The New English Edition of Lamb's Works

THIS collection of Charles Lamb’s writings has been some years in preparation, and Elia’s admirers expected it would be the standard impression of his works, the edition in which posterity would read the letters and essays of this unique genius. And such, no doubt, it would have been, had the publishers selected a competent person to edit the collection ; one who, like John Forster or Barry Cornwall, knew Lamb thoroughly and appreciated him fully. The original editor was Mr. William Carew Hazlitt.² He and the Moxons soon quarrelled, and after they had called each other hard names in the columns of the classical Athenæum, Hazlitt relinquished his labor on Lamb, and some poor hack was hired to finish the work.

At last, after many “ put offs and put bys,” the first volume of “ The Complete Correspondence and Works of Charles Lamb, with an Essay on his Life and Genius by George Augustus Sala,” was published. Sala’s Introduction was so disliked by the lovers of Elia, that the publishers wisely withdrew it, and filled its place (perhaps not quite so wisely) with a paper by a Mr. Thomas Purnell, who prattles pleasantly of Elia, and has something like a right idea of his great and peculiar merits.

Sala’s proem was a literary curiosity, —a masterpiece of digressive skill and ingenuity,—and under the title of “ Charles Lamb and Soforth ” it would have done admirably as a contribution to “Temple Bar” or the “ Belgravia ” magazine. The most roundabout of Thackeray’s “ Roundabout Papers,” or even Montaigne’s famous essay on “ Coaches,” is, when compared with Sala’s dissertation, as “ straightforward as a Roman road.” In this remarkable article he contrived to descant upon voluminous authors and the man of one book, upon the unliterary work of some famous literary men, upon Boswell and Boswellism, upon De Quincey and opium-eating, upon Abelard and Heloise, upon the life and character of Horace Walpole, upon Napoleon the great and Lord Byron, upon the confessions of Montaigne, Rousseau, Pepys, Sterne, and other well-known writers, upon the vinous excesses of some great and famous Englishmen, upon modern clubs and club men, and, in fact, upon almost everything and everybody except Charles Lamb and his works.

And now, two or three years after the appearance of the unlucky first volume, the edition is completed. It fills four goodly duodecimos. Their mechanical execution is quite neat and tasteful ; but the editing is, for the most part, bad enough to make a lover of Elia emulate a certain well-known peculiarity of “ our armies in Flanders.” The editor, whoever he may be, is nearly as well qualified for his business as was George Dyer to criticise the old English dramatists. Macaulay’s school-boy would blush to make such gross mistakes about Lamb and his writings as this man does. Many of his inaccuracies are good enough to be added to Disraeli’s chapter on “Literary Blunders.” Some of the editorial notes marvellously resemble the comments with which Mr. William Carew Hazlitt is wont to enrich the unfortunate publications he attempts to edit. If these notes are his, one cannot be surprised that he and the Moxons quarrelled, though one is surprised that they ever intrusted Lamb to such an incompetent editor as he. If these annotations are not by W. C. Hazlitt, we do not know who could have written them, unless it was the shop-boy whom the publishers set to work upon this edition of Lamb when business was dull.

Lamb says, in a letter to Coleridge, “I think you promised me a sight of Wordsworth’s Tragedy.” Upon this passage the editor comments thus : “ A lost production ; a specimen of it is quoted in one of Hazlitt’s Essays.” The “specimen ” is quoted in Hazlitt’s article on Wordsworth, in “ The Spirit of the Age,” and is taken from the third act of “ The Tragedy of the Borderers.” This work was written in 1795-96, and was circulated in manuscript among the author’s friends. It was published in 1842, and is included in all complete editions of Wordsworth’s poetical works. So much for “a lost production.”

“Professor, thy glories wax dim,” writes Lamb in a letter to Manning, dated December 16, 1800. To this sentence the editor appends the following note : “ Lamb proceeds to apos-

trophize himself under this title, showing what he was to have achieved in the way of book-purchasers, etc., if Mr. H. had succeeded.” Probably in glancing over this delightful letter, the learned commentator caught sight of the words “ we are damned,” and remembering Lamb’s unsuccessful farce, he hastily concluded that the unlucky play spoken of in the epistle was “ Mr. H.” Of course if “ Mr. H.” had been the piece mentioned therein, the Professor must have been Charles Lamb, but as the play in question was Godwin’s tragedy of “ Antonio,” for which Lamb wrote the epilogue, the Professor w'as Godwin himself. “ Mr. H.” was not written till five or six years after the date of this letter, and could not, therefore, have been damned in 1800.

Writing to a friend in December, 1806, Lamb says, “Those 'Tales from Shakespeare’ are coming out, and Mary has begun a new work.” According to an editorial note this new work of Mary Lamb’s was the “ Adventures of Ulysses,” but in fact it was “ Mrs. Leicester’s School,” which was published in 1807. The “ Adventures of Ulysses,” as is well known, was written by Charles Lamb.

