Class. Book___ Copyright N^. COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. LAMB'S ESSAYS il A BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY SELECTED AXD ANISTOTATED BY ELIZABETH DEERING HANSCOM ^....Xf^^jhW BOSTON D LOTHROP COMPANY WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMFIELD (p ^ 4-' COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY D. LoTHKop Company. TO MY MOTHER AND FATHER I DEDICATE THE FIRST FRUITS OF THE EDUCATION I OWE TO THEIR LOVE AND CARE. PREFACE. T HE fame of Charles Lamb has increased rather than dimin- ished in the fifty-seven years elapsing since his death ; and still, as his writings are read and re-read, the personal interest in the man grows stronger. Other writers we are content to know simply as writers ; Charles Lamb Aye must know as a man. If excuse be needed for this volume, it is to be found in this fact. It seemed possible to select and unite such essays as were more directly autobiographical, adding to these a series of annotations, taken largely from the works of Lamb and his contemporaries, and thus to throw, if not new, yet stronger, light on the personal- ity of the gentle Elia. Such, in brief, is the plan of the book ; and if but one mind gains hereby a truer conception of the depth of that "well of English undefyled" from which Lamb drew so copiously, if but one heart is thrilled with a nobler emo- tion by contact with the strong life herein revealed, the writer has not failed in her purpose. The essays, with one exception, are copied from magazines in which they first appeared, and many passages omitted in later editions of the essays are replaced. The reasons for omitting these personal references are long since passed ; and we cannot afford to lose one word that came fresh and forceful from the author's teeming brain. "Corrections and reversions," Lamb always condemned; and all his admirers prefer to read him at first hand, with all his irregularities of spelling and originalities of diction. The original essays have been reproduced as nearly as possible, with the result, it is hoped, of bringing closer together writer and reader. E. D. H. Boston, March i, 1891. CONTENTS, LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB ..... THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE -t? NOTES ON THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE . . . . . ^ ON CHRIST'S HOSPITAL ..... NOTES ON Christ's hospital .... JLcs^christ's hospital five and thirty years ago NOTES ON Christ's hospital five and thirty years ago my relations . - . PAGE. I 7 / NOTES ON MY RELATIONS MACKERY END ' NOTES ON MACKERY END BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 26 47 75 79 103 108 120 124 134 137 1: CONTENTS. NOTES ON BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE . . 1 48 DREAM CHILDREN . . . . . . 150 NOTES ON DREAM CHILDREN . . . . 1 59 ■i^ RECOLLECTIONS OF THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE . 161 NOTES ON RECOLLECTIONS OF THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE ..... < OXFORD IN THE VACATION NOTES ON OXFORD IN THE VACATION THE SUPERANNUATED MAN NOTES ON THE SUPERANNUATED MAN OLD CHINA ..... NOTES ON OLD CHINA DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING . 232 NOTES ON DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING ...... 244 JEWS, QUAKERS, SCOTCHMEN, AND OTHER IMPER- FECT SYMPATHIES . . . . . 246 NOTES ' ON JEWS, QUAKERS, SCOTCHMEN, AND OTHER IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES . . • 262 AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH . . . 265 NOTES ON AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH , 268 A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA . . . 270 NOTES ON A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA 279 177 180 194 199 216 220 231 THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. The Register of Baptism in the Temple Church of London contains the following entry: LAMB. ^Charles, the son of John Lamb and Elizabeth, his wife, of Old Crown Office -^ Row in the Inner Temple, was born 10th February, 1775, and baptized 10th March following by the Rev. Mr. Jeffs. Six children had already been born to the Lamb family and christened in the Temple Church, of whom but two, John and Mary, survived infancy. When Charles was born, John was twelve and Mary ten years old; and the baby boy seems to have been the special pet and charge of the older sister. John Lamb, the father, was friend and ser- 2 THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. vitor of Samuel Salt, a bencher of the Inner Tem- ple, once a well known lawyer, now a name saved from oblivion only by the kindly tribute paid to his memory by the son of his old servant. To the same pen we owe our only reliable account of John Lamb, the elder. As Lovel, of the " Old Bench- ers " essay, he is presented to us as he walked in life, a genial, honest, sturdy Briton, with a touch of eccentricity, and a slight gift of j)oesy. Indeed, he published a volume of poems, of which he was ever after immeasurably proud ; and it is probable that his children inherited from him their power of ver- sification, as it is certain that from him .came the taint of insanity. Of liis pecuniary circumstances at this time we know nothing, but they coidd hardly have been affluent, and the growing family must have made sad drains on the slender salary paid by Mr. Salt, Accordingly, when it was time for the boy Charles to go to school, his father naturally bethought him- self of Christ's Hospital, a school founded and endowed for the sons of middle-class gentlemen, unable to properly educate their children. Through the influence of Mr. Salt — for years the good angel of the family — Charles was presented to Christ's Hospital on the ninth of October, 1782. Here he remained until November 23rd, 1789, at which time he had reached the rank of Deputy THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. 6 Grecian. Higher than this he was unable to rise, owing to an impediment in his speech, rendering impracticable any thought of entering the church. As only those were admitted to the rank of Grecian who were to be sent to the universities in prepara- tion for the church, Charles was obliged to leave without obtaining the honor of joining the " solemn Muftis of the school." At Christ's Hospital he received an education in those days termed "liberal," but reading strange to modern ideas. Of the masters, pupils, instruc- tion and discipline of the famous school, during the last two decades of the eighteenth century, we are fortunate in possessing graphic descriptions by Lamb, Coleridge, and Leigh Hunt. Kude and almost barbaric as the school seems to us, it was, nevertheless, one of the finest of its time, and Lamb always considered himself favored in that he had been educated in its ancient halls. Here he became an excellent Latinist and a fair Grecian, and here he spent some of the happiest years of his life. To estimate the influence of a school by the eru- dition of the masters and the instruction by them imparted is to consider but one factor in the prob- lem. The average boy learns more from his school- mates than from his teachers ; so no account o£ Charles Lamb's school life is complete without mention of his dearest friends, James Wliite and 4 THE LIFE OF- CHARLES LAMB. Samuel Taylor Coleridge : the one, gay, merry, and volatile, fit to develop all tlie fun-loving side of Lamb's nature ; the other, a poet, scholar, and meta- physician in his youth, "the friend of his serious thoughts." The intimacies founded in boyhood were interrupted only by death. Of White, Lamb wrote, " He carried away with him half the fun of the world when he died — of my world at least." Again, after many years, he wrote of Coleridge, " He was my fifty -years-old friend without a dissen- tion. I cannot think without an ineffectual refer- ence to him." Indeed, with the exception of the one dark cloud of his youth, the history of Charles Lamb's life is cliiefly a history of his friendships. To his friends he showed his rarely beautiful nature, offering to them the best of his life ; and those who would know the man Charles Lamb, must seek him, not in his essays and criticisms, not in memoirs and biographies, but in letters written to his friends. Until he was fifteen, Lamb spent his time between the Liner Temple and Christ's Hospital, with an occasional trip into Hertfordshire to visit his grandmother Field, housekeeper of the great house of Gilston, or " Blakesware." The only mod- ern elements in his life were the boys playing and studying in the ancient halls of Christ's Hospital, and even their unavoidable modernity was modified THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. 5 into a semblance of antiquity by the mediaeval garb and monastic rules of conduct imposed upon them. Born in the eighteenth century, he played in the quaint old Temple garden, worshipped where the Templars had hung their trophies brought home from holy wars, wore the dress of the time of Edward the Sixth, feasted his fancy in Mr. Salt's " closet of good old English reading," studied in the " old and awful cloisters " of Christ's Hospital, and, in general, lived in a mediaeval world ■ far removed from the bustling activity of modern London life. Therefore, it is not strange if his writings show that his mind received an unalterable bend toward the antique. We are fortunate in having a pen picture of Lamb when a school-boy, drawn by one of his friends, Charles Valentine LeGrice, of whom affec- tionate mention is made in the second Christ's Hos- pital essay. Mr. LeGrice says : " Lamb was an amiable, gentle boy, very sensible and keenly observing, indulged by his schoolfellows and by his master on account of his infirmity of speech. His countenance was mild; his complexion clear brown, with an expression which might lead you to think that he was of Jewish descent. His eyes were not each of the same color ; one was hazel, the other had specks of gray in the iris, mingled as we see red spots in the bloodstone. His step was b THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. plantigrade, which made his walk slow and pecid- iar, adding to the staid appearance of his figure." Such was Charles Lamb when he left school to enter the South Sea House, where his brother had been employed for several years. Of his life here we know only what he has been pleased to tell us in the " Recollections of the South Sea House." On the fifth of April, 1792, he obtained an appoint- ment in the accountant's office of the great East India Company, "the most celebrated commercial association of ancient or modern times," says a con- temporaneous writer. Up to 1775, the Lamb family continued to live in the Temple ; but in that year they removed to Little Queen Street, Holborn. At this time their condition was sad in the extreme. The father was almost imbecile, the mother was bed-ridden, the older son, a gay young bachelor, did nothing for the support of the family, and Charles was for six weeks in a mad-house at Hoxton. Mary Lamb was straining every nerve to contribute her share toward the maintenance of the family, and was worn out by needlework all day and the care of her mother all night. Moreover, she had suffered from sev- eral attacks of insanity, and the malady was likely to reappear at any time. So matters went on until the twenty-third of September, 1796, when the cri- sis came, and her patient, unselfish nature yielded THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. 7 to the strain so long endured. Just before dinner on that day, Mary, in a sudden fit of insanity, seized a knife, j)ursued lier assistant around the room, tossed about the dinner knives and forts, and finally stabbed her mother. Charles arrived to find his mother dead in her bed, his father seriously wounded in the head, his old aunt insensible, and his sister a raving maniac. At the inquest a ver- dict of lunacy was brought in, and Mary was imme- diately placed in a lunatic asylum. In his own sad and gentle way. Lamb described to Coleridge the tragedy and its consequences. No version of the story is complete without reference to these letters. About a week after his mother's death, he wrote : " My poor, dear, dearest sister, the unhappy and unconscious instrument of the Almighty's judg- ment on our house, is restored to her senses — to a dreadful sense and recollection of what is past, awful to her mind, and impressive (as it must be to the end of her life), but tempered with religious resignation and the reasonings of a sound judg- ment, which, in this early stage, knows how to dis- tinguish between a deed committed in a transient fit of frenzy and the terrible guilt of a mother's murder. I have seen her. I found her this morn- ing, calm and serene; far, very far from an inde- cent, forgetful serenity ; she has a most aif ectionate 8 THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. and tender concern for what has happened. In- deed, from the beginnmg — frightfid and hopeless as her disorder seemed — I had confidence enough in her strength of mind and religious principle, to look forward to a time when even she might recover tranquillity. " God be praised, Coleridge ! Wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once been otherwise than col- lected and calm; even on the dreadful day, and in the midst of the terrible scene, I jDreserved a tran- quillity which by-standers may have construed into indifference — a tranquillity not of despair. Is it folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious principle that most supported me? I allow much to other favorable circumstances. I felt that I had something else to do than to regret." Mary's recovery was so rapid, and her desire to \ leave the asylum was so great, that Charles thought ' it best to remove her. But John was strenuously opposed to this, and it was only after Charles had / • solemnly agreed to provide for her that she was removed to lodgings at Hackney, where he spent all his Sundays and holidays with her. Those were sad days when, after working at his desk all day, he went home to play cribbage with his imbecile father till late into the night. By and by, the old father and aunt died, and with them ceased their annuities, so that Lamb was left to his own THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. 