Southey has a poem, "The Ruined Cottage," among his English Eclogues, which is practically a poetical paraphase of Rosamund Gray. I do not know whether Southey's version was taken from an independent source or whether it was a compliment to Lamb. Lamb's tale had, however, come first.
Finally, it may be remarked that in Barry Cornwall's Poems, Galignani, 1829, is a poem entitled "Rosamund Gray," which from the evidence of its few opening lines was to have been a blank verse adaptation of Lamb's theme.
[Page 35.] Curious Fragments.
John Woodvil, 1802, and Works, 1818.
Lamb engaged upon these experiments in the manner of Burton, always a favourite author with him, at the suggestion of Coleridge. We find him writing to Manning (March 17, 1800): "He [Coleridge] has lugged me to the brink of engaging to a newspaper, and has suggested to me, for a first plan, the forgery of a supposed manuscript of Burton, the anatomist of melancholy." Writing again to Manning a little later, probably in April, 1800, Lamb mentions having submitted two imitations of Burton to Stuart, the editor of the Morning Post, and states also that he has written the lines entitled "Conceipt of Diabolic Possession"—originally, in the John Woodvil volume, a part of these "Fragments," but afterwards, in the Works, separated from them. In August, 1800, Lamb tells Coleridge he has written the ballad in the manner of the "Old and Young Courtier," also originally part of these "Fragments," and mentions further that Stuart had rejected the proposed contribution.
Of Lamb's imitations the first two are most akin to the original in spirit, but the whole performance is curiously happy and a perfect illustration of his fellowship with the Elizabethans. Our language probably contains no more successful impersonation of any author: for the time being Lamb's mind approximated to that of Burton, while reserving enough individuality to make a new thing as well as a very subtle and exact echo. The Burton extracts and the Letters of Sir John Falstaff, written four or five years earlier (in which Lamb certainly had a hand: see [pp. 225] and [491]), represent in prose the same devotion to the Elizabethans that John Woodvil represents in verse. With 1800, when Lamb was twenty-five, this immediately derivative impulse ceased; but it is certain that without such interesting exercises in the manner of his favourite period his ripest work would have been far less rich.
The differences in text between the 1802 and 1818 editions are very slight. They are merely changes of punctuation and spelling—some twenty-four in all—with the exception that on page 39, line 18 "common sort" was originally "mobbe." Concerning this change Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, in The Athenæum, December 28, 1901, has an interesting note. Lamb, he says, made it "for the best of good reasons, because in the meantime he had recollected that to attribute the word mob to the pen of Robert Burton was to commit a linguistic anachronism. The earliest known examples of mob occur in Shadwell (1688) and Dryden (1690), whereas Burton died in January, 1640." I might add that "jokers" was another anachronism; since, according to the New English Dictionary, its first use is in the works of T. Cooke, 1729. "Inerudite" and "incomposite" seem to have been Lamb's coinage, but they are very Burtonian. The New English Dictionary gives Lamb's reference alone to the word "hebetant," meaning making dull.
Lamb's affection for Burton was profound. His own copy was a quarto of 1621, which is now, I believe, in America. The following passage from John Payne Collier's An Old Man's Diary (for 1832) is interesting in this connection:—
This led him [Lamb] to ask me, whether I remembered two or three passages in his book of books, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, illustrating Shakespeare's notions regarding Witches and Fairies. I replied that if I had seen them, I did not then recollect them. I took down the book, the contents of which he knew so well that he opened upon the place almost immediately: the first passage was this, respecting Macbeth and Banquo and their meeting with the three Witches: "And Hector Boethius [relates] of Macbeth and Banco, two Scottish Lords, that, as they were wandering in woods, had their fortunes told them by three strange women." I said that I remembered to have seen that passage quoted, or referred to by more than one editor of Shakespeare. "Have you seen this quoted," he inquired, "which relates to fairies? 'Some put our fairies into this rank, which have been in former times adored with much superstition, with sweeping their houses and setting of a pail of clean water, good victuals and the like; and then they should not be pinched, but find money in their shoes and be fortunate in their enterprises ... and, Olaus Magnus adds, leave that green circle which we commonly find in plain fields.' Farther on Burton gives them the very name assigned to one of them by Shakespeare, for he adds, 'These have several names in several places: we commonly call them Pucks' (part i., sect. 2), which Ben Jonson degrades to Pug."