We are told in a note on one of the letters to Bernard Barton that the Quaker poet was a clerk in a London bank. Barton was never employed in any bank but that of the Messrs. Alexander of Woodbridge ; and there he toiled faithfully for forty years, “ working till within two days of his death,” says his biographer.

To Coleridge, who was preparing for the press a volume of poems by Lamb, Lloyd, and himself, Lamb writes thus: “The Fragments I now send you I want printed to get rid of ’em ; for while they stick burr-like to my memory, they tempt me to go on with the idle trade of versifying, which I long (most sincerely I speak it), I long to leave off, for it is unprofitable to my soul.” The editor says these “Fragments ” were the “ Curious Fragments ” from Burton, but he is wrong. They were “ The Grandame,” and the other well-known fragments of blank verse. The Burton fragments, as the editor observes in another place, were first published with “John Woodvil,” in 1801. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt or his anonymous successor informs us that the “ Specimens from the Writings of Fuller, the Church Historian,” were “probably made when Lamb was in possession [1829] of Mr. Gilman’s copy of Fuller.” Not made till 1829! Why, you careless, blundering commentator, the specimens from Fuller were originally published in 1811, in the fourth number of Leigh Hunt’s “ Reflector,” and were included in “The Works of Charles Lamb,” issued by the Olliers, in “two slight crown octavos,” in 1818.

“ This article,” says Mr. Incompetent, in a note to the fine critical paper “ On the Poetical Works of George Wither,” “ has always found a place in the editions, but its authenticity is very doubtful.” Lamb permitted the essay to appear in the Ollier edition of his “Works,” thereby proving that he at least had no doubts of its authorship.

“ Shortly before his death,” writes Talfourd, in the “ Final Memorials,” “ Lamb had borrowed of Mr. Cary, Phillips’s ‘Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum,’ which when returned by Mr. Moxon, after the event, was found with the leaf folded down at the account of Sir Philip Sidney.” Its receipt was acknowledged by some lines to the memory of Charles Lamb. In this new edition of Lamb this effusion of Cary’s is printed between inverted commas, and inserted among Lamb’s poems, with this heading, “Verses written in a Copy of Phillips’s ‘Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum,’ returned by Mr. Casy, with the Leaf folded down at the Death of Sir Philip Sidney.” To whom did Mr. Casy (probably a misprint for Mr. Cary) return the book ? If he knew the verses were not written by Lamb, why did the editor print them with Lamb’s poetical works ? And if he believed they were by Lamb, why put them between inverted commas ?

We are informed that Lamb’s lines upon the loss of his mother “do not appear in any of the modern editions ” ; and perhaps in the hope of atoning for that neglect, the editor inserts the verses twice in this edition of his author’s writings. He gives them on page 463, Vol. III., under the title of “Lines written about 1797”; and on page 514 of the same volume he prints them under the caption of “ Lines addressed to Robert Southey, about a Year after the Death of Mrs. Lamb [September, 1798].” This poem was originally published in “Southey’s Life and Correspondence.” It was reprinted in the second edition of Talfourd’s “ Final Memorials of Charles Lamb.”

The few fine poems by Mary Lamb included in former editions of Lamb’s works are retained in this, though their author’s name is not given, nor is there anything said to indicate that they are not by Charles ; and therefore all who make the acquaintance of Lamb in this collection of his writings will, if they read poor Mary’s verses, credit him with the authorship of them.

The editor is a rare critic, and kindly informs his reader, whom he evidently regards as a greater ignoramus than himself, that Lamb’s famous Christmas letter to Manning is “full of fun.” This is delicious, and reminds one of the country trader, who hung a dried cod up at his door for a sign, but fearing his customers might not know what it was, labelled it “ Salt Fish.”

The annotations to the essays of Elia are few, but we should not complain if they were fewer. One of them is occasioned by a casual mention of the Gunpowder Plot, in the paper on “ The South Sea House,” “ upon which there is an essay by Lamb in the Miscellaneous Collection. He says in one of his letters he could scarcely forgive another writer [Ainsworth ?] for forestalling him here.” Lamb’s essay on Guy Fawkes was originally published in the “Reflector” in l8l1, and enlarged and reprinted in the “London Magazine,” in 1823. Therefore if Ainsworth, who was born in 1805, “forestalled ” Lamb in this matter, the author of “Jack Sheppard” was a prodigy of precocity, and must have written his romance of “Guy Fawkes ” before he was six years old. The fact is, Ainsworth’s “Guy Fawkes” was not published till 1841, seven years after Lamb’s death. Hazlitt, in the article on Elia, in “ The Spirit of the Age,” says, “ We believe he never heartily forgave a certain writer who took the subject of Guy Fawkes out of his hands.” This “certain writer ” was no doubt Hazlitt himself, who was the author of a semi-political essay on Guy Fawkes, published in the “Examiner,” in 1821. When sketching Lamb’s portrait in “The Spirit of the Age,” Hazlitt had probably forgotten that Elia’s “ Guy Fawkes ” was first printed in the “ Reflector,” years before the appearance of the “Examiner” article.

