The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume II Part 48

Page 242. SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.

_London Magazine_, September, 1823, where it was ent.i.tled "Nugae Criticae. By the Author of Elia. No. 1. Defence of the Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney." Signed "L." The second and last of the "Nugae Criticae"

series was the note on "The Tempest" (see Vol. I.).

It may be interesting here to relate that Henry Francis Gary, the translator of Dante, and Lamb's friend, had, says his son in his memoir, lent Lamb Edward Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum_, which was returned after Lamb's death by Edward Moxon, with the leaf folded down at the account of Sir Philip Sidney. Mr. Gary thereupon wrote his "Lines to the memory of Charles Lamb," which begin:--

So should it be, my gentle friend; Thy leaf last closed at Sidney's end.

Thou, too, like Sidney, wouldst have given The water, thirsting and near heaven.

Lamb has some interesting references to Sidney in the note to Beaumont and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy" in the _Dramatic Specimens_.

Page 243, line 5. _Tibullus, or the ... Author of the Schoolmistress_.

In the _London Magazine_ Lamb wrote "Catullus." Tibullus was one of the tenderest of Latin poets. William Shenstone (1714-1763) wrote "The Schoolmistress," a favourite poem with Lamb. The "prettiest of poems"

he called it in a letter to John Clare.

Page 243, line 9. _Ad Leonoram_. The following translation of Milton's sonnet was made by Leigh Hunt:--

TO LEONORA SINGING AT ROME

To every one (so have ye faith) is given A winged guardian from the ranks of heaven.

A greater, Leonora, visits thee: Thy voice proclaims the present deity.

Either the present deity we hear, Or he of the third heaven hath left his sphere, And through the bosom's pure and warbling wells, Breathes tenderly his smoothed oracles; Breathes tenderly, and so with easy rounds Teaches our mortal hearts to bear immortal sounds.

If G.o.d is all, and in all nature dwells, In thee alone he speaks, mute ruler in all else.

The Latin in Ma.s.son's edition of Milton differs here and there from Lamb's version.

Page 243. _Sonnet I_. Lamb cites the sonnets from _Astrophel and Stella_, in his own order. That which he calls I. is x.x.xI.; II., x.x.xIX.; III., XXIII.; IV., XXVII.; V., XLI.; VI., LIII.; VII., LXIV.; VIII., LXXIII.; IX., LXXIV.; X., LXXV.; XI., CIII.; XII., Lx.x.xIV.

I have left the sonnets as Lamb copied them, but there are certain differences noted in my large edition.

Page 247, middle. _Which I have ... heard objected_. A criticism of Hazlitt's, in his sixth lecture on Elizabethan literature, delivered in 1820 at the Surrey Inst.i.tution, is here criticised. Hazlitt's remarks on Sidney were uniformly slighting. "His sonnets inlaid in the Arcadia are jejune, far-fetch'd and frigid.... [The _Arcadia_] is to me one of the greatest monuments of the abuse of intellectual power upon record.... [Sidney is] a complete intellectual c.o.xcomb, or nearly so;" and so forth. The lectures were published in 1821. Elsewhere, however, Hazlitt found in Sidney much to praise.

Page 248, line 3. _Thin diet of dainty words_. To this sentence, in the _London Magazine_, Lamb put the following footnote:--

"A profusion of verbal dainties, with a disproportionate lack of matter and circ.u.mstance, is I think one reason of the coldness with which the public has received the poetry of a n.o.bleman now living; which, upon the score of exquisite diction alone, is ent.i.tled to something better than neglect. I will venture to copy one of his Sonnets in this place, which for quiet sweetness, and unaffected morality, has scarcely its parallel in our language.

"TO A BIRD THAT HAUNTED THE WATERS OF LACKEN IN THE WINTER

"_By Lord Thurlow_

"O melancholy Bird, a winter's day, Thou standest by the margin of the pool, And, taught by G.o.d, dost thy whole being school To Patience, which all evil can allay.

G.o.d has appointed thee the Fish thy prey; And given thyself a lesson to the Fool Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule, And his unthinking course by thee to weigh.

There need not schools, nor the Professor's chair, Though these be good, true wisdom to impart.

He who has not enough, for these, to spare Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart, And teach his soul, by brooks, and rivers fair: Nature is always wise in every part."

This sonnet, by Edward Hovell-Thurlow, second Baron Thurlow (1781-1829), an intense devotee of Sir Philip Sidney's muse, was a special favourite with Lamb. He copied it into his Commonplace Book, and De Quincey has described, in his "London Reminiscences," how Lamb used to read it aloud.

Page 248, line 27. _Epitaph made on him_. After these words, in the _London Magazine_, came "by Lord Brooke." Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, wrote Sidney's _Life_, published in 1652. After Sidney's death appeared many elegies upon him, eight of which were printed at the end of Spenser's _Colin Clout's Come Home Again_, in 1595. That which Lamb quotes is by Matthew Roydon, Stanzas 15 to 18 and 26 and 27. The poem beginning "Silence augmenteth grief" is attributed to Brooke, chiefly on Lamb's authority, in Ward's _English Poets_. This is one stanza:--

He was (woe worth that word!) to each well-thinking mind A spotless friend, a matchless man, whose virtue ever shined, Declaring in his thoughts, his life and that he writ, Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit.

Sidney was only thirty-two at his death.

Page 249. NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.

_Englishman's Magazine_, October, 1831, being the second paper under the heading "Peter's Net," of which "Recollections of a Late Royal Academician" was the first (see note, Vol. I.).