9 resources, hardly exceeding one hundred pounds a year, from which he had to provide for his own subsistence and the care of Mary, subject to fre- quent attacks of insanity, which required her removal to an asylum for weeks at a time. So, to Charles Lamb, hardly more than a boy, came this great tragedy, blighting forever the dearest hopes of his heart and imposing a burden grievous to be borne. From the first he never faltered ; on the night of his mother's death, when he lay awake, "without terrors and without despair," he doubtless made a decision concerning the future course of his life, a decision from which he never turned aside, even to pity himself or bemoan his fate. What he promised to do for Mary he lovingly per- formed. At twenty-one he took up his life-work; at fifty-nine he laid it down, and during all those years he had unwaveringly fought a good fight. The annals of England are filled with the names of her active heroes, those who have done greatly; when the list of her passive heroes, those who have endured greatly, is made up, honorable mention must be accorded to Charles Lamb. For, as in all passive heroism, the thing which he did is not to be compared, for nobility, with the way in which he did it. So strong is the bond uniting children of the same parents, that there are, doubtless, many brothers capable of renouncing for their sisters their 10 THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. own hopes and plans. But Charles Lamb bore his cross proudly, as if it were a crown ; he lived all his life with a woman liable to seizures of violent mania, and he loved her with the whole strength of his soul; he comforted, honored, and kept her in sickness and in health, forsaking all others he clave only unto her, and he did it humbly, gratefully, calling himseK unworthy of the j)rotecting care which he felt that she exercised over him. His sacrifice was whole and complete ; he gave up all prospect of an independent life, and all hope of a home which sometime he might make for his chosen lady, where they might grow old together, with children and children's children around them. All that is most sweet, most sacred, and most myste- rious in a young man's fancy he renounced forever. Lamb's earliest writings were love poems, record- ing "fancied wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid," full of "peace, and meek quietness, and innocent loves, and maiden purity," dedicated to " Anna, mild-eyed maid." A little collection of these son- nets was ready for publication when the dreadful tragedy broke its thunder-cloud over the head of the youthful poet. How his wooing had prospered before this, we do not know, but probably the words written so many years after were true, in which he tells how, " in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, but persisting ever," he courted the shy, sweet THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. 11 maiden. Now, however, all was changed. In the first sad letter written to Coleridge on the day after his mother's d^ath, he says: "Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past vanity of that kind "; and again, in reference to the publication of the sonnets, he writes : " This is the pomp and paraphernalia of parting, with which I take my leave of a passion which has reigned so royally (so long) within me ; thus, with all its trap- pings of laureateship I fling it off, pleased and sat- isfied with myself that ,the weakness troubles me no longer. I am wedded, Coleridge, to the fortu|ies of my sister and poor old father." A little laier in the year, he " burned a little journal of my foolish passion which I had a long time kept." Even the name of his first love is unknown, except as he set it forth in the Elian essays, "Alice W n." Allusions to her are rare; two or three times in the later essays, occasionally in conversation, he mentioned her ; but down deep in his heart he bur- ied her memory, and he lived on, month after month, content; but sometimes, perhaps at the sight of a friend's wedded happiness, perhaps at the thought of the little children making young again his old comrades, the door of his heart would be unbarred, and dim through the dust of years would look forth the fair face of his first love. But, as he once aptly quoted, " the wind is tem- 12 THE LIFE OF CHAELES LAMB. V pered to the sliorn Lambs," and so, little by little, tbere came to the brother and sister comfort un- thought of in their first dreary hours. If Charles Jjamb was deprived of the love of wife and children, he was loved by his friends more dearly than falls to the fortune of most men ; and if the two lived all their lives subject to the fear of the dreadful ill- nesses periodically afflicting the sister, they were fortunate in this, that never again was the mania attended with serious results, and always there were premonitory symptoms. At such times, the two would set off immediately for Hoxton asylum, and one of their friends has told of meeting them, hur- rying across the fields, hand in hand, weeping bit- terly, and carrying a strait-jacket. With the excep- tion of that one attack in the winter of 1795—96, it is probable that Lamb was never insane. He may have suffered from a brief illness shortly before his death, but the evidence on this point is not clear. From this time on, the biographer of Lamb has few events to cln?onicle. His books and his friends made up his life. Lamb's earliest writings show few of the characteristics of his later work. His humor did not develop early, and the tone of his first poems, letters, and criticisms is grave and sedate, dealing largely with religious subjects. His first published writing appeared in 1797, in a little volume of poems to which Lamb, Coleridge, and THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. 13 Charles Lloyd contributed. In 1798, lie composed Ifiis "miniature romance," "Rosamund Gray," "the secret of whose success," says Mr. Ainger, "in the face of improbabilities and unrealities of many kinds, is one of the curiosities of literature." Lamb always had a fondness for the drama, and vainly imagined that he could write a play. Accordingly, in 1799, he wrote, and in 1802, published a five-act tragedy, " John Woodvil," which between the two dates had been offered to and flatly rejected by Mr. Kemble, then manager of the Drury Lane Theater. This play was largely the result of his explorations in the field of Elizabethan dramatists, but had ele- ments of incongruity and ridiculousness all its own. One more rebuff was needed to his dramatic aspira- tions and this was speedily furnished when, in 1806, his farce, "Mr. H.," was condemned at the same theater. This play was a pet with both Lamb and his sister, and was brought out with Elliston, the best comedian of the day, in its title role; but not even Elliston could atone for the slightness of inter- est, and the play was hissed by galleries and pit alike. Meanwhile, Lamb had been turning to good account his knowledge of the early English drama, and, in 1807, published the "Tales from Shake- speare," joint work of Mary and himself, than which there has been written "no better introduction to 14 THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. the study of Shakespeare," " no better initiation into the mind of Shakespeare, and into the subtleties of his language and rhythm." As a result of this suc- cessful work, he wrote another classic-paraphrase for children, "The Adventures of Ulysses." The next year saw the publication of his greatest work in criticism, " Specimens of English Dramatic Works Contemporary with Shakespeare," which not only placed the author in the front rank of critics, but revived the study of the old English dramatists, before this totally unknown to the average readers of the early part of the century. In the same year, appeared more of the joint work of Charles and Mary Lamb, the collection of tales, called "Mrs. Leicester's School," and " Poetry for Children," a book which, after a short period of popularity, went out of print during the author's life, and for fifty years was entirely lost sight of. In 1877, a copy was sent from Australia to a London publisher, and the book was once more brought to light. Some of the best work of this part of Lamb's life appeared in Z%e Reflector^ edited by Leigh Hmit. Notable among his contributions are the papers on "The Tragedies of Shakespeare," "The Genius and Char- acter of Hogarth," " Burial Societies ; and the Char- acter of an Undertaker," and " The Custom of Hiss- ing at the Theaters." In 1818, Lamb published his first book, entitled "The Works of Charles THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. 15 Lamb," in two volumes, and including several poems, the best known being "Hester" and "A Farewell to Tobacco," his rejected dramas, the tale of "Rosamund Grray," and a number of his best critical essays. In the year 1820, began a new period of Lamb's literary career, and during the next six years he did the best work of his life, and that by which, probably, he will be longest known. In 1820, was revived the London Magazine^ a journal devoted to criticism and literature, and including among its contributors William Hazlitt, Thomas Cariyle, John Keats, Thomas de Quincey, Allan Cunningham, Thomas Hood, Hartley Coleridge, Bryan Waller Procter, Henry Francis Cary, Walter Savage Lan- dor, and others hardly less famous. In Procter's Memoir of Charles Lamb is an exceedingly inter- esting account of the magazine, the contributors, and their monthly meetings. Lamb was engaged to contribute a series of essays, but no conditions seem to have been imposed on him, and he was free to ramble where his fancy led. The number of the magazine issued in August, 1820, contained an essay on " Recollections of the South Sea House," signed Elia. In the October issue, following, the same signature appeared at the close of a paper on " Oxford in the Vacation," and during the five years of the magazine's existence, the Elian essays were 16 THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. among its favorite features. In 1823, the first series was issued in a book containing about twenty- five essays, wliich had already won for their author an enviable position among men of letters. The name Elia (" call him EUia," Lamb wrote to his pub- lishers) was borrowed from a fellow-clerk at the South Sea House, a young Italian, who died before the essays were published. So the name fairly devolved to Lamb, who made it a household word in English-speaking countries. It would take many pages to characterize the style of the Elian essays. Procter, Ainger, Hazlitt, and Talfoiird have expend- ed their genius on the subject. What can a " modern " in a single introductory chapter ? One quotation must suffice ; let us take that from the words of his friend and companion, "Barry Cornwall." >^ " Of the Essays of ' Elia ' written originally for the London Magazine^ I feel it difficult to speak. They are the best among the good — his best. I see that they are genial, delicate, terse, full of thought and full of humor ; that they are delight- fully personal; and when he speaks of himstlf vou can not hear too much; that they are not imita- tions but adoptions. We encounter his likings and fears, his fancies (his nature) in all. The words have expanded their meaning, like o]3ened flowers ; the goodness of others is heightened by his *.wn THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. 17 tenderness ; and what is in nature hard and bad is qualified (qualified, not concealed) by the tender light of pity, which always intermingles with his own vision. Gravity and laughter, fact and fiction are heaped together, leavened in each case by char- ity and toleration; and all are marked by a wise humanity " It will be observed by the sagacious student of the entire essays, that however quaint or familiar, or (rarely, however) sprinkled with classical allu- sions, they are never vulgar, nor commonplace, nor pedantic. They are 'natural with a self -pleasing quaintness.' The phrases are not affected; but are derived from our ancestors, now gone to another country; they are brought back from the land of shadows and made denizens of England, in modern times. Lamb's studies were the lives and charac- ters of men; his humors and tragic meditations were generally dug out of his own heart; there are in them earnestness and pity and generosity and truth ; and there is not a mean or base thought to be found throughout all." In 1833, was published a second series of the Elian Essays, together with later contributions to the New Monthly and the Englishman 8 Magazine. Elia, however, was born and died with the London Magazine^ and Lamb's later work was of slight value compared with that done in his prime. 18 THE LIFE or CHAKLES LAMB. Indeed, though not an old man, he was beginning to feel the effects of age. No one can live under such constant strain as that imposed on Lamb by the frequent illnesses of his beloved sister, without growing old beyond his years. The confining routine of his office work was also beginning to wear on him sadly, and the letters of the years 1823 and 1824 are full of bitter complaints of his "severe step-wife," the " Day-Hag Business," who kept him, "not at bed and board, but at desk and board." In 1825, came the relief which he so gayly set forth in the essay on " The Superannuated Man." But this joy did not last long ; the " old familiar faces " that had made the pleasure of his rare holidays were more deeply missed when the days were all holidays, and, as Mr. Ainger well says, " There was an element of irritability in Lamb, due to the family temperament, which the new life, though he could now 'wander at^his own sweet will,' was little calculated to appease. The rest of which he dreamed, when he retired in the prime of . life from professional work, could only mean to such a tem- perament as Lamb's restlessness." So we see him growing more and more lonely and restless, doing little work of real value, writing long letters to his friends, re-reading his favorite books, and walking miles upon miles after — not with — that sagacious and inconsequent dog. Dash, to whose whims — and THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. 19 they were many — his master became a slave. One by one his oldest and dearest friends dropped away. Years before, he had written, as if in anticipation of this time : " For some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." In July, 1834, Coleridge died; it was as if half of Lamb's life had been suddenly taken away. Unceasingly he mourned his friend, more to him than brother. He survived him but five months. Walking, one day, on London Road, he stumbled against a stone and fell, slightly bruising his face. The wound was healing when erysipelas set in, and he sank quickly but without pain. On the 27th of December he died. " To him who never gave pain to a human being, whose genius yielded nothing but instruction and delight was awarded a calm and easy death." About a fortnight before, he had pointed out to Mary where he wished to be buried ; and there in the churchyard at Edmonton, his friends laid his tired body to rest. Not for twelve years was the grave opened to receive the body of Mary Lamb. During those years her attacks of illness became more frequent, and her mind was much weakened, but to the end she retained her sweet and gentle disposition. 