It is generally known that James Harrington wrote a work entitled “ Oceana,” but till we read the editorial notes to the essay on “ Oxford in the Vacation,” we were not aware that he was the author of a book called “ Oceanus.” Hallam does not mention such a work, neither does Disraeli in his chapter on Harrington in the “Amenities of Literature.” Lowndes never heard of a production so entitled. Perhaps “ Oceanus ” is one of those “d—d typographical blunders which are the bane and the antidote of editors.”

The editor, instead of confining himself to the margin like a modest commentator, meddles occasionally with his author’s text, and makes “fine fretwork” of some of Elia’s immortal sentences, Like the poor pedagogue mentioned in the essay on “The Old and New Schoolmaster,” he apparently thinks he can write the English language more correctly than Charles Lamb. Here is a passage from “The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers,” which he has impertinently tried to improve: “ I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it happens, but I have always found that this composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-sweeper, — whether the oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions which are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged practitioners.” In the new edition of Lamb the sentence reads as follows: “ I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it happens, but I have always found that this composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-sweeper. [I know not] whether the oily particles,” etc. How much better is Elia’s dash than this awkwardly repeated “ I know not ! ” What havoc such a commentator as this would make among the beauties and sublimities of Shakespeare !

Having got hold of the original manuscript of the article on “ Witches, and other Night Fears,” the editor discovers a notable discrepancy between a sentence in the manuscript and the printed copy. In the “ London Magazine ” and in all the editions of Elia we have examined, the sentence is printed with an exclamation-point at the end of it. But in the manuscript it is closed with four asterisks. Of course this grave error is corrected, and in the new edition of Lamb the sentence stands in this shape: “That detestable picture * * * *.” Though this emendation may not give “ a new elegance ” to Elia, it is of immense importance, as you will perceive by reading the editorial note : “ So in MS., but there is authority (Lamb’s own) for the belief that these marks are destitute of significance.” Why not give the author’s very blots, and the blunders and mistakes corrected in the proof? Verily, the editor is remiss in his duty, and has not made his edition of Lamb quite so worthless and contemptible as he might easily have done. The manuscript of this paper on witches contains a paragraph which is printed for the first time in this edition of Lamb, though from a rather queerly worded note it would appear that the learned scholiast is not aware of the fact. Undoubtedly the passage reads best in its place in the essay to which it has been restored, yet we think we should please some of our readers by quoting it, and accordingly we do so. Elia, after relating his inauspicious seadream (which we all remember so well), proceeds in this manner: “When I awoke I came to a determination to write prose all the rest of my life ; and with submission to some of our young writers, who are yet diffident of their powers, and balancing perhaps between verse and prose, they might not do unwisely to decide the preference by the texture of their natural dreams. If these are prosaic, they may depend upon it they have not much to expect in a creative way from their artificial ones. What dreams must not Spenser have had ! ”

The editor says the “ Essays of Elia ” were “first printed in 1823,” and “The Last Essays of Elia” in 1833. Both series of the Elia essays were originally published in the “ London Magazine ” and other periodicals. They were first collected in 1823 and 1833.

Instead of waxing angry with the editor for his ignorance, carelessness, and presumption, the admirers of Charles Lamb should be grateful to the poor commentator for leaving untouched very many note-wanting passages in the letters and essays of their favorite author. The blunders are about well-known matters, and can be easily corrected by any one who has a smattering of literature and is tolerably familiar with Lamb’s life and writings. But suppose this man had attempted to take up the dropped stitches in Elia’s biography ! What a jumble of truth and error there would have been ! And who could have separated the one from the other? Unquestionably this edition is a disgrace to its publishers and an insult to the memory of Charles Lamb ; yet it is not nearly so incorrect and unreliable as it would have been had the editor been more industrious or more ambitious. There are, however, many excellent notes scattered through the volumes, but they are by Lamb and Talfourd, though, with one or two exceptions, there is no sign or signature by which to distinguish them from the editor’s own comments. Perhaps he would like to have them pass for his ; thereby showing excellent taste, and proving that he really knows what would do him credit. He also honors the editor of “Eliana” by taking most of his notes, some of which are credited to that gentleman, others to “Editor,” and the rest are kindly fathered by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt or his worthy successor.³

Notwithstanding the editor evidently desired to make this edition as complete as possible, even by the admission of what he is pleased to call “ poor stuff” and articles of “no value,” he has omitted, among other things, Lamb’s admirable contributions to the “ Tales from Shakespeare,”and the “ Poetry for Children.” Elia’s admirers are greedy for everything he wrote, and will blame the editor for not collecting all their beloved author’s contributions to newspapers and magazines ; and for not including among the correspondence all his letters and notes scattered about in various publications, among which are the little notes to Thomas Allsop, which George William Curtis introduced to Elia’s American readers so finely a few years since ; and the letter to Leigh Hunt in which Lamb says he “should be proud to hang up as an alehouse sign.”

