“The Letters of Charles Lamb”: 2 volumes, Moxon, 1837; with the inscription, “To J. P. Collier, Esq. from his friend H. C. Robinson.”
Talfourd’s “Final Memorials of Charles Lamb”: 2 volumes, Moxon, 1848.
By the way, the last was Wordsworth’s copy, with his signature on the title-page of each volume; and I observed for the first time that the book was dedicated to him. Loosely inserted in several of the volumes were newspaper clippings, a number of pages of manuscript in John Payne Collier’s handwriting, a part of a letter from Mary Lamb addressed to Jane Collier, his mother, and in several of the volumes were notes in Collier’s handwriting referring to matters in the text: as where, against a reference to Lamb’s “Essay on Roast Pig,” Collier says, in pencil, “My mother sent the pig to Lamb.” Again, where Talfourd, referring to an evening with Lamb, says, “We mounted to the top story and were soon seated beside a cheerful fire: hot water and its better adjuncts were soon before us,” Collier writes, “Both Lamb and Talfourd died of the ‘Better Adjuncts.’”
There was a large number of such pencil notes. The pages of manuscript in Collier’s heavy and, as he calls it, “infirm” hand begin:—
In relation to C. Lamb and Southey, Mr. Cosens possesses as interesting a MS. as I know. It is bound as a small quarto, but the writing of Lamb, and chiefly by Southey is post 8vo. They seem to have been contributions to an “Annual Anthology” published by Cottle of Bristol.
The MS. begins with an “Advertisement” in the handwriting of Southey, and it is followed immediately by a poem in Lamb’s handwriting headed “Elegy on a Quid of Tobacco,” in ten stanzas rhiming alternately thus:—
It lay before me on the close grazed grass
Beside my path, an old tobacco quid:
And shall I by the mute adviser pass
Without one serious thought? now Heaven forbid![5]
The next day, Collier copied more of the poem, for on another sheet he remarks, “As my hand is steadier to-day I have copied the remaining stanzas.”
On still another sheet, referring to the Cosens MS., Collier writes:—