The t.i.tle ran thus:--

PETER'S NET

BY THE AUTHOR OF "ELIA"

_No. II.--On the Total Defect of the faculty of Imagination observable in the works of modern British Artists._

For explanation of this t.i.tle see note to the essay that follows. When reprinting the essay in the _Last Essays of Elia_, 1833, Lamb altered the t.i.tle to the one it now bears: the period referred to thus seeming to be about 1798, but really 1801-1803.

Page 249, first line of essay. _Dan Stuart_. See below.

Page 249, line 2 of essay. _The Exhibition at Somerset House._ Between the years 1780 and 1838 the Royal Academy held its exhibitions at Somerset House. It then moved, first to Trafalgar Square, in a portion of the National Gallery, and then to Burlington House, its present quarters, in 1869. The _Morning Post_ office is still almost opposite Somerset House, at the corner of Wellington Street.

Page 250, line 5. _A word or two of D.S._ Daniel Stuart (1766-1846), one of the Perthshire Stuarts, whose father was out in the '45, and his grandfather in the '15, began, with his brother, to print the _Morning Post_ in 1788. In 1795 they bought it for 600, Daniel a.s.sumed the editorship, and in two years' time the circulation had risen from 350 to 1,000. Mackintosh (afterwards Sir James), Stuart's brother-in-law, was on the staff; and in 1797 Coleridge began to contribute. Coleridge's "Devil's Walk" was the most popular thing printed in Stuart's time; his political articles also helped enormously to give the paper prestige. Stuart sold the _Morning Post_ in 1803 for 25,000, and then turned his attention to the development of _The Courier_, an evening paper, in which he also had occasional a.s.sistance from Coleridge and more regular help from Mackintosh.

Lamb's memory served him badly in the essay. So far as I can discover, his connection with the _Morning Post_, instead of ending when Stuart sold the paper, can hardly be said to have existed until after that event. The paper changed hands in September, 1803 (two years after the failure of The _Albion_), and Lamb's hand almost immediately begins to be apparent. He had, we know, made earlier efforts to get a footing there, but had been only moderately successful. The first specimens prepared for Stuart, in 1800, were not accepted. In the late summer of 1801 he was writing for the _Morning Chronicle_--a few comic letters, as I imagine--under James Perry; but that lasted only a short time. At the end of 1801 Lamb tried the _Post_ again. In January and February, 1802, Stuart printed some epigrams by him on public characters, two criticisms of G.F. Cooke, in Richard III. and Lear, and the essay "The Londoner" (see Vol. I.). Probably there were also some paragraphs. In a letter to Rickman in January, 1802, Lamb says that he is leaving the _Post_, partly on account of his difficulty in writing dramatic criticisms on the same night as the performance.

We know nothing of Lamb's journalistic adventures between February, 1802, and October, 1803, when the fashion of pink stockings came in, and when he was certainly back on the _Post_ (Stuart having sold it to establish _The Courier_), and had become more of a journalist than he had ever been. I quote a number of the paragraphs which I take to be his on this rich topic; but the specimen given in the essay is not discoverable:--

"_Oct_. 8.--The fugitive and mercurial matter, of which a _Lady's blush_ is made, after coursing from its natural position, the _cheek_, to the _tip_ of the _elbow_, and thence diverging for a time to the _knee_, has finally settled in the _legs_, where, in the form of a pair of _red hose_, it combines with the posture and situation of _the times_, to put on a most _warlike_ and _martial appearance_."

"_Nov_. 2.--Bartram, who, as a _traveller_, was possessed of a very _lively fancy_, describes vast plains in the interior of America, where his _horse's fetlocks_ for miles were dyed a perfect _blood colour_, in the juice of the _wild strawberries_.

A less ardent fancy than BARTRAM'S may apply this beautiful phenomenon of summer, to solve the present _strawberry appearance_ of the _female leg_ this autumn in England."

"_Nov_. 3.--The _roseate tint_, so agreeably diffused through the silk stockings of our females, induces the belief that the _dye is cast_ for their lovers."

"_Nov_. 8.--A popular superst.i.tion in the North of Germany is said to be the true original of the well-known sign of Mother REDCAP.

Who knows but that _late posterity_, when, what is regarded by us now as _fashion_, shall have long been cla.s.sed among the superst.i.tious observances of an age gone by, may dignify their signs with the antiquated personification of a Mother RED LEGS?"

"_Nov_. 9.--Curiosity is on tip-toe for the arrival of ELPHY BEY'S fair _Circa.s.sian_ Ladies. The attraction of their _naturally-placed, fine, proverbial bloom_, is only wanting to reduce the wandering colour in the 'elbows' and 'ancles' of our _belles_, back to its native _metropolis_ and _palace_, the 'cheek.'"

"_Nov_. 22.--_Pink stockings_ beneath _dark pelices_ are emblems of _Sincerity_ and _Discretion_; signifying a _warm heart_ beneath a _cool exterior_."

"_Nov_. 29.--The decline of red stockings is as fatal to the wits, as the going out of a fashion to an overstocked jeweller: some of these gentry have literally for some months past _fed_ on _roses_."

"_Dec_. 21.--The fashion of red stockings, so much cried down, dispraised, and followed, is on the eve of departing, to be consigned to the family tomb of 'all the fashions,' where sleep in peace the _ruffs_ and _hoops_, and _fardingales_ of past centuries; and