They want his verses on “ Prince Dorus, the Long-Nosed King,” mentioned by Crabb Robinson. They want the theatrical criticisms he wrote for the “Examiner,” which are highly praised by Mr. John Forster. They want the article on Keats’s Poems, published in a London newspaper, and said to be worthy of both its writer and its subject. They even want the witty paragraphs, or “jokes,” which he contributed daily to “ The Morning Post ” for a long twelvemonth.

But if this collection of Charles Lamb’s writings is not so complete as it might be or as it should be, it contains many things not to be found in any other edition of his works, not even in Widdleton’s, which includes “ Eliana.” The additional matter consists of several ordinary occasional poems ; “ Satan in Search of a

Wife ” ; a “ Comic Opera,” in three acts ; three prose articles entitled “ Saturday Night”; “Ritson versus John Scott the Quaker ” ; and “ Recollections of a Late Royal Academician ” ; a number of new letters and “ letterets ” ; ⁴ and the hitherto suppressed passages of the correspondence, of which we shall have a word or two to say anon. “ Satan in Search of a Wife ” is a poetical jeu d' esprit of very little merit; and the “ Comic Opera,” which is now printed for the first time, is a rather poor performance, with perhaps here and there “ a witty sprinkle or two.” Indeed, though Mr. P. G. Patmore, to whom the manuscript formerly belonged, maintains that the authenticity of the work is placed beyond question, “ by every portion of it, even to the minutest alterations, erasures, etc., being in his [Lamb’s] handwriting,” one cannot help having grave doubts about the Opera being Charles Lamb’s. In neither matter nor manner does it resemble him. Possibly, however, it may be a production of his salad days, — one of his first “callow flights in authorship.” “ Saturday Night,” a delightful little “ essaykin,” was copied out of the annual in which it originally appeared into the “ Atlantic Almanac ” for the present year, and is no doubt familiar to the readers of this magazine. “Ritson versus John Scott the Quaker ” is a readable and racy paper, and is thus spoken of in a letter to Bernard Barton : “ Your poem, which I consider very affecting, found me engaged about a humorous paper for the ‘ London,’ which I had called ‘ A Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education had been neglected ’; —and when it was done Tylor and Hessey would not print it, and it discouraged me from doing anything else ; so I took up Scott, where I had scribbled some petulant notes, and for a makeshift fathered them on Ritson.” The letter to the old gentleman was published in the “ London Magazine ” a year or two later, upon the discontinuance of De Quincey’s “ Letters to a Young Gentleman whose Education has been neglected.”

“ The Recollections of a late Royal Academician ” was published in the first number of “Peter’s Net,” an incomplete series of papers, which Lamb contributed to Mr. Moxon’s unsuccessful periodical, “ The Englishman’s Magazine.” It is one of the most charming of Lamb’s second-best articles, and is superior to several of “ The Last Essays of Elia.” It is full of gentle satire and delicious humor, and contains excellent hints and suggestions concerning art. As the paper is too long to quote in full, we will indulge the reader with a brief extract or two. The author thus describes his call upon the painter (George Dawe),⁵ soon after his election to a seat in the Royal Academy, and during the visit of the Allied Sovereigns to England : “ I called upon D. to congratulate him upon a crisis so doubly eventful. His pleasant housekeeper seemed embarrassed, owned that her master was alone. But could he be spoken with ? With some importunity I prevailed upon her to usher me up into his painting-room. It was in* Newman Street. At his easel stood D., with an immense spread of canvas before him, and by his side a live goose. I inquired into this extraordinary combination. Under the rose he informed me that he had undertaken to paint a transparency for Vauxhall, against an expected visit of the Allied Sovereigns to that place. I smiled at an engagement so derogatory to his new-born honors ; but a contempt of small gains was never one of D.’s foibles. My eyes beheld crude forms of warriors, kings, rising under his brush upon this interminable stretch of cloth. The Wolga, the Don, and the Nieper were there, or their representative River Gods ; and Father Thames clubbed urns with the Vistula. Glory with her dazzling Eagle was not absent, nor Fame, nor Victory. The shade of Rubens might have evoked the mighty allegories. But what was the goose ? He was evidently sitting for a something.