20 THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. On tlie 20tli of May, 1847, she was at last released from her suffering; and the two who in their lives were so lovely in death were not divided. In the days of their prosperity, Charles and Mary Lamb were pre-eminently social beings ; and for many years they were surrounded by a choice circle of friends, without a reference to whom no sketch of their lives would be complete. The letters, diaries, and biographies of many of the men of letters of this period abound in references to evenings spent with the Lambs. " When you went to Lamb's rooms on the Wednesday evenings (his 'At Home')," writes Procter, "you generally found the card-table spread out. Lamb himself one of the players. On the corner of the table was a snuff- box ; and the game was enlivened by sundry ejacu- lations and pungent questions which kept alive the wits of the party present The supjDer of cold meat, on these occasions, was always on the side table; not very formal, as may be imagined; and every one might rise, when it suited him, and cut a slice or take a glass of porter, without reflect- ing on the abstinence of the rest of the company." At the head of the whist-table sat Lamb, " with a sort of Quaker primness," "the gentleness of his melancholy smile half lost in his intentness on the game." Talford has thus described him : " A light THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. 21 frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow it, clad in clerklike black, was 'surmounted by a head of form and expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying expression, though the prevalent feeling was sad ; and the nose, slightly curved and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and shadowy stem." Here, in the bare and shabby room, around this quaint figure, gath- ered a host of friends. Here Coleridge expanded his transcendental imageries to a wondering audi- ence ; here Wordsworth met his enthusiastic admir- ers ; here Hazlitt uttered " fine criticism with strug- gling emphasis " ; here Goodwin propounded his daring schemes ; here Liston and Kemble and Miss Kelly, the theatrical pets of the town, came for a quiet chat after the play was over; here young aspirants for fame met the literary lions, or stayed behind to bashfully read their maiden efforts to the kindly critics of the house. Among them all, "Miss Lamb moves gently about to see that each modest stranger is duly served; turning now and then an anxious, loving eye on Charles, which is softened into a half-humorous expression of resig- 22 THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. nation to inevitable fate, as lie mixes his second tmnbler." It cannot be denied that on these and similar occasions, Mary Lamb had cause for anxious thoughts. Too many times as we read the corre- spondence, we find reference to those unfortunate nights when Charles came home "very smoky and drinky." Talfourd and Procter have ineffectually tried to explain these references. Nevertheless, they are facts which must be recorded — sad and dreary facts, which we can only pass over silently and sorrowfully. More easy of excuse and expla- nation are Lamb's eccentricities, his sudden varia- tions of temper, his mercurial gayety, his profound depression, his many incongruities of mind and manner, whimsically set forth in his " Character of the Late Elia." One could hardly expect an ordi- nary character as the result of an inheritance streaked with insanity, a youth blighted by fearful tragedy, and a life spent on the verge of madness. The wonder is, that Lamb so lightly escaped the hereditary curse. Talfourd says, "Perhaps the true cause of this exemption .... will be found in the sudden claim made on his moral and intellectual nature by a terrible exigency, .and by his generous answer to that claim ; so that a life of self-sacrifice was rewarded by the preservation of unclouded reason." THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. 23 Probably the religious side of Lamb's life is the one least understood. Those who know him only as the writer of hon mots^ the genial essayist, the jovial carouser, know but the lesser portion of the man. His first letters breath a spirit of intense religious thought and activity; later, when his youth was passed and with it the desire to put in words his deepest feelings, he became a man, " with no religion to speak of." But down under the surface of his nature, " the stream glided still, the undercurrent of thought, sometimes breaking out in sallies which strangers did not understand, but always feeding and nourishing the most exquisite sweetness of disposition, and the most unobtrusive proofs of self-denying love." " Religion in him never died, but became a habit — a habit of endur- ing hardness, and cleaving to the steadfast perform- ance of duty in face of the strongest allurements to the pleasanter and easier course." So, once more, the story of Charles Lamb's life has been told — albeit haltingly and imperfectly. Of all the tributes to his momery there is none more true, more tender, or more touching than that of our own countryman, George William Curtis. I take the liberty to close my trifling sketch with his living words : "There is nothing to be added to the majesty and dignity of that life, and there is nothing that 24 THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB. can be taken away. Lamb was not a saint. He drank sometimes to excess. He, also, smoked tobacco. But if ever a good, great man walked tlie earth — good and great in the profoundest and noblest sense — full of that simple human charity and utter renunciation of self which is the ful- filling of the highest law and the holiest instinct, it was that man with a face of ' quivering sweetness,' ' nervous, tremulous, . . . . so slight of frame that he looked only fit for the most placid fortune ' ; who conquered poverty and hereditary madness, and won an imperishable name in English literature, and a sacred place in every generous heart — all in silence, and with a smile." r\E QUINCEY has observed that one chief pleasure we derive from Lamb's writing is due to a secret satisfaction in feel- ing that his admirers must always of necessity be a select few. There is an unpleasantly cynical flavor about the remark, but at the same time one understands to what it points. Thoroughly to understand and enjoy Lamb, one must come to entertain a feeling toward him almost like personal affection, and such a circle of intimates will always be small. It is necessary to come to the study of his writings in entire trustfulness, and having first cast away all prejudice It is in vain to attempt to convey an idea of the impression left by Lamb's style. One might as well seek to account for the perfume of lavender, or the flavor of quince. It is in truth an essence, prepared from flowers and herbs gathered in fields where the ordinary reader does not often range. And the nature of the writer — the alembic in which these various simples were distilled — was as rare for sweetness and purity as the best of those enshrined in the old folios, his "midnight darlings." If he had by nature the delicate grace of Marvell, and the quaint fancy of Quarles, he also shared the chivalry of Sidney, and could lay on himself "the lowliest duties" in the spirit of his best-beloved of all, John Milton. It is the man, Charles Lamb, that constitutes the enduring charm of his written words. — Alfred Ainger. 26 OLD BENCHERS. THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. \London Magazine, September, 1821.] On the soutli side of Fleet Street, near to where it adjoins Temple Bar, lies the Inner Temple. It extends southward to the Thames, and contains long ranges of melancholy buildings, in which lawyers (those reputed birds of prey) and their followers congregate. It is a district very memo- rable. About seven hundred years ago, it v/as the abiding place of the Knights Templars ; who erected there a church, which still uplifts its round tower (its sole relic), for the wonder of modern times. Fifty years since, I remember, you entered the precinct through a lowering archway that opened into a gloomy passage ; Inner Temple Lane. On the east side rose the church ; and on the west was a dark line of chambers, since pulled down and rebuilt, and now called Johnson's Buildings. At OT OLD BENCHERS. ^Si some distance westward was an open court, in which was a sun dial ! and, in the midst, a solitary fountain, that sent its silvery voice into the air above ; the murmur of which, descending, seemed to render the place more lonely. Midway, between the Inner Temple Lane and the Thames was, and I believe still is, a range of substantial chambers (overlooking the gardens and the busy river), called Crown Office Row. — Bryan Waller Procter (1866) 28 OLD BENCHERS. THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of my life, in tlie Temple. Its cliurcli, its halls, its gardens, its fountain, its river, I had almost said, for in those young years, what was this king of rivers to me, but a stream that watered our pleasant places? — these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more fre- quently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot : There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide. Till they decayd through pride. Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metrop- olis. What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time — the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet-street, by unexpected OLD BENCHERS. 29 avenues, into its magnificent ample squares, its classic green recesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the greater garden : that goodly pile Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, confronting, with massy contrast, the lighter, older, more fantastically shrouded one, named of Har- court, with the cheerful Crown-office Eow (place of my kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream, which washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned from her Twickenham Naiades! A man would give something to have been born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and fall, how many times ! to the astoundment of the young urchins, my contempo- raries, who, not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted to hail the won- drous work as magic! What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time which they measured, and to take their revelations of its flight immediately from heaven, holding corre- spondence with the fountain of light ! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its movement, 30 OLD BENCHERS. never catclied, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep ! » Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure, and silent heart-language of the old dial ! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd " carved it out quaintly in the sun " ; and, turning philosopher by the very occupation, provided it with mottoes more touching than tombstones. It was a pretty device of the gardener, recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of artificial gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowdrs. I must quote his verses a little higher up, OLD BENCHERS. 31 for they are full, as all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains and sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden scenes. What wondrous life is this I lead ! Ripe apples drop about my head. The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine. The nectarine, and curious peach, Into my hands themselves do reach. Stumbling on melons, as I pass, Insnar'd with flowers, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less Withdraws into its happiness. The mind, that ocean, where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain's sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide : There, like a bird, it sits and sings. Then whets and claps its silver wings ; And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. How well the skilful gardener drew, Of flowers and herbs, this dial new ! Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run : And, as it works, the industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. 32 OLD BENCHERS. How could such sweet and wholesome hours . Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers ?* The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little green nook behind the South Sea House, what a freshness it gives to the dreary pile ! Four little winged marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams from their innocent-wanton lips, in the square of Lin- coln's-inn, when I was no bigger than they were figured. They are gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, they tell me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. Why not then gratify children, by letting them stand? Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. They are awaken- ing images to them at least. Why must every- thing smack of man, and mannish? Is the w^orld all grown up? Is childhood dead? Or, is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best some of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments? The figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged living figures, that still flitter and chatter about that area, less gothic in appearance ? or is the splutter of their hot rhetoric one half so refreshing and innocent, as the little cool playful streams those exploded cherubs uttered ? * From a copy of verses entitled, The Garden. OLD BENCHERS. 