In his blank verse—and couplets—of the same period, the time when he was yet in the early twenties of his age, Lamb shows himself an apt disciple of Cowper (to whom, by the way, he addressed a brief poem in this form "On His Recovery from an Indisposition"). These, however, were but the steps of a born writer learning his craft by more or less conscious imitation, and Lamb was not long in finding his feet and indicating his peculiar individuality. He had learned much from the free expressions of the old dramatic poets, and in such pieces as "The Old Familiar Faces"—a poignant cry from a suffering soul—or in his unconventional sonnet, "The Gipsy's Malison," written more than thirty years later, we have some of the most markedly individual of his poems. He was not a poet, he declared—running counter to the judgement of some of his later critics—but essentially a prosaic writer. All that he wrote in verse, apart from the plays, would come within the compass of a small volume, and perhaps half of that would be occupied with album verses, slight vers d'occasion, such as are more often the products of prose-writers' leisure than of a poet who sings because he must. He felt his way to prose through poetry as so many lesser writers have done, and on the way uttered perhaps a dozen pieces, which for one reason or another will ever make a lasting appeal to readers. The sense of tragedy in "The Old Familiar Faces"—more remarkable in that it was tragedy realized and expressed at the age of three-and-twenty—the weird imagination of "The Gipsy's Malison," the sweet portraiture of "Hester," the fancy of "A Farewell to Tobacco," and the "Ode to the Treadmill," will ensure that portion of his work to which they belong, sharing the immortality of the essays of Elia.
THE DRAMA
As an earnest student of dramatic literature Lamb early turned his attention to the theatre, and was moved with an ambition to write for the stage. In his twenty-fourth year he started upon a piece to be entitled "Pride's Cure," and his letters about this time contain many references to its progress and give various extracts from it—extracts which by themselves might suggest that the play would be a notable one, but the event turned out otherwise. At the end of 1799 the piece was submitted under the title of "John Woodvil" to Kemble, and a year later it was rejected. "John Woodvil" is poor indeed as a play; it has some capital scenes, it has some beautiful passages, but of dramatic story or characterization there is nothing. The play is concerned with the fortunes of the Woodvils, a Devonshire family, at the time of the Restoration. Sir Walter Woodvil is a Cromwellian, living in hiding with his younger son, Simon, while John holds high revel with boon companions. Sir Walter's ward, Margaret, who is beloved by John, finds that young man's affection cooling, and thus leaves him and goes (disguised as a boy) to join her guardian in Sherwood Forest. Then John, in a moment of intoxication, blabs to one of his companions of his proscribed father's whereabouts, and follows it up by quarrelling with that companion, who forthwith sets off with another to arrest Sir Walter. The old man believes that his son has betrayed him and promptly dies of a broken heart. The play ends with the reconciliation of John and Margaret. A ridiculously slight story for a five-act play. Much in the writing of it shows the author's loving study of seventeenth-century models, as may be seen from this speech of Simon's on being asked what are the sports he and his father use in the forest:
Not many; some few, as thus:—
To see the sun to bed, and to arise,
Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes,
Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him,
With all his fires and travelling glories round him.
Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest,
Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast,
And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep
Admiring silence, while those lovers sleep.
Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness,
Nought doing, saying little, thinking less,
To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air,
Go eddying round; and small birds, how they fare,
When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn,
Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn;
And how the woods berries and worms provide
Without their pains, when earth has nought beside
To answer their small wants.
To view the graceful deer come tripping by,
Then stop, and gaze, then turn, they know not why,
Like bashful younkers in society.
To mark the structure of a plant or tree,
And all fair things of earth, how fair they be.
Lamb's next attempt on the theatre was the prose farce of "Mr. H——," in which a wholly inadequate motif was made to supply material for two acts. The piece was played once (Drury Lane, 10th December, 1806) and damned. The eponymous hero, who chooses to be known merely by his initial, creates quite a sensation at Bath, as he is believed to be a nobleman travelling incognito. Hitherto always rejected by the ladies on account of his unfortunate patronym, he has wooed successfully under an initial, when he nearly spoils all by betraying that his name is—Hogsflesh! He is forthwith shunned, but his ladylove remains faithful to him on his making the very natural change of Hogsflesh into Bacon. In his method and atmosphere, Lamb had passed from the seventeenth to the late eighteenth century; he got a hearing, but he did not get—and it must be admitted that he did not deserve—success. The farce is interesting as containing in an inquisitive landlord, Jeremiah Pry, the original, it may be assumed, of a whole family of Paul Prys, of which to-day John Poole's is the best remembered.