“ D. at last informed me, that having fixed upon a group of rivers, he could not introduce the Royal Thames without his swans; that he had inquired the price of a live swan, and it being more than he was prepared to give for it, he had bargained with the poulterer for the next thing to it; adding significantly, that it would do to roast, after it had served its turn to paint swrans by. Reader, this is a true story?” This account of another visit to Dawe’s studio is equally amusing : —

“ I once was witness to a family scene in his painting-closet, which I had entered rather abruptly, and but for his encouragement should as hastily have retreated. He stood with displeased looks, eying a female relative— whom I had known under happier auspices — that was kneeling at his feet with a baby in her arms, with her eyes uplifted and suppliant. Though I could have previously sworn to the virtue of Miss -, yet casual slips have been known. There are such things as families disgraced where least you would have expected it. The child might be -; I had heard of no wedding ; I was the last person to pry into family secrets ; when D. relieved my uneasy cogitations by explaining that the innocent, good-humored creature before me (such as she ever was, and is now that she is married), with a baby borrowed from the public house, was acting Andromache to his Ulysses, for the purpose of transferring upon canvas a tender situation from the Troades of Seneca.”

Here is a graphic and no doubt a very truthful description of the personal appearance of “ the young man,” as Lamb was fond of calling Dawe, whom he knew well, and who must have given him many “ a rare meal of laughter ” : “ My acquaintance with D. was in the outset of his art, when the graving tools rather than the pencil administered to his humble wants. Those implements, as is well known, are not the most favorable to the cultivation of that virtue which is esteemed next to godliness. He might ‘wash his hands in innocency,’ and so metaphorically ‘approach an altar’; but his material puds were anything but fit to be carried to church. By an ingrained economy of soap — if it was not for pictorial effect rather — he would wash (on Sundays) the inner oval, or portrait, as it may be termed, of his countenance, leaving the unwashed temples to form a natural black frame round a picture in which a dead white was the predominant color. This, with the addition of green spectacles, made necessary by the impairment which his graving labors by day and night (for he was ordinarily at them for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four) had brought upon his visual faculties, gave him a rather singular appearance when he took the air abroad ; insomuch that I have seen a crowd of young men and boys following him along Oxford Street with admiration, not without shouts ; even as the youth of Rome, we read in Vasari, followed the steps of Raphael with acclamation for his genius and for his beauty, when he proceeded from his workshop to chat with cardinals and popes at the Vatican.”

With critical humor and artistic insight, Lamb briefly comments upon the art of this pygmy painter : “ The Hopners and the Lawrences were his Vandykes and his Velasquezes ; and if he could make anything like them, he insured himself immortality. With such guides he struggled on through laborious nights and days, till he reached the eminence he aimed at, — of mediocrity. Having gained that summit, he sat down contented. If the features were but cognoscible, no matter whether the flesh resembled flesh or oil-skin. For the thousand tints, the grains, which in the life diversify the nose, the chin, the cheek, which a Reynolds can but coarsely counterfeit, he cared nothing at all about them. He left such scrupulosities to opticians and anatomists. If the features were but there, the character, of course, could not be far off. A lucky hit which he made in painting the dress of a very dressy lady—Mrs. W—e—, whose handsome countenance also and tall elegance of shape were too palpable entirely to escape under any mask of oil with which even D. could overlay them — brought to him at once an influx of sitters which almost rivalled the importune calls upon Sir Thomas. A portrait he did soon after of the Princess Charlotte clenched his fame.

He proceeded Academician.....

“So entirely devoid of imagination or any feeling for his high art was this painter, that for the few historical pictures he attempted any sitter might sit for any character. He took once for a subject The Infant Hercules. Did he choose for a model some robust antique ? No. He did not even pilfer from Sir Joshua, who was nearer to his own size. But from a show he hired to sit to him a child in years, indead (though no infant), but in fact a precocious man, or human portent, that was disgustingly exhibiting at that period, — a thing to be strangled. From this he formed his Infant Hercules. In a scriptural flight he next attempted a Samson in the lap of Delilah. A Delilah of some sort was procurable for love or money, but who should stand for the Jewish Hercules ? He hired a tolerably stout porter, with a thickish head of hair curling in yellowish locks, but lithe, — much like a wig. And these were the robust strengths of Samson ! ”

There is one thing, at least, for which Charles Lamb’s readers will thank the editor of these volumes, and that is for printing the correspondence just as it was written, without suppression or mutilation. Talfourd, in preparing Lamb’s letters for publication, not only omitted all passages which he feared might pain or offend persons then living who were gravely or sportively mentioned therein, but in the despotic exercise of editorial power he seems to have slashed right and left, cutting out sentences and paragraphs without judgment or reason. If the restored passages are not remarkably humorous or original, they are full of characteristic quips and cranks, and have considerable biographical interest and value. Lamb had a great partiality for the epithet “ damned,” as Mr. Edmund Ollier observes in his pleasant Introduction to Hotten’s sixpenny “ Elia.” But Talfourd, who was sometimes more nice than wise, in editing the letters, changed the word “ damn ” into “ hang,” somewhat to the detriment of Elia’s humor and the reader’s pleasure. Lamb’s “ Damn ” is as harmless as Marjorie Fleming’s “ Devilish ” ; and in examining this edition of his writings we were glad to find that the editor had generally discarded the “ Hangs ” and restored the “ Damns.”

