ouldcroft was staggered, and would have cut the connection; but by main force I made her go and take her leave of her protégée. I thought, if she went no more, the Abactor or the Abactor's wife (vide Ainsworth) would suppose she had heard something; and I have delicacy for a sheep-stealer. The overseers actually overhauled a mutton-pie at the baker's (his first, last, and only hope of mutton pie), which he never came to eat, and thence inferred his guilt. Per occasionem cujus, I framed the sonnet; observe its elaborate construction. I was four days about it. [Here came the sonnet.] Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely elaborate. 'Tis a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed to the structure of it. See you? and was this a fourteener to be rejected by a trumpery annual? forsooth,'twould shock all mothers; and may all mothers, who would so be shocked, be damned! as if mothers were such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of their child from the theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hanged, if the judge pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. Oh B.C.! my whole heart is faint, and my whole head is sick (how is it?) at this damned canting unmasculine age!"
[Footnote 27: Talfourd. Canon Ainger gives "Damn">[
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