The following editorial note was prefixed to the first instalment:—"This Series of Papers was intended for a new periodical, which has been suddenly discontinued. The distinguished writer having kindly offered them to the ATHENÆUM, we think it advisable to perfect the Series by this reprint; and, from the limited sale of the work in which it originally appeared, it is not likely to have been read by one in a thousand of our subscribers."
The explanation of this passage has been made simple by the researches of the late Mr. Dykes Campbell. Lamb intended the essay originally for the Englishman's Magazine, November number, to follow the excursus on newspapers. But that magazine came to an end with the October number. In the letter from Lamb to Moxon dated October 24, 1831, Lamb says, referring to Moxon's announcement that the periodical would cease:—"Will it please, or plague, you, to say that when your Parcel came I damned it, for my pen was warming in my hand at a ludicrous description of a Landscape of an R.A., which I calculated upon sending you to morrow, the last day you gave me."
That was the present essay. Subsequently—at the end of 1832—Moxon started a weekly paper entitled The Reflector, edited by John Forster, in which the printing of Lamb's essay was begun. It lasted only a short time, and on its cessation Lamb sent the ill-fated manuscript to The Athenæum, where it at last saw publication completed. Of The Reflector all trace seems to have vanished, and with it possibly other writings of Lamb's.
In The Athenæum of December 22, 1832, the current Reflector (No. 2) is advertised as containing "An Essay on Painters and Painting by Elia."
Page 256, line 1 of essay. Hogarth. Compare Lamb's criticism of
Hogarth, Vol. I.
Page 256, foot. Titian's "Ariadne." This picture is now No. 35 in the National Gallery. Writing to Wordsworth in May, 1833, it is amusing to note, Lamb says: "Inter nos the Ariadne is not a darling with me, several incongruous things are in it, but in the composition it served me as illustrative." The legend of Ariadne tells that after being abandoned by Theseus, whom she loved with intense passion, she was wooed by Bacchus.
Page 258, line 2. Somerset House. See note above to the essay on
"Newspapers."
Page 258, line 14. Neoteric … Mr. ——. Probably J.M.W. Turner and his "Garden of the Hesperides," now in the National Gallery. It is true it was painted in 1806, but Lamb does not describe it as a picture of the year and Turner was certainly the most notable neoteric, or innovator, of that time.
Page 259, line 1. Of a modern artist. In The Athenæum this had been printed "of M——," meaning John Martin (1789-1854). His "Belshazzar's Feast," which Lamb analyses below, was painted in 1821, and made him famous. It was awarded a £200 premium, and was copied on glass and exhibited with great success as an illuminated transparency in the Strand. Lord Lytton said of Martin that "he was more original, more self-dependent, than Raphael or Michael Angelo." Lamb had previously expressed his opinion of Martin, in a letter to Bernard Barton, dated June 11, 1827, in a passage which contains the germ of this essay:—"Martin's Belshazzar (the picture) I have seen. Its architectural effect is stupendous; but the human figures, the squalling, contorted little antics that are playing at being frightened, like children at a sham ghost who half know it to be a mask, are detestable. Then the letters are nothing more than a transparency lighted up, such as a Lord might order to be lit up on a sudden at a Christmas Gambol, to scare the ladies. The type is as plain as Baskervil—they should have been dim, full of mystery, letters to the mind rather than the eye."
Page 259, line 13. The late King. George IV., who built, when Prince of Wales, the Brighton Pavilion. As I cannot find this incident in any memoirs of the Regency, I assume Lamb to have invented it, after his wont, when in need of a good parallel. "Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name" stands of course for Mrs. Fitzherbert.