The “bard of nature,” so humorously ridiculed in one of the letters to Manning, was, it appears, Mr. Joseph Cottle, the Bristol bookseller, whom Lamb respected as a man and laughed at as a poet. The passage about him was too rich to be suppressed, and so Talfourd published it in full, merely changing Joseph Cottle into “Joseph D.” “A. K.,” so often mentioned in

the correspondence with Barton, and for whom Elia seems to have felt a kindliness that “almost amounted to a tendre,” was Anne Knight. One would like to know more about her.

It is evident, from one of these hitherto unpublished paragraphs, that Lamb was not paid very promptly for his early contributions to the “London Magazine.” “ B[aldwin?], who first engaged me as Elia, has not paid me up yet [1823] (nor any of us without repeated mortifying appeals), yet how the knave fawned when I was of service to him. Yet I dare say the fellow is punctual in settling his milk-score, etc.” In one of the “notelets ” to Hone, all of which are now printed for the first time, Lamb thus writes of the second series of “ Elia,” which was then ready for publication ; “ Our little book is delayed by a heathenish injunction threatened by the man Taylor”; and in a restored sentence at the close of a letter to Cary, Lamb says that he and Taylor are at law about the second volume of “ Elia.” Talfourd makes no mention of this lawsuit ; and, indeed, judging from his introduction to one of Lamb’s letters to Moxon, in the “ Final Memorials,” in which this matter is plainly hinted at, it may be doubted whether the biographer knew anything of the injunction. Taylor, it is perhaps unnecessary to remark, was one of the publishers into whose hands the “London Magazine ” passed upon the death of John Scott, its original editor. “ The great Beast! the beggarly Nit! ” as Lamb in mock anger called Taylor, probably maintained, and no doubt honestly believed, that the Elia papers were his property, because he had paid a handsome sum for each article upon its appearance in the magazine.

Although having an almost reverential admiration for Wordsworth, Lamb was not blind to the poet’s faults, as the following passage from one of the mutilated letters proves : “ He [Wordsworth] says he does not see much difficulty in writing like Shakespeare, if he had a mind to try it. It is clear that nothing is wanting but the mind. Even Coleridge was a little checked at this hardihood of assertion.” Of course, such an enthusiastic lover of the Poet of Rydal Mount as Talfourd took heartfelt satisfaction in suppressing the anecdote.

This pleasant paragraph about Miss Coleridge, the gifted daughter of a marvellously gifted man, is rounded with a very pathetic touch concerning her father : “ The she Coleridges have taken flight, to my regret. With Sara’s ownmade acquisitions, her unaffectedness and no-pretensions are beautiful. You might pass an age with her without suspecting that she knew anything but her mother’s tongue. I don’t mean any reflections on Mrs. Coleridge here.

I had better have said her vernacular idiom. Poor C. ! I wish he had a home to receive his daughter in but he is but a stranger or a visitor in this world.”

Here is an amusing bit about some of Lamb’s literary companions, which Talfourd cut out of one of the Manning letters : “ There’s your friend Holcroft, now, has written a play. You used to be fond of the drama. Nobody went to see it. Notwithstanding this, with an audacity perfectly original, he faces the town down in a preface that they did like it very much. I have heard a waspish punster say, ‘ Sir, why did you not laugh at my jest?’ But for a man boldly to face one out with, ‘ Sir, I maintain it, you did laugh at my jest,’ is a little too much. I have seen H. but once. He spoke of you to me in honorable terms. H. seems to me to be drearily dull. G[odwin ?] is dull, then he has a dash of affectation, which smacks of the coxcomb, and your coxcombs are always agreeable.”

We find this interesting account of the genuine Elia in the hitherto unpublished correspondence with “J. Taylor, Esq.,” of the firm of Taylor and Hessey, booksellers and publishers, Fleet Street, London : “Poor Elia, the real (for I am but a counterfeit), is dead. The fact is, a person of that name, an Italian, was a fellow-clerk at the South Sea House thirty (not forty) years ago, when the characters I described there existed, but had left it, like myself, many years ; and I having a brother now there, and doubting how he might relish certain descriptions in it, I clapt down the name of 'Elia ’ to it, which passed off pretty well, for Elia himself added the functions of an author to that of a scrivener, like myself. I went the other day (not having seen him for a year) to laugh over with him at my usurpation of his name, and found him, alas ! no more than a name ; for he had died of consumption eleven months ago, and I knew not of it. So the name has fairly devolved to me, I think; and ’t is all he has left me.” The following characteristic passage is from the same letter, and was written after reading (in manuscript ?) “ Olen’s ” poetical “Epistle to Elia,” published in the “London Magazine,” and suggested by the essay on “ New-Year’s Eve ” : “You will do me injustice if you do not convey to the writer of the beautiful lines, which I now return you, my sense of the extreme kindness which dictated them. Poor Elia (call him Ellia) does not pretend to see so very clear revelations of a future state of being as Olen seems gifted with. He stumbles about dark mountains at best ; but he knows at least how to be thankful for this life, and is too thankful, indeed, for certain relationships lent him here, not to tremble for a possible resumption of the gift. He is too apt to express himself lightly, and can - not be sorry for the present occasion, as it has called forth a reproof so Christian-like. His animus, at least (whatever became of it in the female termination), hath always been cum christianis.”

