The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume IV Part 74

Lamb admired Cowper greatly in those days--particularly his "Crazy Kate"

("Task," Book I., 534-556). "I have been reading 'The Task' with fresh delight," he says on December 5, 1796. "I am glad you love Cowper. I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that man my friend, who should be offended with the 'divine chit-chat of Cowper.'" And again a little later, "I do so love him."

Page 17. _Lines addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol, in the Summer of 1796._

_The Monthly Magazine,_ January, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb.

Lamb sent the lines in their original state to Coleridge in the letter of July 5, 1796, immediately before the words "_Let us prose,_" at the head of that doc.u.ment as it is now preserved.

"Another minstrel" was Coleridge. Chatterton was the mysterious youth of line 16. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was baptised at St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol; he was the nephew of the s.e.xton; he brooded for many hours a day in the church; he copied his antique writing from the parchment in its muniment room; one of his later dreams was to be able to build a new spire; and a cenotaph to his memory was erected by public subscription in 1840 near the north-east angle of the churchyard.

Chatterton went to London on April 24, 1770, aged seventeen and a half, and died there by his own hand on August 25 of the same year.

The poem originated in an invitation to Lamb from the Coleridges at Bristol, which he hoped to be able to accept; but to his request for the necessary holiday from the India House came refusal. Lamb went to Nether Stowey, however, in the following summer and met Wordsworth there.

Lamb at one time wished these lines to be included among his poems in the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797. Writing on January 18, 1797, Lamb says: "I shall be sorry if that volume comes out, as it necessarily must do, unless you print those very school boyish verses I sent you on not getting leave to come down to Bristol last summer." At the end of the letter he adds: "Yet I should feel ashamed that to you I wrote nothing better. But they are too personal, almost trifling and obscure withal."

Page 18. _Sonnet to a Friend._

The _Monthly Magazine,_ October, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb.

Lamb sent this sonnet to Coleridge on January 2, 1797, remarking: "If the fraternal sentiment conveyed in the following lines will atone for the total want of any thing like merit or genius in it, I desire you will print it next after my other Sonnet to my Sister." The other sonnet was, "If from my lips some peevish accents fall," printed with Coleridge's _Poems_ in 1797 (see page 9), concerning which book Lamb was writing in the above letter. Coleridge apparently decided against the present sonnet, for it was not printed in that book.

Writing to Coleridge again a week later concerning the present poem, Lamb said:--

"I am aware of the unpoetical caste of the 6 last lines of my last sonnet, and think myself unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into the book; only the sentiments of those 6 lines are thoroughly congenial to me in my state of mind, and I wish to acc.u.mulate perpetuating tokens of my affection to poor Mary."

It has to be borne in mind that only three months had elapsed since the death of Mrs. Lamb, and Mary was still in confinement.

Page 18. _To a Young Lady_. Signed C.L.

_Monthly Magazine_, March, 1797, afterwards copied into the _Poetical Register_ for 1803, signed C.L. in both cases. We know these to be Lamb's from a letter to Coleridge of December 5, 1796. The ident.i.ty of the young lady is not now known.

Page 19. _Living without G.o.d in the World._

The _Annual Anthology,_ Vol. I., 1799.

Vol. I. of the _Annual Anthology_, edited by Southey for Joseph Cottle, was issued in September, 1799; and that was, I believe, this poem's first appearance as a whole. Early in 1799, however, Charles Lloyd had issued a pamphlet ent.i.tled _Lines suggested by the Fast appointed on Wednesday, February 27, 1799_ (Birmingham, 1799), in which, in a note, he quotes a pa.s.sage from Lamb's poem, beginning, "some braver spirits"

(line 23), and ending, "prey on carca.s.ses" (line 36), with the prefatory remark: "I am happy in the opportunity afforded me of introducing the following striking extract from some lines, intended as a satire on the G.o.dwinian jargon."

Writing to Southey concerning this poem, Lamb says:-"I can have no objection to you printing 'Mystery of G.o.d' [afterwards called 'Living without G.o.d in the World'] with my name, and all due acknowledgments for the honour and favour of the communication: indeed, 'tis a poem that can dishonour no name. Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto vanitas."

Page 21. _BLANK VERSE_, BY CHARLES LLOYD AND CHARLES LAMB, 1798.

Charles Lloyd left Coleridge early in 1797, and was in the winter 1797-1798 living in London, sharing lodgings with James White (Lamb's friend and the author of _Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff_, 1796). It was then that the joint production of this volume was entered upon. Of the seven poems contributed by Lamb only "The Old Familiar Faces" (shorn of one stanza) and the lines "Composed at Midnight" were reprinted by him: on account, it may be a.s.sumed, of his wish not to revive in his sister, who would naturally read all that he published, any painful recollections. Not that she refused in after years to speak of her mother, but Lamb was, I think, sensitive for her and for himself and the family too. As a matter of fact the circ.u.mstances of Mrs. Lamb's death were known only to a very few of the Lambs' friends until after Charles' death. It must be remembered that when _Blank Verse_ was originally published, in 1798, Mary Lamb was still living apart, nor was it known that she, would ever be herself again.

