The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume IV Part 80

Page 59. _Written at Cambridge_.

This sonnet was first printed in _The Examiner_, August 29 and 30, 1819, and was dated August 15. Lamb, we now know, from a letter recently discovered, was in Cambridge in August, 1819, just after being refused by Miss Kelly. Hazlitt in his essay "On the Conversation of Authors" in the _London Magazine_ for September, 1820, referred to Lamb's visit to him some years before, and his want of ease among rural surroundings, adding: "But when we cross the country to Oxford, then he spoke a little. He and the old collegers were hail-fellow-well-met: and in the quadrangle he 'walked gowned.'"

Page 59. _To a Celebrated Female Performer in the "Blind Boy."_

First printed in the _Morning Chronicle_, 1819. "The Blind Boy,"

"attributed," says Genest, "to Hewetson," was produced in 1807. It was revived from time to time. Miss Kelly used to play Edmond, the t.i.tle _role_.

Page 59. _Work_.

First printed in _The Examiner_, June 20 and 21, 1819, under the t.i.tle "Sonnet."

Many years earlier we see the germ of this sonnet in Lamb's mind, as indeed we see the germ of so many ideas that were not fully expressed till later, for he always kept his thoughts at call. Writing to Wordsworth in September, 1805, he says:--"Hang work! I wish that all the year were holyday. I am sure that Indolence indefeasible Indolence is the true state of man, and business the invention of the Old Teazer who persuaded Adam's Master to give him an ap.r.o.n and set him a-houghing. Pen and Ink and Clerks, and desks, were the refinements of this old torturer a thousand years after...."

Lamb probably was as fond of this sonnet as of anything he wrote in what might be called his second poetical period. He copied it into his first letter to Bernard Barton, in September, 1822, and he drew attention to it in his _Elia_ essay "The Superannuated Man."

Page 60. _Leisure_.

First printed in the _London Magazine_ for April, 1821, probably, I think, as a protest against the objection taken by some persons to the opinions expressed by Lamb in his essay on "New Year's Eve" in that magazine for January (see Vol. II., and notes). Lamb had therein said, speaking of death:--"I am not content to pa.s.s away 'like a weaver's shuttle.' Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends. To be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave."

Such sentiments probably called forth some private as well as public protests; and it was, as I imagine, in a whimsical wish to emphasise the sincerity of his regard for life that Lamb reiterated that devotion in the emphatic words of "Leisure" in the April number. This sonnet was a special favourite with Edward FitzGerald.

It is sad to think that Lamb, when his leisure came, had too much of it.

Writing to Barton on July 25, 1829, during one of his sister's illnesses, he says: "I bragg'd formerly that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit.... I am a sanguinary murderer of time, that would kill him inchmeal just now."

Page 60. _To Samuel Rogers, Esq_.

Daniel Rogers, the poet's elder brother, died in 1829. In acknowledging Lamb's sonnet, Samuel Rogers wrote the following letter, which Lamb described to Barton (July 3, 1829) as the prettiest he ever read.

Many, many thanks. The verses are beautiful. I need not say with what feelings they were read. Pray accept the grateful acknowledgements of us all, and believe me when I say that nothing could have been a greater cordial to us in our affliction than such a testimony from such a quarter. He was--for none knew him so well--we were born within a year or two of each other--a man of a very high mind, and with less disguise than perhaps any that ever lived. Whatever he was, _that_ we saw. He stood before his fellow beings (if I may be forgiven for saying so) almost as before his Maker: and G.o.d grant that we may all bear as severe an examination. He was an admirable scholar. His Dante and his Homer were as familiar to him as his Alphabets: and he had the tenderest heart. When a flock of turkies was stolen from his farm, the indignation of the poor far and wide was great and loud. To me he is the greatest loss, for we were nearly of an age; and there is now no human being alive in whose eyes I have always been young.

Yours most gratefully,

SAMUEL ROGERS.

Another sonnet to Rogers will be found on p. 100.

Page 61. _The Gipsy's Malison_.

First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, January, 1829. Lamb had sent it to _The Gem_, but, as he told Procter in a letter on January 22, 1829: "The editors declined it, on the plea that it would _shock all mothers;_ so they published the 'Widow' [Hood's parody of Lamb] instead. I am born out of time. I have no conecture about what the present world calls delicacy. I thought _Rosamund Gray_ was a pretty modest thing. Hessey a.s.sures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Hang[27] the age, I will write for Antiquity!'"

In another letter to Procter, Lamb tells the sonnet's history:--

"_January_ 29, 1829.

