ELIA
The last essay in the “Spirit of the Age” is entitled “Elia and Geoffrey Crayon.” An edition published at Paris by Galignani in 1825 omits the account of Washington Irving, and this text, as it is in all respects unexceptionable, has been here adopted for the sake of coherence. In a letter to Bernard Barton, February 10, 1825, Lamb refers to Hazlitt’s sketch: “He has laid too many colours on my likeness, but I have had so much injustice done me in my own name, that I make a rule of accepting as much over-measure to ‘Elia’ as Gentlemen think proper to bestow.”
[P. 221.] shuffle off. “Hamlet,” iii, 1, 67.
The self-applauding bird. Cowper’s “Truth,” 58.
[P. 222.] New-born gauds and give to dust. “Troilus and Cressida,” iii, 3, 176-79.
do not in broad rumor lie, and the two following quotations are free renderings of “Lycidas,” 78-82.
Mr. Lamb rather affects. Hazlitt had Lamb in his eye when he described the Occult School in the essay “On Criticism” (“Table Talk”): “There is another race of critics who might be designated as the Occult School—verè adepti. They discern no beauties but what are concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar part of mankind. Their art is the transmutation of styles. By happy alchemy of mind they convert dross into gold—and gold into tinsel. They see farther into a millstone than most others. If an author is utterly unreadable, they can read him for ever: his intricacies are their delight, his mysteries are their study. They prefer Sir Thomas Brown to the Rambler by Dr. Johnson, and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy to all the writers of the Georgian Age. They judge of works of genius as misers do of hid treasure—it is of no value unless they have it all to themselves. They will no more share a book than a mistress with a friend. If they suspected their favourite volumes of delighting any eyes but their own, they would immediately discard them from the list. Theirs are superannuated beauties that every one else has left off intriguing with, bed-ridden hags, a ‘stud of night-mares.’ This is not envy or affectation, but a natural proneness to singularity, a love of what is odd and out of the way. They must come at their pleasures with difficulty, and support admiration by an uneasy sense of ridicule and opposition. They despise those qualities in a work which are cheap and obvious. They like a monopoly of taste, and are shocked at the prostitution of intellect implied in popular productions. In like manner, they would chuse a friend or recommend a mistress for gross defects; and tolerate the sweetness of an actress’s voice only for the ugliness of her face. Pure pleasures are in their judgment cloying and insipid—
‘An ounce of sour is worth a pound of sweet!’
Nothing goes down with them but what is caviare to the multitude. They are eaters of olives and readers of black-letter. Yet they smack of genius, and would be worth any money, were it only for the rarity of the thing!”
[P. 223.] fine fretwork. “Essays of Elia,” “The South-Sea House.”
the chimes at midnight. 2 “Henry IV,” iii, 2, 228.
[P. 224.] cheese and pippins. Ibid., v, 3.
inns and courts of law. “The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,” in “Essays of Elia.”
a certain writer. Hazlitt himself. It is known to everybody that the friendship of Lamb for Hazlitt suffered certain strains, and various attempts have been made to guess at the provocations. Mutual recriminations in regard to literary borrowings have been thought to be responsible for more than one breach. So Mr. Bertram Dobell, in his “Sidelights on Lamb,” 212-14, imagines that the mystery is solved in a letter of Hazlitt’s to the editor of the London Magazine (April 12, 1820) charging Lamb with appropriating his ideas: “Do you keep the Past and Future? You see Lamb argues the same view of the subject. That ‘young master’ will anticipate all my discoveries if I don’t mind.” The similarity of idea between Hazlitt’s “Past and Future” and Lamb’s “New Year’s Eve,” and the appearance in Lamb’s essay of the phrase “young masters” makes it clear enough what Hazlitt is referring to, but that either man should have taken the matter very seriously is hard to believe. It is easier to look upon Hazlitt’s expression as banter of the same kind that Lamb allowed himself in connection with the essay on “Guy Faux” alluded to in the present sketch. This subject had been proposed by Lamb, as we are informed in “Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen,” and had been written up by Hazlitt in the Examiner in 1821 (Works, XI, 317-334). Two years later Lamb contributed a paper on the same subject to the London Magazine, founded partly on an essay in the Reflector (1811), entitled “On the Probable Effects of the Gunpowder Treason.” The essay in the London Magazine (Lamb’s Works, ed. Lucas, I, 236 ff.) opens with a facetious thrust at Hazlitt: “A very ingenious and subtle writer, whom there is good reason for suspecting to be an ex-Jesuit, not unknown at Douay some five-and-twenty years since (he will not obtrude himself at M—th again in a hurry), about a twelvemonth back, set himself to prove the character of the Powder Plot conspirators to have been that of heroic self-devotedness and true Christian martyrdom. Under the mask of Protestant candour, he actually gained admission for his treatise into a London weekly paper, not particularly distinguished for its zeal towards either religion. But, admitting Catholic principles, his arguments are shrewd and