CHARLES LAMB (1775–1834)
1. His Life. Lamb was born in London, his father being a kind of factotum to a Bencher of the Middle Temple. The boy, who was a timid and retiring youth, was educated at Christ’s Hospital, where he was a fellow-pupil of Coleridge, whose early eccentricities he has touched upon with his usual felicity. He would have entered the Church, but an impediment in his speech made such a course impossible; instead he obtained a clerkship first in the South Sea House, then (1792) in the East India House, where the remainder of his working life was spent. There was a strain of madness in the family which did not leave him untouched, for in 1795–96 he was under restraint for a time. In the case of his sister, Mary Lamb, the curse was a deadly one. In September 1796 she murdered her mother in a sudden frenzy, and thereafter she had intermittent attacks of insanity. Lamb devoted his life to the welfare of his afflicted sister, who frequently appears in his essays under the name of Cousin Bridget. After more than thirty years’ service Lamb retired (1825) on a pension, and the last ten years of his life were passed in blessed release from his desk. He was a charming man, a delightful talker, and one of the least assuming of writers. His reputation, based upon his qualities of humor, pathos, and cheery goodwill, is unsurpassed in our literature.
2. His Essays. Lamb started his literary career as a poet, producing short pieces of moderate ability, including the well-known The Old Familiar Faces and To Hester. He attempted a tragedy, John Woodvil (1801), in the style of his favorite Elizabethan playwrights, but it had no success on the stage. His Tales from Shakespeare (1807), written in collaboration with his sister, are skillfully done, and are agreeable to read. His critical work, narrow in scope, is remarkable for its delicate insight and good literary taste. All these writings, however, are of little importance compared with his essays.
The first of his essays appeared in The London Magazine in 1820, when Lamb was forty-five years old. It was signed “Elia,” a name taken almost at random as that of an old foreigner who used to haunt the South Sea House. The series continued till October 1822, and was published as The Essays of Elia (1823). A second series lasted from May 1824 to August 1825, and was published under the title of The Last Essays of Elia (1833).
The essays are unequaled in English. In subject they are of the usual miscellaneous kind, ranging from chimneysweeps to old china. They are, however, touched with personal opinions and recollections so oddly obtruded that interest in the subject is nearly swamped by the reader’s delight in the author. No essayist is more egotistical than Lamb; but no egotist can be so artless and yet so artful, so tearful and yet so mirthful, so pedantic and yet so humane. It is this delicate clashing of humors, like the chiming of sweet bells, that affords the chief delight to Lamb’s readers.
It is almost impossible to do justice to his style. It is old-fashioned, bearing echoes and odors from older writers like Sir Thomas Browne and Fuller; it is full of long and curious words; and it is dashed with frequent exclamations and parentheses. The humor that runs through it all is not strong, but airy, almost elfish, in note; it vibrates faintly, but in application never lacks precision. His pathos is of much the same character; and sometimes, as in Dream-Children, it deepens into a quivering sigh of regret. He is so sensitive and so strong, so cheerful and yet so unalteringly doomed to sorrow.
The extract given below deals with the playhouse, which was one of his greatest passions. The reader can easily observe some of the above-mentioned features of his style.
In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfortable manager who abolished them!—with one of these we went. I remember the waiting at the door—not that which is left—but between that and an inner door in shelter—O when shall I be such an expectant again!—with the cry of nonpareils, an indispensable playhouse accompaniment in those days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses then was, “Chase some oranges, chase some num-parels, chase a bill of the play;”—chase pro chuse. But when we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed—the breathless anticipations I endured! I had seen something like it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe’s Shakespeare—the tent scene with Diomede—and a sight of that plate can always bring back in a measure the feeling of that evening.—The boxes at that time, full of well-dressed women of quality, projected over the pit; and the pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling—a homely fancy—but I judged it to be sugar-candy—yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy!—The orchestra lights at length arose, those “fair Auroras!” Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once again—and, incapable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang the second time. The curtain drew up—I was not past six years old—and the play was Artaxerxes!
My First Play