It was this little volume which gave Gillray an opportunity for introducing Lamb and Lloyd into his cartoon "The New Morality,"

published in the first number of _The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine_ (which succeeded Canning's _Anti-Jacobin_), August 1, 1798. Canning's lines, "The New Morality," had been published in _The Anti-Jacobin_ on July 9, 1798, containing the couplets:--

And ye five other wandering Bards that move In sweet accord of harmony and love, C----dge and S--th--y, L----d, and L----be and Co., Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux!

In the picture Gillray introduced "Coleridge" as a donkey offering a volume of "Dactylics," and Southey as another donkey, flourishing a volume of "Saphics." Behind them, seated side by side, poring over a ma.n.u.script ent.i.tled "Blank Verse, by Toad and Frog," are a toad and frog which the Key states to be Lloyd and Lamb. It was in reference to this picture that G.o.dwin, on first meeting Lamb, asked him, "Pray, Mr. Lamb, are you toad or frog?"

Page 21. _To Charles Lloyd._

_The Monthly Magazine_, October, 1797. Signed.

Lamb sent these lines to Coleridge in September, 1797, remarking: "The following I wrote when I had returned from Charles Lloyd, leaving him behind at Burton, with Southey. To understand some of it you must remember that at that time he was very much perplexed in mind." Lloyd throughout his life was given to religious speculations which now and then disturbed his mind to an alarming extent, affecting him not unlike the gloomy forebodings and fears that beset Cowper. On this particular occasion he was in difficulty also as to his engagement with Sophia Pemberton, with whom he was meditating elopement and a Scotch marriage.

Page 21. _Written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral._

"This afternoon," Lamb wrote to Coleridge on February 13, 1797, "I attend the funeral of my poor old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own I am thankful that the good creature has ended all her days of suffering and infirmity. She was to me the 'cherisher of infancy.' ..." Lamb's Aunt Hetty was his father's sister. Her real name was Sarah Lamb. All that we know of her is found in this poem, in the _Letters_, in the pa.s.sages in "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," and "My Relations;" in the story of "The Witch Aunt," in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, and in a reference in one of Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart, where, writing of her aunt and her mother,--"the best creatures in the world,"--she speaks of Miss Lamb as being "as unlike a gentlewoman as you can possibly imagine a good old woman to be;" contrasting her with Mrs. Lamb, "a perfect gentlewoman." The description in "The Witch Aunt"

bears out Mary Lamb's letter.

After the tragedy of September, 1796, Aunt Hetty was taken into the house of a rich relative. This lady, however, seems to have been of too selfish and jealous a disposition (see Lamb's letter to Coleridge, December 9, 1796) to exert any real effort to make her guest comfortable or happy. Hence Aunt Hetty returned to her nephew.

"My poor old aunt [Lamb wrote to Coleridge on January 5, 1797], whom you have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at school; who used to toddle there to bring me f.a.g [food], when I, school-boy like, only despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you went into the old grammar-school, opend her ap.r.o.n, and bring out her bason with some nice thing she had caused to be saved for me--the good old creature is now lying on her death bed.... She says, poor thing, she is glad to come home to die with me. I was always her favourite."

Line 24. _One parent yet is left_. John Lamb, who is described as he was in his prime, as Lovel, in the _Elia_ essay on _"The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,"_ died in 1799.

Line 27. _A semblance most forlorn of what he was_. Lamb uses this line as a quotation, slightly altered, in his account of Lovel.

Page 22. _Written a Year after the Events_.

Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge in September, 1797, ent.i.tling it "Written a Twelvemonth after the Events," and adding, "Friday next, Coleridge, is the day on which my Mother died." Mrs. Lamb's death, at the hands of her daughter in a moment of frenzy, occurred on September 22, 1796. Lamb added that he wrote the poem at the office with "unusual celerity." "I expect you to like it better than anything of mine; Lloyd does, and I do myself." The version sent to Coleridge differs only in minor and unimportant points from that in _Blank Verse_.

The second paragraph of the poem is very similar to a pa.s.sage which Lamb had written in a letter to Coleridge on November 14, 1796:--

"Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those 'merrier days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a _mother's_ fondness for her _school-boy_. What would I give to call her back to earth for _one_ day!--on my knees to ask her pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to time, have given her gentle spirit pain!--and the day, my friend, I trust, will come. There will be 'time enough' for kind offices of love, if 'Heaven's eternal year' be ours. Here-after, her meek spirit shall not reproach me."