C. LAMB.
Thomas Stothard, then in his seventy-ninth year, Lamb had met at Henry Rogers', who had died at Christmas, 1832. The following was the copy of verses printed in The Athenaeum, December 21, 1833 ("that most romantic tale" was Peter Wilkins):—
TO T. STOTHARD, ESQ.
On his Illustrations of the Poems of Mr. Rogers
Consummate Artist, whose undying name
With classic Rogers shall go down to fame,
Be this thy crowning work! In my young days
How often have I with a child's fond gaze
Pored on the pictured wonders thou hadst done:
Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison!
All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view;
I saw, and I believed the phantoms true.
But, above all, that most romantic tale
Did o'er my raw credulity prevail,
Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things,
That serve at once for jackets and for wings.
Age, that enfeebles other men's designs,
But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines.
In several ways distinct you make us feel—
Graceful as Raphael, as Watteau genteel.
Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise;
And warmly wish you Titian's length of days.
"Short of the theatres." The injury done by the theatres is of course the subject of Lamb's Reflector essay on Shakespeare's Tragedies (see Vol. I.).
"Boydell's 'Shakespeare Gallery'"—the series of 170 illustrations to Shakespeare by leading artists of the day projected by Alderman Boydell in 1786.
"Coleridge's… exemplification." Lamb quoted incorrectly. The lines had just appeared in Friendship's Offering for 1834:—
In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column;
In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.
Coleridge took the lines from Schiller.