33 Thej have lately gothicized the entrance to the Inner Temple-hall, and the library front, to assim- ilate them, I suppose, to the body of the hall, which they do not at all resemble. What is become of the winged horse that stood over the former? a stately arms ! and who has removed those frescoes of the Virtues, which Italianized the end of the Paper-buildings ? — my first hint of allegory ! They must account to me for these things, which I miss so greatly. The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call the parade ; but the traces are passed away of the footsteps which made its pavement awful ! It is be- come common and profane. The old benchers had it almost sacred to themselves, in the forepart of the day at least. They might not be sided or jostled. Their air and dress asserted the parade. You left wide spaces betwixt you, when you passed them. We walk on even ternis with their successors. The roguish eye of J —11, ever ready to be delivered of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. But what insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry? — whose person was a q^uadrate,, his step massy and elephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait peremptory and path- keeping, indivertible from liis way as a moving column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the brow- beater of equals and superiors, who made a solitude 34 OLD BENCHERS. of children wherever he came, for they fled his insufferable presence, as they would have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears, whether he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke, his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggra- vating the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at once, diving for it, under the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket; his waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original, and by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete gold. And so he paced the terrace. By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were coevals, and had nothing but that and their benchership in common. In politics Salt was a Whig, and Coventry a staunch Tory. Many a sar- castic growl did the latter cast out, for Coventry had a rough spinous humour, at the political con- federates of his associate, which rebounded from the gentle bosom of the latter like cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel Salt. S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, and of excellent discernment in the chamber prac- tice of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount to much. When a case of difficult dispo- OLD BENCHERS. 8e5 sition of money, testamentary or otherwise, came before him, he ordinarily handed it over with a few instructions to his man Lovel, who was a quick lit- tle fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural understanding, of which he had an uncommon share. It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man ; a child might pose him in a minute — indolent and procrastinating to the last degree. Yet men would give him credit for vast application in spite of himself. He was not to be trusted with himself with impunity. He never dressed for a dinner party but he forgot his sword they wore swords then — or some other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave him his cue. If there was anything which he could speak unseasonably, he was sure to do it. — He was to dine at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her execution ; — and L. who had a wary foresight of his probable hallucinations, before he set out, schooled him with great anxiety not in any possible manner to allude to her story that day. S. promised faithfully to observe the injunction. He had not been seated in the parlour, where the company was expecting the dinner summons, four minutes, when, a pause in the conversation ensu- ing, he got up, looked out of window, and pulling 36 OLD BENCHERS. down his ruffles — an ordinary motion with him — observed, " it was a gloomy day," and added, " Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances of this sort were perpetual. Yet S. was thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit person to be consulted, not alone in matters per- taining to the law, but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments of conduct — from force of manner entirely. He never laughed. He had the same good fortune among the female world, was a known toast with the ladies, and one or two are said to have died for love of him — I suppose, because he never trifled or talked gallantry with them, or paid them, indeed, hardly common attentions. He had a fine face and person, but wanted, methought, the spirit that should have shown them off with advant- age to the women. His eye lacked lustre. Lady Mary Wortley Montague was an exception to her sex : she says, in one of her letters, " I wonder what the women see in S. I do not think him by any means handsome. To me he appears an extraor- dinary dull fellow and to want common sense. Yet the fools are all sighing for him." Not so, thought Susan P ; who, at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening time, unaccompanied, wetting the pavement of B d Row, with tears that fell in drops which might be heard, because her friend had died that day — he, whom she had OLD BENCHERS. 37 pursued with a hopeless passion for the last forty years — a passion, which years could not extinguish or abate, nor the long resolved, yet gently enforced, puttings off of unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan P , thou hast now thy friend in heaven I Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of that name. He passed his youth in con- tracted circumstances, which gave him early those parsimonious habits which in after-life never for- sook him; so that, with one windfall or another, about the time I knew him, he was master of four or five hundred thousand ]30unds ; nor did he look, or walk, worth a moidore less. He lived in i^ gloomy house opposite the pump in Serjeant's-inn, Meet-street. J., the counsel, is doing self-imposed penance in it, for what reason I divine not, at this day. C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray, where he seldom spent above a day or two at a time in the summer ; but preferred, during the hot months, standing at his window in this damj), close, well-like mansion, to watch, as he said, "the maids drawing water all day long." I suspect he had his within-door reasons for the preference. Hio currus et arma fuere. He might think his treasures more safe. His house had the aspect of a strong box. C. was a close hunks — a hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a miser, none of the mad Elwes 38 OLD BENCHERS. breed, who tave brought discredit upon a character, which cannot exist without certain admirable points of steadmess and unity of purpose. One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily despise him. By taking care of the pence, he is often enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an immeasurable distance behind. C. gave away 30,000 1. at once in his life-time to a blind charity. His house-keeping was severely looked after, but he kept the table of a gentleman. He woidd know who came in and who went out of his house, but his kitchen chimney was never suffered to freeze. ^ Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew what he was worth in the world ; and having but a competency for his rank, which his indolent habits were little calculated to improve, might have suffered severely if he had not had honest people about him. Lovel took care of everything. He was at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, his " flapper," his guide, stop-watch, audi- tor, treasurer. He did nothing without consulting Lovel, or failed in anything without expecting and fearing his admonishing. He put himself almost too much in his hands, had they not been the purest in the world. He resigned his title almost to respect as a master, if L. could ever have forgot- ten for a moment that he was a servant. OLD BENCHERS. 39 I knew tMs Lovel. He was a man of an incor- rigible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and "would strike." In the cause of the oppressed he never considered inequalities, or calculated the number of his opponents. He once wrested a sword out of the hand of a man of quality that had drawn upon him ; and pommelled him severely with the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a female — an occasion upon which no odds against him could have prevented the interference of Lovel. He would stand next day bare-headed to the same person^ modestly to excuse his mterfer- ence. For L. never forgot rank, where something better was not concerned. He pleaded the cause of a delinquent in the treasury of the Temple so effectually with S. the then treasurer — that the man was allowed to keep his place. L. had the offer to succeed him. It had been a lucrative pro- motion. But L. chose to forego the advantage because the man had a wife and family. L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous poetry — next to Swift and Prior — moulded heads in clay or plaister of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural genius merely; turned cribbage boards, and such small cabinet toys, to perfection; took 40 OLD BENCHERS. a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility; made punch better than any man of his degree in England ; had the merriest quips and conceits, and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and inven- tions as you could desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Isaac Walton would have chosen to go a fishing with. I saw him in his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of human weakness — "a rem- nant most forlorn of what he was," — yet even then his eye would light up upon the mention of his favourite Garrick. He was greatest, he 'would say, in Bayes — " was upon the stage nearly throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals too, he would speak of his former life, and how he came up a little boy from Lincoln to go to service, and how his mother cried at parting with him, and how he returned after some few years' absence in his smart new livery to see her, and she blessed herself at the change, and could hardly be brought to believe that it was "her own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, till I have wished that sad second-childhood might have a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the common mother of us all in no long time after received him gently into hers. With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks OLD BENCHERS. 41 upon the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join to make up a third. They did not walk linked arm in arm in those days — " as now our stout triumvirs sweep the streets," — but generally with both hands folded behind them for state, or with one at least behind, the other carrying a cane. P. was a benevolent, but not a prepossessing man. He had that in his face which you could not term unhappiness ; it rather implied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks were colourless, even to whiteness. His look was uninviting, resembling (but without his sourness) that of our great philan- thropist. I know that he did good acts, but I could never make out what he was. Contemporary with these, but subordinate, was Daines Barring- ton — another oddity — he walked burly and square — in imitation, I think, of Coventry — howbeit he attained not to the dignity of his prototjrpe. Never- theless, he did pretty well, upon the strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and having a brother a bishop. When the account of his year's treas- urership came to be audited, the following singular charge was unanimously disallowed by the bench: " Item, disbursed Mr. Allen the gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff to poison the sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was old Barton — a jolly negation, who took upon him the ordering of the bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where 42 OLD BENCHEES. the bencliers dine — answering to the combination rooms at college — mucli to tlie easement of his less epicurean brethren. I know nothing more of him. — Then Read, and Twopenny — Read, good- humoured and personable — Twopenny, good-hu- moured, but thin, and felicitous in jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was attenu- ated and fleeting. Many must remember him (for he was rather of later date) and his singular gait, which was performed by three steps and a jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk; the jump com23aratively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he learned this figure, or what occasioned it, I could never discover. It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose any better than common walking. The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a trial of poising. Twopenny would often rally him uj)on his leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty; but ,W. had no relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely, when any thing had offended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson he was called — was of this period. He had the reputation of possessing more multifarious knowl- edge than any man of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less literate portion of the Temple. OLD BENCHERS. 43 I remember a pleasant passage, of tlie cook apply- ing to him, witli much formality of apology, for instructions how to write down edge bone of beef in his bill of commons. He was supposed to know, if any man in the world did. He decided the orthography to be — as I have given it — fortify- ing his authority with such anatomical reasons as dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned and happy. Some do spell it yet perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful resemblance between its shape, and that of the aspirate so denominated. I had almost forgotten Mingay with the iron hand — but he was somewhat later. He had lost his right hand by some accident, and supplied it with a grappling hook, which he wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the substitute, before I was old enoup-h to reason whether it were artificial or not. I remember the astonishment it raised in me. He was a blustering, loud-talking person ; and I recon- ciled the phenomenon to my ideas as an emblem of power — somewhat like the horns in the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. Baron Maseres, who walks (or did till very lately) in the costume of the reign of George the Second, closes my imperfect recollections of the old benchers of the Inner Temple. Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, if the like of you exist, why exist they no more for me? 44 OLD BENCHERS. Ye inexplicable, half-understood appearances, why comes in reason to tear away the preternatural mist, bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you? Why make ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to me — to my childish eyes — the myth- ology of the Temple? In those days I saw Gods, as " old men covered with a mantle," walking upon the earth. — Let the dreams of classic idolatry perish, — extinct be the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, — in the heart of childhood, there will, for ever, spring up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition — the seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital — from every-day forms educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that little Goshen there will be light, when the grown world flounders about in the darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, imagina- tion shall not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the earth. P. S. I have done injustice to the soft shade of Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imper- fect memory, and the erring notices of childhood ! Yet I protest I always thought that he had been a bachelor ! This gentleman, R. N., informs me, married young, and losing his lady in child-bed within the first year of their union, fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects of which, probably, he OLD BENCHERS. ^5 never thorouglily recovered. In what a new light does this place his rejection (O call it by a gentler name!) of mild Susan P , unravellmg mto beauty certain peculiarities of tins very shy and retiring character! -Henceforth let no one receive the narratives of Elia for true records ! They are, in truth, but shadows of fact - verisimilitudes, not verities -or sitting but upon the remote edges and outskirts of history. He is no such honest croni- cler as K. N., and would have done better perhaps to have consulted that gentleman, before he sent these incondite reminiscences to press. But the worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old and his new masters — would but have been puzzled at the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not, peradventure, of the license which Magaz^nes have arrived at in this personal age, or hardly dreams of their existence beyond the Gentleman s _-Tiis furthest monthly excursions in this nature kiving been long confined to the holy ground of honest Urhan's obituary. May it be long before his own name shall help to swell those columns ot unenvied flattery ! — Meantime, O ye new Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself the kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities over-take him — he is yet in green and vigorous senility — make allowances for them, remembering that "ye yourselves are old." bo 46 OLD BENCHERS. may tlie winged horse, your ancient badge and cognisance, still flourisli! so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your church and chambers ! so may the sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers, unpoisoned hop about your walks ! so may the fresh-coloured and cleanly nursery maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsey as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion ! so may the younkers of this generation eye you, pac- ing your stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration, with which the child Elia gazed on the old worthies that solemnized the parade before ye I OLD BENCHERS. 47 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. PAGE 29 — Crowrv-office Row. Since, partly rebuilt; but No. 2, Lamb's house, stands now nearly as it did then. 32 — The child's heart. Henry Crabb Robinson, in his diary, wrote of Lamb : " How Lamb con- firms the remark of the childlikeness of genius ! " 33 — Inner Temple-hall. This old hall, of James I.'s time was replaced in 1870 by a handsome Gothic hall, designed by Sidney Smirke. 33 — J II, Joseph Jekyll, M. P. A Master in Chancery, distinguished for his wit; solicitor- general to the Prince of Wales, in 1805. 34 — Samuel Salt. For many years the friend and patron of the Lamb family. It was into his " spacious closet of good old English reading " that Charles and Mary Lamb were "tumbled," and in which they "browsed at will." It was through his influence that Charles Lamb was presented to Christ's Hospital, and Mr. Procter thinks it proba- ble that the same kindly friend was efficient in pro- 48 OLD BENCHERS. curing Lamb's appointment at the East India House. 35 — His man Lovel. Under this name, Lamb has given us a portrait of his father, so clear and delicate, so distinct and softly tinted, as to remind us of an exquisite bit of ivory miniature-painting. 36 — Susan P . "Susan Pierson." — Key to Elia. 36 — B d Row. Bedford Row. 37 — Mad Elwes breed. John Meggot Elwes, a famous English miser, who lived in the great- est destitution, and at his death, in 1789, left £500,000. 39 — The liveliest little fellow breathing. In a poem, "Written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral," Lamb thus describes his father: " A merrier man, A man more apt to frame matter for mirth, Mad jokes, and antics for a Christmas eve; Making life social, and the laggard time To move on nimbly, never yet did cheer The little circle of domestic friends." 39 — A fine turn for humorous poetry. John Lamb published a volume of poems, of which the most were extraordinary and eccentric productions. 40 His old age. In the poem quoted above, occur these lines, also referring to John Lamb : OLD BENCHERS. 49 "A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man, A semblance most forlorn of what he was." 44 — That little Goshen. A favorite reference of Lamb's to the land of Goslien, which, because of the children of Israel, was exempted from the plagues of Egypt. 44 — R. N. Randal Norris, who held an office at Christ's Hospital, when Charles Lamb was a pupil there, and afterward became sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple. His last hours are commemo- rated in the Elian essay, " A Death Bed," an essay very slightly altered from a letter to Henry Crabb Robinson, in which Lamb writes : " He was my friend and my father's friend all the life I can remember. I seem to have made foolish friend- ships ever since. Those are friendships which ontKve a second generation. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes I was still the child he first knew me. To the last he called me Charley. I have none to call me Charley now." 50 Christ's hospital. ON CHEIST'S HOSPITAL, AND THE CHAE- ACTEE OE THE CHEIST'S HOSPITAL BOYS. [Gentleman'' s Magazme, June, 1813] Perhaps there is not a foundation in the country so truly English, taking that word to mean what Englishmen wish it to mean; — something solid, unpretending, of good character, and free to all. More boys are to be found in it, who issue from a greater variety of ranks, than in any other school in the kingdoms and as it is the most various, so it is the largest, of all the free schools .... The boys themselves (at least it was so in my time) had no sort of feeling of the difference of one another's ranks out of doors. The cleverest boy was the noblest, let his father be who he might. Christ-Hospital is a nursery of tradesmen, of mer- chants, of naval officers, of scholars ; it has pro- duced some of the greatest ornaments of their time Christ's hospitat. 51 Christ-Hospital, I believe, towards tlie close of the last century, and the beginning of the present, sent out more living writers, in its proportion, than any other school. -^ Leigh Hunt (1850.) 52 Christ's hospital. ON CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, AND THE CHAR- ACTER OF THE CHRIST'S HOSPITAL BOYS. A GREAT deal lias been said about the Governors of this Hospital abusing their right of presentation, by presenting the children of opulent parents to the Institution. This may have been the case in an instance or two ; and what wonder, in an establishment consisting, in town and country, of upwards of a thousand boys ! But I believe there is no great danger of an abuse of this sort ever becoming very general. There is an old quality in human nature,, which will perpetually present an adequate preventive to this evil. While the coarse blue coat and the yellow hose shall continue to be the costume of this school, (and never may modern refinement innovate upon the venerable fashion!) the sons of the Aristocracy of this country, cleric or laic, will not often be obtruded upon this seminary. Christ's hospital. 53 I own, 1 wish there was more room for such complanits. I cannot but think that a sprinlding of the sons of respectable parents among them has an admirable tendency to liberalize the whole mass ; and that to the great proportion of Clergymen's children in particular which are to be found among them it is owing, that the foundation has not long since degenerated into a mere Charity-school, as it must do, upon the plan so hotly recommended by some reformists, of recruiting its ranks from the offspring of none but the very lowest of the people. I am not learned enough in the history of the Hospital to say by what steps it may have departed from the letter of its original charter; but believ- ing it, as it is at present constituted, to be a great practical benefit, I am not anxious to revert to first principles, to overturn a positive good, under j)!'^- tence of restoring something which existed in the days of Edward the Sixth, when the face of every thing around us was as different as can be from the present. Since that time the opportunities of instruction to the very lowest classes (of as much instruction as may be beneficial and not pernicious to them) have multiplied beyond what the pro- phetic spirit of the first suggester of this charity* could have predicted, or the wishes of that holy * Bishop Ridley, in a Sermon preached before King Edward the Sixth. 54 Christ's hospital. man have even aspired to. There are parochial schools, and Bell's and Lancaster's, with their arms open to receive every son of ignorance, and dis- perse the last fog of uninstructed darkness which dwells upon the land. What harm, then, if in the heart of this noble City tliere should be left one receptacle, where parents of rather more liberal views, but whose time-straightened circumstances do not admit of affording their children that better sort of education which they themselves, not with- out cost to their parents, have received, may with- out cost send their sons? For such Christ's Hospital unfolds her bounty. To comfort the desponding parent with the thought that, without diminishing the stock which is imperiously demand- ed to furnish the more pressing and homely wants of our nature, he has disposed of one or more per- haps out of a numerous offspring, under the shelter of a care scarce less tender than the paternal, where not only their bodily cravings shall be supplied, but that mental pahulum is also dispensed, which He hath declared to be no less necessary to our suste- nance, who said, that " not by bread alone man can live." Here neither, on the one hand, are the youth lifted up above their family, which we must suppose liberal though reduced ; nor, on the other hand, are they liable to be depressed below its level by the mean habits and sentiments which a common char- Christ's hospital. 55 ity-school generates. It is, in a word, an Institu- tion to keep those who have yet held up their heads in the world from sinking ; to keep alive the spirit of a decent household, when poverty was in danger of crushing it; to assist those who are the most willing, but not always the most able, to assist them- selves ; to separate a child from his family for a season, in order to render him back hereafter, with feelings and habits more congenial to it, than he could even have attained by remaining at home in the bosom of it. It is a preserving and renovat- ing principle, an antidote for the res angusta domi^ when it presses, as it always does, most heavily upon the most ingenuous natures. This is Christ's Hospital; and whether its char- acter would be improved by confining its advant- ages to the very lowest of the people, let those judge who have witnessed the looks, the gestures, the behaviour, the manner of their play with one another, their deportment towards strangers, the whole aspect and physiognomy of that vast assem- blage of boys on the London foundation, who freshen and make alive again with their sports the else moiddering cloisters of the old Grey Friars — which strangers who have never witnessed, if they pass through Newgate-street, or by Smithfield, would do well to go a little out of their way to see : let those judge, I say, who have compared this 66 chkist's hospital. scene witli tlie abject countenances, the squalid mirth, the broken-down spirit, and crouching, or else fierce and brutal deportment to strangers, of the very different sets of little beings who range round the precincts of common orphan schools and places of charity. For the Christ's Hospital boy feels that he is no charity-boy; he feels it in the antiquity and regal- ity of the foundation to which he belongs ; in the usage which he meets with at school, and the treat- ment he is accustomed to out of its bounds ; in the respect, and even kindness, which his well-known garb never fails to procure him in the streets of the Metropolis ; he feels it in his education, in that meas- ure of classical attainments, which every individual at that school, though not destined to a learned profession, has it in his power to procure, attainments which it would be worse than folly to put it in the reach of the labouring classes to acquire : he feels it in the numberless comforts, and even magnificences, which surround him ; in his old and awful cloisters, with their traditions ; in his spacious school-rooms, and in the well-ordered, airy, and lofty rooms where he sleeps; in his stately dining hall, hung round with pictures by Verrio, Lely, and others, one of them surpassing in size and grandeur almost any other in the kingdom ; * above all, in the very *By Verrio, representing James tire Second on his throne, CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 57 extent and magnitude of the body 'to which he belongs, and the consequent spirit, the intelligence, and public conscience, which is the result of so' many various yet wonderfully combining members. Compared with this last-named advantage, what is the stock of information, (I do not here speak of book-learning, but of that knowledge which boy receives from boy,) the mass of collected opinions, the intelligence in common, among the few and narrow members of an ordinary boarding-school? The Christ's Hospital or Blue-coat boy has a distmctive character of his own, as far removed from the abject qualities of a common charity-boy, as it is from the disgusting forwardness of a lad brought up at some other of the Public Schools, There i^ pride in it, accumulated from the circum- stances which I have described as differencing him from the former; and there is a restraimncj mod- esty, from a sense of obligation and dependance, which must ever keep his deportment from assim- ilating to that of the latter. His very garb, as it IS antique and venerable, feeds his self-respect ; as It IS a badge of dependance, it restrains the natural petulance of that age from breaking out into overt- acts of insolence. This produces silence and a surrounded by his courtiers (all curious portraits), receiving the mathematical pupils at their annual presentation, a custom still kept up on New-year's-day at Court. 