The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume IV Part 78

TO CHARLES LAMB

On the Reviewal of his _Alb.u.m Verses_ in the _Literary Gazette_.

Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear, For rarest genius, and for sterling worth, Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere, And wit that never gave an ill thought birth, Nor ever in its sport infix'd a sting; To us who have admired and loved thee long, It is a proud as well as pleasant thing To hear thy good report, now borne along Upon the honest breath of public praise: We know that with the elder sons of song, In honouring whom thou hast delighted still, Thy name shall keep its course to after days.

The empty pertness, and the vulgar wrong, The flippant folly, the malicious will, Which have a.s.sailed thee, now, or heretofore, Find, soon or late, their proper meed of shame; The more thy triumph, and our pride the more, When witling critics to the world proclaim, In lead, their own dolt incapacity.

Matter it is of mirthful memory To think, when thou wert early in the field, How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield.

And now, a veteran in the lists of fame, I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim, Dulness hath thrown a _jerdan_ at thy head.

SOUTHEY.

This was, I think, Southey's first public utterance concerning Lamb since Lamb's famous open letter to him of October, 1823 (see Vol. I.).

Lamb wrote to Bernard Barton in the same month: "How n.o.ble ... in R.S.

to come forward for an old friend who had treated him so unworthily,"

For the critics, Lamb said in the same letter, he did not care the "five hundred thousandth part of a half-farthing;" and we can believe him. On page 123 will be found, however, an epigram on the _Literary Gazette_.

ALb.u.m VERSES

Page 46. _In the Alb.u.m of a Clergyman's Lady._

This lady was probably Mrs. Williams, of Fornham, in Suffolk, in whose house Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma Isola, lived as a governess in 1829-1830. The epitaph on page 65 and the acrostic on page 107 were written for the same lady.

Page 46. _In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W----._

Mrs. Sergeant Wilde, _nee_ Wileman, was the first wife of Thomas Wilde, afterwards Lord Truro (1782-1855), for whose election at Newark in 1831 Lamb is said to have written facetious verses (see my large edition).

The Wildes were Lamb's neighbours at Enfield.

Page 47. _In the Alb.u.m of Lucy Barton._

These lines were sent by Lamb to Lucy Barton's father, Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, in the letter of September 30, 1824. Lucy Barton, who afterwards became the wife of Edward FitzGerald, the translator of Omar Khayyam, lived until November 27, 1898. She retained her faculties almost to the end, and in 1892 kindly wrote out for me her memory of a visit paid with her father to the Lambs at Colebrook Row about 1825--a little reminiscence first printed in _Bernard Barton and His Friends,_ 1893.

Page 48. _In the Alb.u.m of Miss----._

This poem was first printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, May, 1829, ent.i.tled "For a Young Lady's Alb.u.m." The ident.i.ty of the young lady is not now discoverable: probably a school friend of Emma Isola's.

Page 48. _In the Alb.u.m of a very young Lady._

Josepha was a daughter of Mrs. Williams, of Fornham.

Page 49. _In the Alb.u.m of a French Teacher._

First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine,_ June, 1829, ent.i.tled "For the Alb.u.m of: Miss----, French Teacher at Mrs. Gisborn's School, Enfield."

Page 49. _In the Alb.u.m of Miss Daubeny._

Miss Daubeny was a schoolfellow of Emma Isola's, at Dulwich.

Page 50. _In the Alb.u.m of Mrs. Jane Towers._

Charles Clarke--in line 7--was Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877), a friend of the Lambs not only for his own sake, but for that of his wife, Mary Victoria Novello, whom he married in 1828 and who died as recently as 1898. Their _Recollections of Writers,_ 1878, have many interesting reminiscences of Charles and Mary Lamb. Writing to Cowden Clarke on February 25, 1828, Lamb says:--"I had a pleasant letter from your sister, greatly over acknowledging my poor sonnet.... Alas for sonnetting,'tis as the nerves are; all the summer I was dawdling among green lanes, and verses came as thick as fancies. I am sunk winterly below prose and zero."

Mrs. Towers lived at Standerwick, in Somersetshire, and was fairly well known in her day as a writer of books for children, _The Children's Fireside,_ etc.

Page 50. _In my own Alb.u.m._

This poem was first printed in _The Bijou,_ 1828, edited by William Fraser, under the t.i.tle "Verses for an Alb.u.m."

MISCELLANEOUS

Page 51. _Angel Help._

This poem was first printed in the _New Monthly Magazine,_ 1827, with trifling differences, and the addition, at the end, of this couplet:--

Virtuous Poor Ones, sleep, sleep on, And, waking, find your labours done.

I am afraid that the "Nonsense Verses" on page 123 represent an attempt to make fun of this beautiful poem.

Aders' house in Euston Square was hung with engravings princ.i.p.ally of the German school (see the poem on page 94 addressed to him).