I have set up the Tales from the second edition, 1809, because it embodies certain corrections and was probably the last edition in which the Lambs took any interest. The changes of word are few. I note the more important; Page 5, line 1, "recollection" was "remembrance" in the first edition; page 10, line 27, "voracious" was "ugly" in the first edition; page 15, line 21, "vessel" was "churn"; page 42, line 30, "continued" was in the first edition "remained"; page 108, foot, "But she being a woman" had run in the first edition, "But she being a bad ambitious woman." I leave other minute differences to the Bibliographer.
The second edition was issued in two forms: one similar to the first edition and one with only frontispiece, a portrait of Shakespear, and the following foreword from the pen, I imagine, of Mr. Godwin:—
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION
The Proprietors of this work willingly pay obedience to the voice of the public. It has been the general sentiment, that the style in which these Tales are written, is not so precisely adapted for the amusement of mere children, as for an acceptable and improving present to young ladies advancing to the state of womanhood. They therefore now offer to the public an edition prepared with suitable elegance. In the former impression they gave twenty prints, illustrative of the twenty tales which compose these volumes, for they knew that it was a grievous thing and a disappointment to a child, to find some tales without the recommendation of a print, which the others possessed. The prints were therefore made from spirited designs, but did not pretend to high finishing in the execution. To this edition they have annexed merely a beautiful head of our immortal Dramatist, from a much admired painting by Zoust.—They are satisfied that every reader of taste will thank them for not suppressing the former Preface, though not exactly applicable on the present occasion.
N.B.—A few copies have been worked off on the plan of the former impression, for the use of those who rather coincide in the original conception of the writer, than in the opinion above stated.
Lamb, we may be sure, had no hand in this manifesto, but whatever protest he may have made was unsuccessful. It reappears in the third edition, while the preface there has the general alteration of the first person singular to the first person plural: "our young readers" for "my young readers," and so forth. But this was probably Godwinian work.
The Godwins also issued some or all of the Tales separately at sixpence each (the two ordinary volumes cost eight shillings) with three plates to each, of a different design from those in the two-volume edition. These little books are exceedingly rare, but copies have been discovered both plain and coloured. The plates are attributed to Blake.
The Lambs' Tales from Shakespear were not, Mr. Bertram Dobell has pointed out, the first experiment of the kind. In 1783 was published in Paris Contes Moraux, Amusans et Instructifs, à l'usage de la Jeunesse tirés des Tragédies de Shakespear. Par M. Perrin. The Lambs did not, however, borrow anything from M. Perrin, even if they were aware of his work. The Tales are peculiarly their own.
The Tales from Shakespear are, and probably will continue to be, the most widely distributed of all the Lambs' work. In England it may be that Elia has had as many readers; but abroad the Tales from Shakespear easily lead. In the British Museum catalogue I find translations in French, German, Swedish, Spanish, and Polish. (No complete translation of Elia into any language is known, not even in French, although a selection of the essays will be found at the end of Depret's monograph, De L'Humeur Littéraire en Angleterre, 1877.) In England almost every Christmas brings a new edition of the Tales and often an imitation.
Although Mary Lamb was the true author of the book, as of Mrs. Leicester's School and of Poetry for Children, her share being much greater than her brother's in all of these, she was not until many years later associated publicly with any of them. The Tales were attributed to Charles Lamb, presumably against his wish, as we see from a sentence in the letter to Wordsworth quoted above, and the other two books had no name attached to them at all. Why Mary Lamb preserved such strict anonymity we do not now know; but it was probably from a natural shrinking from any kind of publicity after the unhappy publicity which she had once gained by her misfortune.