58 Christ's hospital. reserve before strangers, yet not that cowardly shy* ness which boys mewed up at home will feel; he will speak up when spoken to, but the stranger must begin the conversation with him. Within his bounds he is all fire and play; but in the streets he steals along with all the self-concentra- tion of a young monk. He is never known to mix with other boys ; they are a sort of laity to him. All this proceeds, I have no doubt, from the con- tinual consciousness which he carries about him of the difference of his dress from that of the rest of the world; with a modest jealousy over himself, lest, by over-hastily mixing with common and secular playfellows, he should commit the dignity of his cloth. Nor let any one laugh at this ; for, considering the projDcnsity of the multitude, and especially of the small multitude, to ridicule any- thing unusual in dress — above all, where such peculiarity may be construed by malice into a mark of dis23aragement — this reserve will appear to be nothing more than a wise instinct in the Blue- coat boy. That it is neither pride nor rusticity, at least that it has none of the offensive qualities of either, a stranger may soon satisfy himself by put- ting a question to any of these boys : he may be sure of an answer couched in terms of plain civil- ity, neither loquacious nor embarrassed. Let him put the same question to a Parish boy, or to one Christ's hospital. 59 of tlie Trenclier-caps in tlie Cloisters ; and tlie impudent reply of the one shall not fail to exasper- ate, any more than the certain servility, and merce- nary eye to reward, which he will meet with in the other, can fail to depress and sadden him. The Christ's Hospital boy is a religious charac- ter. His school is eminently a religious founda- tion ; it has its peculiar prayers, its services at set times, its graces, hymns, and anthems, following each other in an almost monastic closeness of suc- cession. This religious character in him is not always mitinged with superstition. That is not wonderful, when we consider the thousand tales and traditions which must circulate, with undisturbed credulity, amongst so many boys, that have so few checks to their belief from any intercourse with the world at large; upon whom their equals in age must work so much, their elders so little. With this leaning towards an over-belief in matters of Religion, which will soon correct itself when he comes out into society, may be classed a turn for Romance above most other boys. This is to be traced in the same manner to their excess of society with each other, and defect of mingling with the world. Hence the peculiar avidity with which such books as the Arabian Nights Entertainments, and others of a still wilder cast, are, or at least were in my time, sought for by the boys. I remember 60 Christ's hospital. when some lialf dozen of them set off from school, without map, card, or compass, on a serious expedi- tion to find out Philip QuarlVs Island. The Christ's Hospital Boy's sense of right and wrong is peculiarly tender and apprehensive. It is even apt to run out into ceremonial observances; and to impose a yoke upon itself beyond the strict obligations of the moral law. Those who were con- temporaries with me at that School iive-and-twenty or thirty years ago, will remember with what more than Judaic rigour the eating of the fat of certain boiled meats* was interdicted. A boy would have blushed, as at the exposure of some heinous immor- ality, to have been detected eating that forbidden portion of his allowance of animal food, the whole of which, while he was in health, was little more than sufficient to allay his hunger. The same, or even greater, refinement was shewn in the rejection of certain kinds of sweet cake. What gave rise to these supererogatory penances, these self-denying ordinances, I could never learn ;f they certainly * Under the denomination of gags. 1 1 am told that the present Steward, who has evinced on many occasions a most praise-worthy anxiety to promote the comfort of the boys, had occasion for all his address and perse- verance to eradicate the first of these mifortunate prejudftces, in which he has at length happily succeeded, and thereby restored to one half of the animal nutrition of the School those honours which painful superstition and blind zeal had so long conspired to withhold from it. Christ's hospital. 61 argue no defect of the conscientious principle. A little excess in that article is not undesirable in youth, to make allowance for the inevitable waste which comes in maturer years. But in the less ambiguous line of duty, in those directions of the moral feelings which cannot be mistaken or depre- ciated, I will relate what took place in the year 1785, when Mr. Perry, the Steward, died. I must be pardoned for taking my instances from my own times. Indeed, the vividness of my recollections, while I am upon this subject, almost bring back those times ; they are present to me still. But I believe that in the years which have elapsed since the period which I speak of, the character of the Christ's Hospital boy is very little changed. Their situation in point of many comforts is improved; but that which I ventured before to term the public conscience of the School, the pervading moral sense, of which every mind partakes, and to which so many individual minds contribute, remains, I believe, pretty much the same as when I left it. I have seen within this twelvemonth almost the change which has been produced upon a boy of eight or nine years of age, upon being admitted into that school ; how, from a pert young coxcomb, who thought that all knowledge was com- prehended within his shallow brains, because a smat- tering of two or three languages and one or two 62 Christ's hospital. sciences were stuffed into him by injudicious treat- ment at home, by a mixture with the wholesome society of so many school-fellows, in less time than I have spoken of, he has sunk to his own level, and is contented to be carried on in the quiet orb of modest seK-knowledge in which the common mass of that unpresumptuous assemblage of boys seem to move on : from being a little unfeeling mortal, he has got to feel and reflect. Nor would it be a difficult matter to shew how at a school like this where the boy is neither entirely separated from home, nor yet exclusively under its influence, the best feelings, the filial for instance, are brought to a maturity, which they could not have attained under a comj)letely domestic education; how the relation of parent is rendered less tender by unre- mitted association, and the very awfulness of age is best apprehended by some sojourning amidst the comparative levity of youth; how absence, not drawn out by too great extension into alienation or forgetfulness, puts an edge upon the relish of occasional intercourse, and the boy is made the better child by that which keeps the force of that relation from being felt as perpetually ^Dressing on him ; how the substituted paternity, into the care of which he is adopted, while in everything substantial it makes up for the natural, in the necessary omis- sion of individual fondnesses and partialities, directs Christ's hospital. 63 the mind only the more strongly to appreciate that natural and first tie, in which such weaknesses are the bond of strength, and the appetite which craves after them betrays no j)erverse palate But these speculations rather belong to the question of the comparative advantages of a public over a private education in general. I must get back to my favourite school; and to that which took place when our old and good Steward died. And I will say, that when I think of the frequent instances which I have met with in children, of a hard-heartedness, a callousness, and insensibility to the loss of relations, even of those who have begot and nourished them, I cannot but consider it as a proof of something in the peculiar conformation of that School, favourable to the expansion of the best feelings of our nature, that, at the period which I am noticing, out of five hundred boys there was not a dry eye to be fomid among them, nor a heart that did not beat with genuine emotion Every impulse to play, until the funeral day was past, seemed sus- pended throughout the School ; and the boys, lately so mirthful and spritely, were seen j)acing their cloisters alone, or in sad groupes standing about, few of them without some token, such as their slender means could provide, a black ribband, or something to denote respect, and a sense of their loss. The time itself was a time of anarchy, a time 64 Christ's hospital. in wliicli all authority (out of scliool-liours) was abandoned. The ordinary restraints were for those days superseded; and the gates, which at other times kept us in, were left without watchers. Yet, with the exception of one or two graceless boys at most, who took advantage of that suspension of authorities to sulk out^ as it was called, the whole body of that great School kej^t rigorously within their bounds by a voluntary self -imprisonment ; and they who broke bounds, though they escaped pun- ishment from any Master, fell into a general disre- pute among us, and, for that which at any other time would have been applauded and admired as a mark of spirit, were consigned to infamy and reprobation : so much natural government have gratitude and the principles of reverence and love, and so much did a respect to their dead friend pre- vail with these Christ's Hospital boys above any fear which his presence among them when living could ever produce. And if the impressions which were made on my mind so long ago are to be trusted, very richly did their Steward deserve this tribute. It is a pleasure to me even now to call to mind his portly form, the regal awe which he always contrived to inspire, in spite of a tenderness and even weakness of nature that would have enfeebled the reins of discipline in any other mas- ter ; a yearning of tenderness towards those under Christ's hospital. 65 Ms protection, wliich could make five hundred boys at once feel towards liim. eacli as to tlieir individual father. He liad faults, with, which we had nothing to do ; but with all his faults, indeed Mr. Perry was a most extraordinary creature. Contemporary with him, and still living, though he has long since resigned his occupation, will it be impertinent to mention the name of our excellent Upper Gram- mar-Master, the Rev. James Boyer?. He was a disciplinarian, indeed, of a different stamp from him whom I have just described ; but, now the terrors of the rod, and of a temper a little too hasty to leave the more nervous of us quite at our ease to do justice to his merits in those days, are long since over, ungrateful were we if we should refuse our testimony to that unwearied assiduity with which he attended to the particular improve- ment of each of us. Had we been the offspring of the first gentry in the land, he could not have been instigated by the strongest views of recompence and reward to have made himself a greater slave to the most laborious of all occupations than he did for us sons of charity, from whom, or from our parents, he could expect nothing. He has had his reward in the satisfaction of having discharged his duty, in the pleasurable consciousness of having advanced the respectability of that Institution to which, both man and boy, he was attached: in 66 Christ's hospital. the honours to which so many of his pupils have successfully aspired at both our Universities ; and in the staff with which the Governors of the Hospi- tal at the close of his hard labours, with the highest expressions of the obligations the School lay under to him, unanimously voted to present him. I have often considered it among the felicities of the constitution of this School, that the offices of Steward and Schoolmaster are kept distinct; the strict business of education alone devolving upon the latter, while the former has the charge of all things out of school, the controul of the provisions, the regulation of meals, of dress, of play, and the ordinary intercourse of the boys. By this divi- sion of management, a superior respectability must attach to the teacher, while his office is unmixed with any of these lower concerns. A still greater advantage over the construction of common board- ing-schools is to be found in the settled salaries of the Masters, rendering them totally free of obliga- tion to any individual pupil or his parents. This never fails to have its effect at schools where each boy can reckon up to a hair what profit the master derives from him, where he views him every day in the light of a caterer, a provider for the family, who is to get so much by him in each of his meals. Boys will see and consider these things ; and how much must the sacred character of Preceptor suffer Christ's hospital. 67 in their minds by these degrading associations! The very bill which the pupil carries home with him at Christmas, eked out, perhaps, with elaborate though necessary minuteness, instructs him that his teachers have other ends than the mere love to Learning in the lessons which they give him ; and though they put into his hands the fine sayings of Seneca or Epictetus, yet they themselves are none of those disinterested pedagogues to teach philoso- phy gratis. The master, too, is sensible that he is seen in this light ; and how much this must lessen that affectionate regard to the learners which alone can sweeten the bitter labour of instruction, and convert the whole business into unwelcome and uninteresting task-work, many Preceptors that I have conversed with on the subject are ready with a sad heart to acknowledge. From this inconven- ience the settled salaries of the Masters of this School in great measure exempt them; while the happy custom of chusing Masters (indeed every Officer of the Establishment) from those who have received their education there, gives them an inter- est in advancing the character of the School, and binds them to observe a tenderness and a respect to the children, in which a stranger, feeling that inde- pendence which I have spoken of, might well be expected to fail. In affectionate recollections of the place where 68 Christ's hospital. . he was bred up, in hearty recognitions of old school-fellows met with again after the lapse of years, or in foreign countries, the Christ's Plospital boy yields to none ; I might almost say, he goes beyond most other boys. The very compass and magnitude of the School, its thousand bearings, the space it takes up in the imagination beyond the sphere of ordinary schools, impresses a re-mem- brance, accompanied with an elevation of mind, that attends him through life. It is too big, too affecting an object, to pass away quickly from his mind. The Christ's Hospital boy's friends at school are commonly his intimates through life. For me, I do not know whether a constitutional imbecility does not incline me too obstinately to cling to the remembrances of childhood; in an inverted ratio to the usual sentiments of mankind, nothing that I have been engaged in since seems of any value or importance, compared to the colours which imagination gave to everything then. I belong to no hody corporate such as I then made a part of. — And here, before I close, taking leave of the general reader, and addressing myself solely to my old schoolfellows, that were contemporaries with me from the year 1782 to 1789, let me have leave to remember some of those circumstances of our School, which they will not be unwilling to have brought back to their minds. Christ's hospital, 69 And first, let us remember, as first in importance in our childish eyes, the young men (as they almost were) who, under the denomination of Grecians^ were waiting the expiration of the period when they shoidd be sent, at the charges of the Hospital, to one or other of our Universities, but more fre- quently to Cambridge. These youths, from their superior acquirements, their superior age and stat- ure, and the fewness of their numbers (for seldom above two or three at a time were inaugurated into that high order), drew the eyes of all, and espe- cially of the younger boys, into a reverent ob- servance and admiration. How tall they used to seem to us ! how stately would they pace along the Cloisters!