Two other dramatic pieces were written by Lamb in his later years: "The Wife's Trial, or, The Intruding Widow" (founded upon Crabbe's "The Confidant"), in blank verse, and a second farce, "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," in prose. In these two pieces he had made distinct advances, yet neither was perhaps suited for stage representation. In "The Wife's Trial" we have a couple—Mr. and Mrs. Selby—five years married, on whose hospitality a widow forces herself owing to some mysterious hold which she has over the wife. Mrs. Selby had been secretly married as a schoolgirl, though her husband left her at the church door and had died abroad. The widow striving to use this knowledge for purposes not far removed from blackmail, is neatly hoist with her own petard, and the slight play ends with the cordial reconciliation of the Selbys. In "The Pawnbroker's Daughter" once more the story is of the slightest, though the farce seems more fitted for the stage than "Mr. H——." Marion, the daughter of a pawnbroker, is, against her father's wishes, wooed by a gentleman, and, thanks to the trick of a maid, goes off with her lover while carrying some valuable jewels with which her father has entrusted her. There are two other lovers, Pendulous—who has been unjustly hanged and only reprieved just in time to save his life—and Marian Flyn, and out of their by-play comes the reconciliation of all. The feelings of the half-hanged man had earlier been dealt with by Lamb in a letter "On the Inconveniences Resulting from being Hanged," which he contributed (as "Pensilis") to "The Reflector" in 1811.
STORIES
After essaying poetry and the drama (for both of which he maintained a lifelong liking, writing in each form during his latest years), the next kind of literary expression on which Lamb ventured was that of stories and verses for children. In "Rosamund Gray," which is scarcely a tale for children but rather a classic novelette, he gives the story of a young orphan girl living at Widford in Hertfordshire with her blind grandmother. The girl is beloved by young Allan Clare, and one evening, wandering in sheer joy over the scenes of past delightful rambles, she is assailed by a villain. Her blind grandmother finding her gone from the cottage dies of a broken heart, and poor Rosamund, disgraced and terrified, seeks the home of Allan and his sister and there dies. It is a terrible story told with a beautiful simplicity. Of how far it may have been founded on fact we do not know, but in Rosamund, Lamb seems to have depicted something of a likeness of the "fair-haired maid" with whom he had been in love, and in Elinor Clare there can be no doubt that he portrayed much of the character of his own loved sister.
The first of Lamb's known publications professedly for children was "The King and Queen of Hearts: showing how notably the Queen made her Tarts, and how scurvily the Knave stole them away: with other particulars pertaining thereto," and this was only recovered about ten years since after having been forgotten for the best part of a century. The booklet, which was issued anonymously, consists of a number of rough pictures, each accompanied by half a dozen lines of Hudibrastic verse; the inspiration being of course the old nursery rhyme about the tarts made by the Queen of Hearts and their subsequent fate.
The "Tales from Shakspeare," which followed, were written by both Charles Lamb and his sister: indeed the work seems at first to have been intended for Mary's hand alone, but her brother undertook the telling of the stories of the tragedies, and to use his own words, out of the twenty tales he was "responsible for Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, for occasionally a tail-piece or correction of grammar, for none of the cuts, and for all of the spelling." When the work was originally produced it had illustrations to which Lamb objected. His reference to tail-pieces is possibly an indication that he sometimes rounded off the stories for his sister, just as he certainly completed the preface for her. Though the dual authorship of the volume is referred to in the preface the publisher put Charles Lamb's name as author of the whole on the title-page of the book. The "Tales" are of course designed for young readers—they are told, as it has been recognized, with a kind of Wordsworthian simplicity—as an introduction to "the rich treasures from which the small and valueless coins are extracted." How admirably they have served their purpose for generations of readers is to be seen in the long succession of editions in which the work has been issued.