Here is an Elia-ish bit concerning “grace,” which would make an excellent note to the paper on “Grace before Meat.” It is quoted from one of the above - mentioned “notelets ” to William Hone, “ingenious Hone,” as Lamb styled him in some agreeable commendatory verses : —

“Our Hebrew brethren seem to appreciate the good things of this life in more liberal latitude than we, to judge from their frequent graces. One, I think, you must have omitted : 'After concluding a bargain.’ Their distinction of 'Fruits growing upon trees,’ and 'upon the ground,’ I can understand. A sow makes quite a different grunt (her grace) over chestnuts and pignuts. The last is a little above Elia. With thanks, and wishing grace be with you,

“Yours,

“C. LAMB.”

The following letter, which Talfourd did not print in the “Life and Letters ” or the “Final Memorials,” contains considerable new and interesting information concerning the “Tales from Shakespeare.” The “baby” therein mentioned so contemptuously was the second Mrs. Godwin, who was one of Lamb’s “imperfect sympathies.” He elsewhere calls her “the Professor’s rib,” and “that d—d Mrs. Godwin.” She has, he informs Manning, “ come out to be a disagreeable woman, so much so as to drive me and some more old chums from his house.” Godwin was a bookseller as well as a book-writer. He was the proprietor of the “ Juvenile Library,” No. 41 Skinner Street, London. There, under the name of M. J. Godwin, he published Hazlitt’s little work on English Grammar, and many delightful books for children, among which were Charles and Mary Lamb’s “ Tales from Shakespeare ” and “ Mrs. Leicester’s School.”

“ DEAR WORDSWORTH :We have booked off from Swan and Two Necks, Lad Lane, this day (per coach) the ‘ Tales from Shakespeare.’ You will forgive me the plates, when I tell you they were left to the direction of Godwin, who left the choice of subjects to the bad baby, who from mischief (I suppose) has chosen one from damned beastly vulgarity (vide ‘ Merch. Venice’ ), where no atom of authority was in the tale to justify it ; to another has given a name which exists not in the tale, Nic Bottom, and which she thought would be funny ; though in this I suspect his hand, for I guess her reading does not reach far enough to know Bottom’s Christian name ; and one of Hamlet and grave-digging, a scene which is not hinted at in the story, and you might as well have put King Canute the Great reproving his courtiers. The rest are giants and giantesses. Suffice it, to save our tastes and damn our folly, that we left it all to a friend, W. G., who in the first place cheated me into putting a name to them, which I did not mean but do not repent, and then wrote a puff about their simplicity, etc., to go with the advertisement as in my name ! Enough of this egregious dupery. I will try to abstract the load of tearing circumstances from the stories, and tell you that I am answerable for Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, for occasionally a tail-piece or correction of grammar, for none of the cuts and all of the spelling. The rest is my sister’s. We think Pericles of hers the best, and Othello of mine ; but I hope all have some good. As You Like It, we like least. So much, only begging you to tear out the cuts and give them to Johnny, as ‘ Mrs. Godwin’s fancy ! ’

“C. L.”

“Thursday, 29th January 1807.

“ Our love to all.

“ I had almost forgot, my part of the preface begins in the middle of a sentence, in last but one page, after a colon, thus : — which if they be happily so done, etc. The former part hath a more feminine turn and does hold me up something as an instructor to young ladies ; but upon my modesty’s honor,

I wrote it not. Godwin told my sister the Baby chose the subjects : a fact in taste.”

Possibly the above epistle, and the one that follows, addressed to Miss Wordsworth, were among those letters of Lamb’s which Crabb Robinson says Wordsworth did not choose to send to Talfourd for publication. There is exquisite moral pathos and beautiful Christian feeling in the homely account of the poor rustic wench whom Providence seems to have guided to those good Samaritans, Elia and Bridget.

Nov. 23, 1810.