— while the play of the lesser boys was absolutely suspended, or its boisterousness at least allayed, at their presence ! Not that they ever beat or struck the boys — that would have been to have demeaned themselves — the dignity of their j)ersons alone insured them all respect. The task of blows, of corporal chastisement, they left to the common Monitors, or Heads of Wards, who, it must be con- fessed, in our time had rather too much licence allowed them to oppress and misuse their inferiors; and the interference of the Grecian, who may be considered as the spiritual power, was not unfre- quently called for, to mitigate by its mediation the heavy unrelenting arm of this temporal power, or 70 Christ's hospital. monitor. In fine, the Grecians were the solemn Muftis of the School, ^ras were computed from their time ; — it used to be said, such or such a thing was done when S or T was Grecian. As I ventured to call the Grecians the Muftis of the School, the King's boys,* as their character then was, may well pass for the Janizaries. They were the terror of all the other boys ; bred up under that hardy sailor, as well as excellent mathemati- cian, and co-navigator with Captain Cook, William Wales. All his systems were adapted to fit them for the rough element which they were destined to encounter. Frequent and severe punishments, which were expected to be borne with more than Spartan fortitude, came to be considered less as inflictions of disgrace than as trials of obstinate endurance. To make his boys hardy, and to ^ive them early sailor habits, seemed to be his only aim; to this everything was subordinate. Moral obliqui- ties, indeed, were sure of receiving their full recom- pence, for no occasion of laying on the lash was ever let slip ; but the effects expected to be pro- duced from it were something very different from contrition or mortification. There was in William Wales a perpetual fund of humour, a constant glee about him, which, heightened by an inveterate pro- *The mathematical pupils, bred up to the sea, on the founda- tion of Charles the Second. CHRIST S HOSPITAL. 71 vincialism of North-country dialect, absolutely took away the sting from his severities. His punish- ments were a game at j^atience, in which the Master was not always worst contented when he found him- self at times overcome by his pupil. What success this discipline had, or how the effects of it oper- ated upon the after-lives of these King's boys, I cannot say ; but 1 am sure that, for the time, they were absolute nuisances to the rest of the School. Hardy, brutal, and often wicked, they were the most graceless lump in the whole mass ; older and bigger than the other boys (for by the system of their education they were kept longer at school by two or three years than any of the rest, except the Grecians) they were a constant terror to the younger part of the School; and some who may read this, I doubt not, will remember the consterna- tion into which the juvenile fry of us were thrown, when the cry was raised in the Cloisters, that the First Order was coming — for so they termed the first form or class of those boys. Still these sea- boys answered some good purposes in the School. They were the military class among the boys, fore- most in athletic exercises, who extended the fame of the prowess of the School far and near ; and the apprentices in the vicinage, and sometimes the butchers' boys in the neighbouring market, had sad occasion to attest their valour. 72 Christ's hospital. The time would fail me if I were to attempt to enumerate all those circumstances, some pleasant, some attended with some pain, which, seen through the mist of distance, come sweetly softened to the memory. But I must crave leave to remember our transcending superiority in those invigorating sports, leap-frog, and basting the bear ; our delight- ful excursions in the Summer holidays to the New River, near Newington, where, like otters, we would live the long day in the water, never caring for dressing ourselves when we had once stript ; our savoury meals afterwards, when we came home almost famished with staying out all day without our dinners ; our visits at other times to the Tower, where, by antient privilege, we had free access to all the curiosities ; our solemn processions through the City at Easter, with the Lord Mayor's largess of buns, wine, and a shilling, with the festive ques- tions and civic pleasantries of the dispensing Alder- men, which were more to us than all the rest of the banquet; our stately suppings in public, where the well-lighted hall, and the confluence of well-dressed company who came to see us, made the whole look more like a concert or assembly, than a scene of a plain bread and cheese collation; the annual ora- tions upon St. Matthew's Day, in which the Senior Scholar, before he had done, seldom failed to reckon up, among those who had done honour to Christ's hospital. 73 our School by being educated in it, the names of those accomplished critics and Greek scholars, Joshua Barnes and Jeremiah Markland (I marvel they left out Camden while they were about it). Let me have leave to remember our hymns, and anthems, and well-toned organ ; the doleful tune of the burial anthem chanted in the solemn Cloisters, upon the seldom-occurring funeral of Sjome school- fellow; the festivities at Christmas, when the rich- est of us would club our stock to have a gaudy day, sitting round the fire, replenished to the heiglit with logs ; and the pennyless, and he that could contribute nothing, partook in all the mirth, and in some of the substantialities of the feasting : the carol sung by night at that time of the year, which, when a young boy, I have so often lain awake from seven (the hour of going to bed) till ten, when it was sung by the older boys and monitors, and have listened to it, in their rude chanting, till I have been transported in fancy to the fields of Bethle- hem, and the song which was sung at that season by Angels' voices to the shepherds. Nor would I willingly forget any of those things which administered to our vanity. The hem- stitched bands, and town-made shirts, which some of the most fashionable among us wore ; the town- girdles, with buckles of silver, or shining stone; the badges of the sea-boys; the cots, or superior 74 Christ's hospital. shoe-strings of the Monitors ; the medals of the markers (those who were appointed to hear the Bible read in the Wards on Sunday morning and evening), which bore on their obverse in silver, as certain parts of our garments carried in meaner metal, the countenance of our Founder, that godly and royal child. King Edward the Sixth, the flower of the Tudor name — the young flower that was untimely cropt as it began to fill our land with its early odours — the boy-patron of boys — the serious and holy child who walked with Cranmer and Ridley — fit associate, in those tender years, for the bishops and future martyrs of our Church, to receive, or (as occasion sometimes proved) to give instruction. "But ah; what means the silent tear? Why e'en 'mid joy my bosom heave? Ye long-lost scenes, enchantments^dear! Lo ! now I linger o'er your grave. *' Fly then, ye hours of rosy hue, And bear away the bloom of years ! And quick succeed, ye sickly crew Of doubts and sorrows, pains and fears ! *' Still will I ponder Fate's unalter'd plan, Nor, tracing back the child, forget that I am man." * * Lines meditated in the Cloisters of Christ's Hospital, in the " Poetics " of Mr. George Dyer. Christ's hospital. 75 ON CHKIST'S HOSPITAL, AND THE CHAR- ACTER OF THE CHRIST'S HOSPITAL BOYS. [This essay was the author's sole contribution to the Gentle- man's Magazine, and was suggested by various abuses of the right of presentation, recently brought to public notice. Christ's Hospital was founded expressly for orphans, but changing con- ditions had caused the governors to admit boys whose parents were not able to provide for their support and education. At the time that this essay was written, however, the son of a clergy- man with ;i^i2oo a year was being educated at the school. Such evident disregard of the spirit as well as the letter of the foun- dation did not pass unheeded, and the friends and beneficiaries of the school rushed into print for the preservation of the ancient rules of the institution. E. D. H.J PAGE 52 — Costume of this school, Leigli Hunt, who was a pupil at Christ's Hospital, not long after Lamb left, thus describes the costume of the boys : " Our dress was of the coarsest and quaintest kind, but was respected out of doors, and is so. It con- sisted of a blue drugget gown, or body, with ample coats to it; a yeUow vest underneath in winter- time ; small-clothes of Russia duck ; worsted yellow 76 cheist's hospital, stockings ; a leathern girdle ; and a little black worsted cap, usually carried in tlie hand. I believe it was the ordinary dress of children in humble life, during the reign of the Tudor s. We used to flat- ter ourselves that it was taken from the monks. 59 — A religious foundation. Leigh Hunt, in his Autobiography gives a different view of the religious services : " On Sundays, the school-time of the other days was occupied in church, both morn- ing and evening ; and as the Bible was read to us every day before every meal, and on going to bed, besides prayers and graces, we rivalled the monks in the religious part of our duties. The effect was certainly not what was intended. ... I, for one, . . . began secretly to become as indiffer- ent as I thought the preachers ; and, though the morals of the school were in the main excellent and exemplary, we all felt, without knowing it, that it was the orderliness and example of the general sys- tem that kept us so, and not the leligious part of it; which seldom entered our heads at all, and only tired us when it did." 60 — Philip QuarlVs Island. "The Hermit, or the Sufferings and Adventures of Philip Quarll, an Englishman," an anonymous Romance, largely an imitation of "Robinson Crusoe," published in 1727. 65 — Hev. James Boyer. The character of this stern and eccentric master is drawn in both the chkist's hospital. 77 Christ's Hospital essays witli the greatest frank- ness. We leave his eccentricities untouched for the present, adding to the praise already given the encomiums of Coleridge: "At school (Christ's Hospital) I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time, a very severe master, the Reverend James Bowyer " (^sic.^ " He sent us to the University excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and tolerable Hebraists. Yet our classical knowledge was the least of the good gifts, which we derived from his zealous and conscien- tious tutorage. He is now gone to his final reward, full of years, and full of honors, even those honors, which were dearest to his heart, as gratefully be- stowed by that school, and still binding him to the interests of that school, in which he had been him- self educated, and to which during his whole life he was a dedicated thing." 68 — His intimates through life. In Lamb's own case this was particularly true. Among his life-long friends were George Dyer, Thomas Barnes, Barron Field, James White, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, all school-fellows at Christ's. 70 — ■ William Wales. Leigh Hunt says of him : "He was a good man, of plain, simple manners, with a heavy, large person, and a benign counte- nance." 71 — The First Order was coming. To quote 78 cheist's hospital. Hunt once more : " It was etiquette among them never to move out of a right line when they walked, whoever stood in their way ... If aware, the boys got out of his way ; if not, down they went, one or more; away rolled the top or the marbles, and on walked the future captain." FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 79 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIETY YEARS AGO. [London Magazine, November, 1820] It requires some familiarity with Lamb's love of masquerading ... to disengage fact from fancy, and extract what refers to himself only, in these two papers: ["On Christ's Hospital," and " Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago."] The former is, what it purports to be, a serious tribute of praise to the dignified and elevating character of the great charity by which he had been fostered. It speaks chiefly of the young scholar's pride in the antiquity of the foundation and the monastic customs and ritual which had survived into modern times; . . . with many touching reminiscences of the happy days spent in country excursions or visits to the sights of London. But in calling up these recollections, it seems to have struck Lamb that his old school, like other institutions, had more than one side, and 80 FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. that the grievances of school-boys, real and imag- inary, as well as the humorous side of some of the regulations and traditions of the school, might supj)ly material for another picture not less inter- esting. Accordingly, under the disguise of the signature Elia^ he wrote a second account of his school, purporting to be a corrective of the over- coloring employed by " Mr. Lamb " in the former account. . . . The friendless boy whose per- sonality is thus assumed, was young Samuel Taylor Coleridge. — Alfred Ainger, FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 81 CHKIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIKTY YEARS AGO. In Mr. Lamb's "Works," published a year or two since, I find a magnificent eulogy on my old school,* such as it was, or now appears to him to have been, between the years 1782 and 1789. It happens, very oddly, that my own standing at Christ's was nearly corresponding with his ; and, with all gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think he has contrived to bring together whatever can be said in praise of them, dropping all the other side of the argument most ingeniously. I remember L. at school; and can well recollect that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were near at hand ; and he had the privilege of going to see them, almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distinction, which was denied to us. The present worthy sub- * Recollections of Christ's Hospital. 