The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume IV Part 83

Printed in the _London Magazine_, October, 1820, where it was preceded by these words:--

"To THE EDITOR

"Mr. Editor,--The riddling lines which I send you, were written upon a young lady, who, from her diverting sportiveness in childhood, was named by her friends The Ape. When the verses were written, L.M. had outgrown the t.i.tle--but not the memory of it--being in her teens, and consequently past child-tricks. They are an endeavour to express that perplexity, which one feels at any alteration, even supposed for the better, in a beloved object; with a little oblique grudging at Time, who cannot bestow new graces without taking away some portion of the older ones, which we can ill miss.

L.M. was Louisa Martin, who is now and then referred to in Lamb's letter as Monkey, and to whom he addressed the lines on page 82, which come as a sequel to the present ones. In a letter to Wordsworth, many years later, dated February 22, 1834, Lamb asks a favour for this lady:--"The oldest and best friends I have left are in trouble. A branch of them (and they of the best stock of G.o.d's creatures, I believe) is establishing a school at Carlisle; Her name is Louisa Martin ... her qualities ... are the most amiable, most upright. For thirty years she has been tried by me, and on her behaviour I would stake my soul."

Page 90. _In Tabulam Eximii...._

These Latin verses were printed in _The Champion_, May 6 and 7, 1820, signed Carlagnulus, accompanied by this notice: "We insert, with great pleasure, the following beautiful Latin Verses on HAYDON'S fine Picture, and shall be obliged to any of our correspondents for a spirited translation for our next." The following week brought one translation--Lamb's own--signed C.L. Both were reprinted in _The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion"_ in 1822, and again in Tom Taylor's _Life of Haydon_, 1853.

Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) was for six years at work upon this picture--"Christ's Entry into Jerusalem"--which was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall in 1820. The story goes that Mrs. Siddons established the picture's reputation in society. While the private-view company were a.s.sembled in doubt the great actress entered and walked across the room.

"It is completely successful," she was heard to say to Sir George Beaumont; and then, to Haydon, "The paleness of your Christ gives it a supernatural look." A stream of 30,000 persons followed this verdict.

The picture is now in Philadelphia.

Line 4. _Palma_. There were two Palmas, both painters of the Venetian school. Giacomo Palma the Elder, who is referred to here, was born about 1480. Both painted many scenes in the life of Christ.

Lines 7 and 8. _Flaccus' sentence_.

Valeat res ludicra si me Palma negata macrum, donata reducit opimum.

Horace, _Epist., II_., I, 180-181.

(Farewell to performances, if the palm, denied, sends one home lean, but, granted, flourishing.)

Lamb has not quite represented the poet's meaning, which is a profession of independence in regard to popular applause.

Page 91. _Sonnet to Miss Burney...._

First printed in the _Morning Chronicle_, July 13, 1820. The Burney family began to be famous with Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814), the musician, the author of the _History of Music_, and the friend of Dr.

Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Among his children were the Rev.

Charles Burney (1757-1817), the cla.s.sical scholar and owner of the Burney Library, now in the British Museum; Rear-Admiral James Burney (1750-1821), who sailed with Cook, wrote the _Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean_, and became a friend of Lamb; Frances Burney, afterwards Madame d'Arblay (1752-1840), the novelist, author of _Evelina, Camilla_ and _Cecilia_; and Sarah Harriet Burney (1770?-1844), a daughter of Dr. Burney's second wife, also a novelist, and the author, among other stories, of _Geraldine Fauconberg_. "Country Neighbours; or, The Secret," the tale that inspired Lamb's sonnet, formed Vols. II. and III. of Sarah Burney's _Tales of Fancy_. Blanch is the heroine.

The good old man in Madame d'Arblay's _Camilla_ is Sir Hugh Tyrold, who adopted the heroine.

Page 91. _To my Friend The Indicator_.

Printed in _The Indicator_, September 27, 1820, signed ****, preceded by these words by Leigh Hunt, the editor:--

Every pleasure we could experience in a friend's approbation, we have felt in receiving the following verses. They are from a writer, who of all other men, knows how to extricate a common thing from commonness, and to give it an underlook of pleasant consciousness and wisdom.

...The receipt of these verses has set us upon thinking of the good-natured countenance, which men of genius, in all ages, have for the most part shewn to contemporary writers.

Page 92. _On seeing Mrs. K---- B----_.

The late Mr. d.y.k.es Campbell thought it very likely that these charming verses were Lamb's. I think they may be, although it is odd that he should not have reprinted anything so pretty. Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's belief that they are Lamb's, added to that of their discoverer, leads me to include them confidently here. Here and there it seems impossible that the poem could come from any other hand: line 11 for example, and the idea in lines 13 to 16, and the statement in lines 27 and 28. None the less it must be borne in mind that one does but conjecture. The lines are in _The Tickler Magazine_ for 1821.

Page 93. _To Emma, Learning Latin, and Desponding_.

First printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, June, 1829.

Mary Lamb had other pupils in her time, among them Miss Kelly, the actress, Mary Victoria Novello (afterwards Mrs. Cowden Clarke), and William Hazlitt, the essayist's son. Emma was, of course, Emma Isola.

Sara Coleridge's translation of Martin Dobrizhoffer's _Historia de Abiponibus_ under the t.i.tle _Account of the Abipones_ was published in 1822, when she was only twenty.

"To think [Lamb wrote to Barton, on February 17, 1823, of Sara Coleridge] that she should have had to toil thro' five octavos of that cursed (I forget I write to a Quaker) Abbey pony History, and then to abridge them to 3, and all for 113. At her years, to be doing stupid Jesuits' Latin into English, when she should be reading or writing Romances." Sara Coleridge's romance-writing came later, in 1837, when her fairy tale, _Phantasmion_, appeared.

In its original form this sonnet in its fifth line ran thus:--

(In new tasks hardest still the first appears).

Derwent Coleridge read the sonnet in 1853 in Mrs. Moxon's alb.u.m, and copying it out, sent it to his wife, saying that he wished Sissy (his daughter Christabel) to get it by heart. He added this note: "Charles Lamb having discovered that this Sonnet consisted but of thirteen lines, Miss Lamb inserted the 5th, which interrupts the flow and repeats a rhime." Derwent Coleridge goes on to suggest two alternative lines:--

And hope may surely chase desponding fears

or

Let hope encouraged chase desponding fears.

Lamb, however, had already amended the fifth line (as in _Blackwood's Magazine_) to--

To young beginnings natural are these fears.

Page 93. _Lines addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N._

First printed in _The Athenaeum_, January 10, 1846, contributed by an anonymous correspondent (probably Thomas Westwood the Younger) who sent also "The First Leaf of Spring" (page 105). _Travels in the Interior of Mexico in_ 1825 ... 1828, by Robert William Hale Hardy, was published in 1829. Lamb made an exception in favour of Hardy's book. Writing to Dilke for something to read from _The Athenaum_ office, in 1833, he particularly desired that "no natural history or useful learning, such as Pyramids, Catacombs, Giraffes, or Adventures in Southern Africa"

might be sent.