“We are in a pickle. Mary, from her affectation of physiognomy, has hired a stupid, big country wench, who looked honest, as she thought, and has been doing her work some days, but without eating; eats no butter, nor meat, but prefers cheese with her tea for breakfast ; and now it comes out that she was ill when she came, with lifting her mother about (who is now with God) when she was dying, and with riding up from Norfolk, four days and nights in the wagon. She got advice yesterday, and look something which made her bring up a quart of blood, and she now lies in her bed, a dead weight upon our humanity, incapable of getting up, refusing to go into a hospital, having nobody in town but a poor asthmatic uncle whose son lately married a drab who fills his house, and there is nowhere she can go, and she seems to have made up her mind to take her flight to heaven from our bed. Oh for the little wheelbarrow which trundled the hunchback from door to door to try the various charities of different professions of mankind ! Here ’s her uncle just crawled up. He is far liker Death than she. Oh the parish, the parish, the hospital, the infirmary, the charnelhouse ! — these are places meet for such guests, not our quiet mansion, where nothing but affluent plenty and literary ease should abound. Howard’s House, or where the paralytic descended through the skylight (what a God’s gift!) to get at our Saviour. In this perplexity such topics as Spanish papers and Monkhouses sink into comparative insignificance. What shall we do? If she died, it were something; gladly would I pay the coffin-maker and the bell-man and searchers.”

We conclude this article by quoting one of the best of Charles Lamb’s letters ; a letter which is printed for the first time in this edition of his writings, and which Talfourd would have been happy to publish in the “ Life and Letters,” or the “ Final Memorials,” had he deemed it right to do so during the lifetime of Mr. Joseph Cottle, who is described in it with great freedom, humor, and truth. And yet, though poor Cottle’s literary vanity is unsparingly shown up, the sketch, which is a Shandyan bit of writing, is remarkable for its smiling good-nature and its loving, pitying humor. The author of “Alfred” is hit off in Elia’s deftest manner, and will go down to posterity in company with Mrs. Battle and Captain Jackson.

The letter, we should add, was written to Coleridge, who was indebted to Cottle for many a kind and generous act.

“ October 9th, 1800,

“I suppose you have heard of the death of Amos Cottle.

“I paid a solemn visit of condolence to his brother, accompanied by George Dyer, of burlesque memory.

“ I went, trembling to see poor Cottle so immediately upon the event.

“ He was in black ; and his younger brother was also in black.

“ Everything wore an aspect suitable to the respect due to the freshly dead. For some time after our entrance, nobody spoke, till George modestly put in a question, whether Alfred was likely to sell. This was Lethe to Cottle, and his poor face, wet with tears, and his kind eye brightened up in a moment. Now I felt it was my cue to speak.

“ I had to thank him for a present of a magnificent copy, and had promised to send him my remarks, — the least thing I could do ; so I ventured to suggest that I perceived a considerable improvement he had made in his first book since the state in which he first read it to me. Joseph, who till now had sat with his knees cowering in by the fireplace, wheeled about, and with great difficulty of body shifted the same round to the corner of a table where I was sitting, and first stationing one thigh over the other, which is his sedentary mood, and placidly fixing his benevolent face right against mine, waited my observations.

“At that moment it came strongly into my mind, that I had got Uncle Toby before me, he looked so kind and so good. I could not say an unkind thing of Alfred. So I set my memory to work to recollect what was the name of Alfred’s queen, and with some adroitness recalled the well-known sound to Cottle’s ears of Alswitha. At that moment I could perceive that Cottle had forgot his brother was so lately become a blessed spirit. In the language of mathematicians, the author was as 9, the brother as I.

“ I felt my cue, and strong pity working at the root, I went to work, and beslabbered Alfred with most unqualified praise, or only qualifying my praise by the occasional politic interposition of an exception taken against trivial faults, slips, and human imperfections, which, by removing the appearance of insincerity, did but in truth heighten the relish.

“ Perhaps I might have spared that refinement, for Joseph was in a humor to hope and believe all things. What I said was beautifully supported, corroborated, and confirmed by the stupidity of his brother on my left hand, and by George on my right, who has an utter incapacity of comprehending that there can be anything bad in poetry. All poems are good poems to George ; all men are fine geniuses.

“ So what with my actual memory, of which I made the most, and Cattle’s own helping me out, for I really had forgotten a good deal of Alfred, I made shift to discuss the most essential parts entirely to the satisfaction of its author, who repeatedly declared that he loved nothing better than candid criticism. Was I a candid greyhound now for all this ? or did I do right ? I believe I did. The effect was luscious to my conscience.

“ For all the rest of the evening Amos was no more heard of, till George revived the subject by inquiring whether some account should not be drawn up by the friends of the deceased to be inserted in Phillip’s monthly obituary; adding, that Amos was estimable both for his head and heart, and would have made a fine poet if he had lived.

“To the expediency of this measure Cottle fully assented, but could not help adding that he always thought that the qualities of his brother’s heart exceeded those of his head. I believe his brother, when living, had formed precisely the same idea of him ; and I apprehend the world will assent to both judgments. I rather guess that the brothers were poetical rivals. I judged so when I saw them together. Poor Cottle, I must leave him, after his short dream, to muse again upon his poor brother, for whom I am sure in secret he will yet shed many a tear. Now send me in return some Greta news.

“C. L.”

F. E. Babson.