incontrovertible. [Then follows a quotation from Hazlitt setting forth the Catholic standpoint.] It is impossible, upon Catholic principles, not to admit the force of this reasoning; we can only not help smiling (with the writer) at the simplicity of the gulled editor, swallowing the dregs of Loyola for the very quintessence of sublimated reason in England at the commencement of the nineteenth century. We will just, as a contrast, show what we Protestants (who are a party concerned) thought upon the same subject, at a period rather nearer to the heroic project in question.” This is the kind of resentment we would expect Lamb to show at the appropriation of his ideas. That there were not wanting grounds for real grievance against Hazlitt may be gathered from a letter to Wordsworth, September 23, 1816 (Lamb’s Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 491): “There was a cut at me a few months back by the same hand.... It was a pretty compendium of observation, which the author has collected in my disparagement, from some hundred of social evenings which we had spent together,—however in spite of all, there is something tough in my attachment to H—— which these violent strainings cannot quite dislocate or sever asunder. I get no conversation in London that is absolutely worth attending to but his.” To one of his quarrels with Lamb Hazlitt owes the finest compliment he ever received, and happily it marks the termination of all differences between them. It occurs in the well-known “Letter of Elia to Robert Southey” which Lamb published in the London Magazine when Southey reproached him with his friendship for Hazlitt (Works, I, 233): “I stood well with him for fifteen years (the proudest of my life), and have ever spoke my full mind of him to some, to whom his panegyric must naturally be least tasteful. I never in thought swerved from him, I never betrayed him, I never slackened in my admiration for him, I was the same to him (neither better nor worse) though he could not see it, as in the days when he thought fit to trust me. At this instant, he may be preparing for me some compliment, above my deserts, as he has sprinkled many such among his admirable books, for which I rest his debtor; or, for any thing I know, or can guess to the contrary, he may be about to read a lecture on my weaknesses. He is welcome to them (as he was to my humble hearth), if they can divert a spleen, or ventilate a fit of sullenness. I wish he would not quarrel with the world at the rate he does; but the reconciliation must be effected by himself, and I despair of living to see that day. But, protesting against much that he has written, and some things he chooses to do; judging him by his conversation which I enjoyed so long, and relished so deeply; or by his books, in those places where no clouding passion intervenes—I should belie my own conscience, if I said less, than that I think W. H. to be, in his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing. So far from being ashamed of that intimacy, which was betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able for so many years to have preserved it entire; and I think I shall go to my grave without finding, or expecting to find, such another companion.”
Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy was published in 1621. Its quaint prose was often imitated by Lamb and had a direct effect on his style.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), physician and essayist, author of “Religio Medici” (1642), “Pseudodoxia Epidemica” (1646), and “Hydriotaphia or Urn Burial” (1658).
Fuller’s Worthies. The “History of the Worthies of England” (1662) is the best known work of Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), an English divine and writer on church history.
does not make him despise Pope. See p. [322].
Parnell, Thomas (1679-1717). In the sixth lecture on the “English Poets” Hazlitt says: “Parnell, though a good-natured, easy man, and a friend to poets and the Muses, was himself little more than an occasional versifier.”
Gay, John (1685-1732), is best known by his “Beggar’s Opera” (1728) and “Fables” (1727 and 1738). Hazlitt writes of Gay in the sixth lecture on the “English Poets” and has a paper on “The Beggar’s Opera” in the “Round Table.”
His taste in French and German. Cf. “On Old English Writers and Speakers” in the “Plain Speaker”: “Mr. Lamb has lately taken it into his head to read St. Evremont, and works of that stamp. I neither praise nor blame him for it. He observed, that St. Evremont was a writer half-way between Montaigne and Voltaire, with a spice of the wit of the one and the sense of the other. I said I was always of the opinion that there had been a great many clever people in the world, both in France and England, but I had been sometimes rebuked for it. Lamb took this as a slight reproach; for he had been a little exclusive and national in his tastes.”
[P. 225.] His admiration of Hogarth. See note to p. [158].
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Italian painter, sculptor, architect.
fine Titian head. Hazlitt painted a portrait of Lamb in the costume of a Venetian senator. This portrait now hangs in the National Gallery.
[P. 226.] to have coined. Cf. “Julius Cæsar,” iv, 3, 72: “I had rather coin my heart, And drop my blood for drachmas.”
Mr. Waithman, Robert (1764-1833), was Lord Mayor in 1823.
Rosamond Gray, a tale, was published in 1798 and “John Woodvill,” a tragedy, in 1802. The lines in the footnote are from the second act of “John Woodvill.”