The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume IV Part 76

Page 30. _A Ballad Noting the Difference of Rich and Poor_.

These two poems formed, in the _John Woodvil_ volume, 1802, portions of the "Fragments of Burton," which will be found in Vol. I. Lamb afterwards took out these poems and printed them separately in the Works, 1818, in the form here given. Originally "Hypochondriacus" formed Extract III. of the "Fragments," under the t.i.tle "A Conceipt of Diabolical Possession." The body of the verses differed very slightly from the present state; but at the end the prayer ran: "_Jesu Mariae!

libera nos ab his tentationibus, oral, implorat, R.B. Peccator_"--R.B.

standing for Robert Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, the professed author of the poem.

"The Old and Young Courtier" may be found in the _Percy Reliques_. Lamb copied it into one of his Commonplace Books.

Page 32. THE _WORKS_ OF CHARLES LAMB, 1818.

This book, in two volumes, was published by C. & J. Ollier in 1818: the first volume containing the dedication to Coleridge that is here printed on page 1, all of Lamb's poetry that he then wished to preserve, "John Woodvil," "The Witch," the "Fragments of Burton," "Rosamund Gray" and "Recollections of Christ's Hospital;" the second volume, dedicated to Martin Charles Burney in the sonnet on page 45, containing criticisms, essays and "Mr. H."

The scheme of the present volume makes it impossible to keep together the poetical portion of Lamb's _Works_. In order, however, to present clearly to the reader Lamb's mature selection, in 1818, of the poetry by which he wished to be known, I have indicated the position in his _Works_ of those poems that have already been printed on earlier pages.

Page 32. _Hester_.

Lamb sent this poem to Manning in March, 1803--"I send you some verses I have made on the death of a young Quaker you may have heard me speak of as being in love with for some years while I lived at Pentonville, though I had never spoken to her in my life. She died about a month since."

Hester Savory was the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith in the Strand. She was born in 1777 and was thus by two years Lamb's junior.

She married, in July, 1802, Charles Stoke Dudley, a merchant, and she died in February of the following year, and was buried at Bunhill Fields. Lamb was living in Pentonville from the end of 1796 until 1799.

Page 33. _Dialogue between a Mother and Child._ By Mary Lamb.

Charles Lamb, writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 2, 1804, says: "I send you two little copies of verses by Mary L--b." Then follow this "Dialogue" and the "Lady Blanch" verses on page 41. Lamb adds at the end: "I wish they may please you: we in these parts are not a little proud of them."

Page 34. _A Farewell to Tobacco._

First printed in _The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811.

Lamb had begun to think poetically of tobacco as early as 1803. Writing to Coleridge in April 13 of that year, he says:--"What do you think of smoking? I want your sober, _average, noon opinion_ of it. I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it. Morning is a girl, and can't smoke--she's no evidence one way or the other; and Night is so [? evidently] _bought over_, that he can't be a very upright judge. May be the truth is, that _one_ pipe is wholesome; _two_ pipes toothsome; _three_ pipes noisome; _four_ pipes fulsome; _five_ pipes quarrelsome; and that's the _sum_ on't. But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason."

Writing to William and Dorothy Wordsworth on September 28, 1805, Lamb remarked regarding his literary plans:--"Sometimes I think of a farce--but hitherto all schemes have gone off,--an idle brag or two of an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and going off in the morning--but now I have bid farewell to my 'Sweet Enemy' Tobacco, as you will see in my next page, I perhaps shall set soberly to work. Hang work!"

On the next page Lamb copied the "Farewell to Tobacco," adding:--"I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to my 'Friendly Traitress.'

Tobacco has been my evening comfort and my morning curse for these five years: and you know how difficult it is from refraining to pick one's lips even when it has become a habit. This Poem is the only one which I have finished since so long as when I wrote 'Hester Savory' [in March, 1803].... The 'Tobacco,' being a little in the way of Withers (whom Southey so much likes), perhaps you will somehow convey it to him with my kind remembrances."

Mr. Bertram Dobell has a MS. copy of the poem, in Lamb's hand, inscribed thus: "To his _quondam_ Brethren of the Pipe, Capt. B[urney], and J[ohn]

R[ickman], Esq., the Author dedicates this his last Farewell to Tobacco." At the end is a rude drawing of a pipe broken--"My Emblem."

It is perhaps hardly needful to say that Lamb's farewell was not final.

He did not give up smoking for many years. When asked (Talfourd's version of the story says by Dr. Parr) how he was able to emit such volumes of smoke, he replied, "I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue;" and Macready records having heard Lamb express the wish to draw his last breath through a pipe and exhale it in a pun. Talfourd says that in late life Lamb ceased to smoke except very occasionally.

But the late Mrs. Coe, who knew Lamb at Widford when she was a child, told me that she remembered Lamb's black pipe and his devotion to it, about 1830.

In his character sketch of the late Elia (see Vol. II.), written in 1822, Lamb describes the effect of tobacco upon himself. "He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry--as the friendly vapour ascended, how his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments, which tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist!"

Page 38. _To T.L.H_.

First printed in _The Examiner_, January 1, 1815.

The lines are to Thornton Leigh Hunt, Leigh Hunt's little boy, who was born in 1810, and, during his father's imprisonment for a libel on the Regent from February, 1813, to February, 1815, was much in the Surrey gaol. Lamb, who was among Hunt's constant visitors, probably first saw him there. Lamb mentions him again in his _Elia_ essay "Witches and other Night Fears." See also note to the "Letter to Southey," Vol. I.

Thornton Leigh Hunt became a journalist, and held an important post on the _Daily Telegraph_. He died in 1873.

When printed in Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_, signed C.L., the poem had these prefatory words by the editor:--

The following piece perhaps we had some personal reasons for not admitting, but we found more for the contrary; and could not resist the pleasure of contemplating together the author and the object of his address,--to one of whom the Editor is owing for some of the lightest hours of his captivity, and to the other for a main part of its continual solace.

Page 41. _Lines Suggested by a Picture of Two Females by Lionardo da Vinci_. By Mary Lamb.

This was the "Lady Blanch" poem which Lamb sent to Dorothy Wordsworth in the letter of June 2, 1804 (see page 325). There it was ent.i.tled "Suggested by a Print of 2 Females, after Lionardo da Vinci, called Prudence and Beauty, which hangs up in our room." The usual t.i.tle is "Modesty and Vanity."

Page 41. _Lines on the Same Picture being Removed to make Place for a Portrait of a Lady by t.i.tian_. By Mary Lamb.

Writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 14, 1805, Lamb says: "You had her [Mary's] Lines about the 'Lady Blanch.' You have not had some which she wrote upon a copy of a girl from t.i.tian, which I had hung up where that print of Blanch and the Abbess (as she beautifully interpreted two female figures from L. da Vinci) had hung, in our room. 'Tis light and pretty."

Page 42. _Lines on the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, called The Virgin of the Rocks_.

This was the picture, one version of which hangs in the National Gallery, that was known to Lamb's friends as his "Beauty," and which led to the Scotchman's mistake in the _Elia_ essay "Imperfect Sympathies."

Page 42. _On the Same_. By Mary Lamb.