"When Miss Ouldcroft (who is now Mrs. Beddam [Badams], and Bed-dam'd to her!) was at Enfield, which she was in summer-time, and owed her health to its suns and genial influences, she visited (with young lady-like impertinence) a poor man's cottage that had a pretty baby (O the yearnling!), gave it fine caps and sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the parlour our two maids uproarious. 'O ma'am, who do you think Miss Ouldcroft (they p.r.o.nounce it Holcroft) has been working a cap for?' 'A child," answered Mary, in true Shandean female simplicity.' 'Tis the man's child as was taken up for sheep-stealing.' Miss Ouldcroft was staggered, and would have cut the connection; but by main force I made her go and take her leave of her protegee. I thought, if she went no more, the Abactor or the Abactor's wife (_vide_ Ainsworth) would suppose she had heard something; and I have delicacy for a sheep-stealer. The overseers actually overhauled a mutton-pie at the baker's (his first, last, and only hope of mutton pie), which he never came to eat, and thence inferred his guilt. _Per occasionem cujus_, I framed the sonnet; observe its elaborate construction. I was four days about it. [Here came the sonnet.] Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely elaborate. 'Tis a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed to the structure of it. See you? and was this a fourteener to be rejected by a trumpery annual? forsooth,'twould shock all mothers; and may all mothers, who would so be shocked, be d.a.m.ned! as if mothers were such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of _their_ child from the theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hanged, if the judge pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. Oh B.C.! my whole heart is faint, and my whole head is sick (how is it?) at this d.a.m.ned canting unmasculine age!"

[Footnote 27: Talfourd. Canon Ainger gives "d.a.m.n"]

COMMENDATORY VERSES

Page 61. _To the Author of Poems, published under the name of Barry Cornwall_.

Printed in the _London Magazine_, September, 1820.

Barry Cornwall was the pen-name of Bryan Waller Procter, 1787-1874, whose impulse to write poetry came largely from Lamb himself. In his _Dramatic Scenes_, 1819, was the beginning of a blank-verse treatment or adaptation of Lamb's "Rosamund Gray." Procter addressed to Lamb some excellent lines "Over a Flask of Sherris," which were printed in the _London Magazine_, 1825, and again in _English Songs_, 1832. His _Martian Colonna; an Italian Tale_, was published in 1820 and his _Sicilian Story_ later in the same year. The "Dream" was printed in _Dramatic Scenes_. Procter in his old age wrote a charming memoir of Lamb.

Page 62. _To R.S. Knowles, Esq_.

First printed in the _London Magazine_, September, 1820. By a curious oversight the error in Knowles's initials was repeated in the _Alb.u.m Verses_, 1830, Knowles's first name being, of course, James. James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862) had been a doctor, a schoolmaster, an actor, and a travelling elocutionist, before he took seriously to writing for the stage. His first really successful play was "Virginius,"

written for Edmund Kean, transferred to Macready, and produced in 1820.

His greatest triumph was "The Hunchback," 1832. Lamb, who met Knowles through William Hazlitt, of Wem, the essayist's father, wrote both the prologue and epilogue for Knowles's play "The Wife," 1833 (see pages 146-7).

Page 63. _Quatrains to the Editor of the "Every-Day Book_."

First printed in the _London Magazine_, May, 1825, and copied by Hone into the _Every-Day Book_ for July 9 of the same year. William Hone (see Vol. I. notes), 1780-1842, was a bookseller, pamphleteer and antiquary, who, before he took to editing his _Every-Day Book_ in 1825, had pa.s.sed through a stormy career on account of his critical outspokenness and want of ordinary political caution; and Lamb did by no means a fashionable thing when he commended Hone thus publicly. The _Every-Day Book_, begun in 1825, was, when published in 1826, dedicated by Hone to Charles Lamb and his sister. "Your daring to publish me your 'friend,'

with your 'proper name' annexed," Hone wrote, "I shall never forget."

Page 63. Acrostics.

In his more leisurely years, at Islington and Enfield, Lamb wrote a great number of acrostics--many more probably than have been preserved--of which these, printed in _Alb.u.m Verses_, are all that he cared to see in print. Probably he found his chief impulse in Emma Isola's schoolfellows and friends, who must have been very eager to obtain in their alb.u.ms a contribution from so distinguished a gentleman as Elia, and who pa.s.sed on their requests through his adopted daughter.

I have not been able to trace the ident.i.ty of several of them. The lady who desired her epitaph was Mrs. Williams in whose house Emma Isola was governess. While there Emma was seriously ill, and Lamb travelled down to Fornham, in Suffolk, in 1830, to bring her home. On returning he wrote Mrs. Williams several letters, in one of which, dated Good Friday, he said:--"I beg you to have inserted in your county paper something like this advertis.e.m.e.nt; 'To the n.o.bility, gentry, and others, about Bury,--C. Lamb respectfully informs his friends and the public in general, that he is leaving off business in the acrostic line, as he is going into an entirely new line. Rebuses and Charades done as usual, and upon the old terms. Also, Epitaphs to suit the memory of any person deceased.'"