82 FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain liow that happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in a morning, while we were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf — our crug — moistened with atten- uated small beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack, it was poured from. Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the peas soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him with a slice of " extraordi- nary bread and butter," from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, some- what less repugnant — (we had three banyan to four meat days in the week) — was endeared to his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger (to make it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our lialf-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as caro equina^ with detest- able marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty mutton crags on Fridays — and rather more savoury, but grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted or rear, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our appe- tites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal proportion) - — he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting griskin (exotics un- known to our palates) cooked in the paternal kitchen (a great thing) and brought him daily by FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 83 his maid or aiiiit ! I remember tlie good old rela- tive (in wliom. love forbade pride,) squatting down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of tlie cloisters, disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those cates which the ravens ministered to the Tishbite) ; and the contending passions of L. at the unfolding. There was love for the bringer ; shame for the thing brought, and the manner of its bringing; sympathy for those who were too many to share in it; and, at top of all, hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions ! ) predominant, breaking down the stony fences of shame, and aukwardness, and -a troubling over-consciousness. I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those who should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they could reckon upon being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holyday visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, though I thought them few enough ; and, one after another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone among six hundred j)lay mates. O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early home-stead ! The yearnings which I used to have towards it in those unfledged years ! How, in my dreams, would my native town (far in the 84 FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. west) come back, with its church, and trees, and faces ! How I would wake weeping, and in the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Cahie in Wiltshire ! To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by the recollection of those friendless holydays. The long warm days of summer never return but they bring with them a gloom from the haunting memory of those whole-day -leaves^ when, by some strange arrangement, we were turned out, for the live-long day, upon our own hands, whether we had friends to go to, or none. I remember those bath- ing-excursions to the New-River, which L. recalls with such relish, better, I think, than he can — for he was a home-seeking lad, and did not much care for such water-pastimes : — How merrily we would sally forth into the fields ; and strip under the first warmth of the sun ; and wanton like young dace in the streams ; getting us appetites for noon, which those of us that were pennyless (our scanty morn- ing crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying — while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed about us, and we had noth- ing to satisfy our cravings — the very beauty of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them ! — How faint and languid, finally, we would return, towards night-fall, to our desired morsel, half- FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 85 rejoicing, lialf reluctant, that tlie hours of our uneasy liberty had expired I It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowl- ing about the streets objectless — shivering at cold windows of print-shops, to extract a little amuse- ment; or haply, as a last resort, in the hope of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times repeatei visit (where our individual faces should be as well known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the Lions in the Tower — to whose levee, by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to admission. L.'s governor (so we called the patron who pre- sented us to the foundation) lived in a manner under his paternal roof. Any complaint which he had to make was sure of being attended to. This was understood at Christ's, and was an effectual screen to him against the severity of masters, or worse tyranny of the monitors. The oppressions of these young brutes are heart-sickening to call to recollection. I have been called out of my bed, and waked for the purpose^ in the coldest winter nights — and this not once, but night after night — in my shirt, to receive the discij)line of a leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it pleased my callous overseer, when there has been any talk- ing heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six last beds in the dormitory, where the youngest 86 FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. children of us slept, answerable for an offence tliey neither dared to commit, nor had the power to hinder. The same execrable tyranny drove the younger part of us from the fires, when our feet were perishing with snow ; and, under the cruellest penalties, forbad the indulgence of a drink of water, when we lay in sleepless summer nights, fevered with the season, and the day's sports. There was one H , who, I learned, in after- days, was seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. (Do I flatter myself in fancying that this might be the planter of that name, who suf- fered at Nevis, I think, or St. Kits, some few years since ? My friend Tobin was the benevo- lent instrument of bringing him to the gallows.) This petty Nero actually branded a boy, who had offended him, with a red-hot iron ; and nearly starved forty of us, with exacting contributions, to the one half of our bread, to pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with the conniv- ance of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of his) he had contrived to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the ward^ as they called our dormi- tories. This game went on for better than a week, till the foolish beast, not able to fare well but he must cry roast meat — happier than Caligula's minion, could he have kept his own counsel — but, foolisher, alas ! than any of his species in the fables FIVE a:nd thiktt tears ago. 87 — waxing fat, and kicking, in the fulness of bread, one unlucky minute would needs proclaim Ms good fortune to the world below; and, laying out his simple throat, blew such a ram's horn blast, as (toppling down the walls of his own Jericho) set concealment any longer at defiance. The client was dismissed, with certain attentions, to Smith- field; but I never understood that the patron underwent any censure on the occasion. This was in the stewardship of L.'s admired Perry. Under the same facile administration, can L. have forgotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used to carry away openly, in open platters, for their own tables, one out of two of every hot joint, which the careful matron had been seeing scrupulously weighed out for our dinners ? These things were daily practised in that magnificent apartment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume) praises so highly for the grand paintings "by Yerrio, and others," with which it is "hung round and adorned." But the sight of sleek well- fed blue-coat boys in pictures, was, at that time, I believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the living ones, who saw the better part of our provisions car- ried away before our faces by harpies ; and our- selves reduced (with the Trojan in the hall of Dido) TO FEED OUR MIND WITH IDLE PORTRAITURE. L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to 88 FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. gags^ or the fat of fresh beef boiled; and sets it down to some superstition. But these unctuous morsels are never grateful to young palates (chil- dren are universally fat-haters) - and in strong, coarse, boiled meats, unsalted^ are detestable. A gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a goul^ and held in equal detestation. ^ ^ ^ -^ suffered luider the imputation. 'Twas said, .He ate strange flesh. He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the remnants left at his table (not many, nor very choice fragments, you may credit me) — and, in an especial manner, these disreputahle inorsels^ which he would convey away, and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his bedside. None saw when hft ate them. It was rumored that he pri- vately devoured them in the night. He was watched, but no traces of such midnight practices were discoverable. Some reported, that, on leave- days, he had been seen to carry out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief, full of something. This then must be the accursed thing. Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This belief generally prevailed. He went about moping. None spake to him. No one would play with him. FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 89 He was excommunicated; put out of the pale of the school. He was too powerful a hoy to he heaten, hut he underwent every mode of that negative j)un- islunent, which is more grevious than many stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was ohserved by two of his school-fellows, who were determined to get at the secret, and had traced liiin. one leave-day for that purpose, to enter a large worn-out building (such as there exist specimens of in Chancery-lane, which are let out to various scales of pauperism) with open door, and a common stair-case. After him they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth up four flights, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened by an aged woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. The informers had secured their victim. They had him in their toils. Accusation was formally preferred, and retribution most signal was looked for. Mr. Hathaway, the then steward (for this hajDpened a little after my time,) with that patient sagacity which tempered all his conduct, determined to inves- tigate the matter, before he proceeded to sentence. The result was, that the supposed mendicants, the receivers or purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be the parents of , an honest cou- ple oome to decay, — whom this seasonable supply had, in all ^probability, saved from mendicancy ; and that this young stork, at the expence of his own 90 riYE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. good name, had all this while been only feeding the old birds ! — The governors on this occasion, much to their honour, voted a present relief to the family of ,- and presented him with a silver medal. The lesson which the steward read upon rash JUDGMENT, on the occasion of publicly delivering the medal to , I believe, would not be lost upon his auditory. — I had left school then, but I well remember . He was a tall, shambling youth, with a cast in his eye, not at all calculated to con- ciliate hostile prejudices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's basket. 1 think I heard he did not do quite so well by himself, as he had done by the old folks. I was a hypochondriac lad; and the sight of a boy in fetters, upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothes, was not exactly fitted to as- suage the natural terrors of initiation. I was of tender years, barely turned of seven ; and had only read of such things in books, or seen them but in dreams. I was told he had run aiuay. This was the punishment for the first offence. — As a novice I was soon after taken to see the dungeons. These were little, square. Bedlam cells, where a boy could just lie at his length upon straw and a blanket — a mattress, I think, was afterwards substituted — with a peep of light, let in ascance, from a prison- orifice at top, barely enough to read by. Here tlie FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 91 poor boy was locked in by himself all day, without sight of any but the porter who brought him his bread and water — who might not speah to him; — or of the beadle, who came twice a week to call him out to receive his periodical chastisement, which was almost welcome, because it separated him for a brief interval from solitude : — and here he was shut up by himself of nights, out of the reach of any sound, to suffer whatever horrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident to his time of life, might subject him to.* This was the penalty for the second offence. Wouldst thou like, reader, to see what became of him in the next degree ? The culprit, who had been a third time an of- fender, and whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was brought forth, as at some solemn auto da /e, arrayed in uncouth and most appalling attire — all trace of his late "watchet weeds" carefully effaced, he was exposed in a jacket, resembling those which London lamplight- ers formerly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect of this divestiture was such as the ingen- * One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accord- ingly, at length convinced the Governors of the impolicy of this part of the sentence, and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with. — This fancy of dungeons for children, was a sprout of Howard's brain; for which (saving the reverence due to Holy Paul) methinks, I could willingly spit upon his stony gaberdine. 92 FIVE AND THIETY YEARS AGO. ious devisers of it could have anticipated. With his pale and frighted features, it was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante had seized upon him. In this disguisement he was brought into the hall {L .\ favourite state-room)^ where awaited him the whole number of his school-fellows, whose joint lessons and sports he was thenceforth to share no more ; the awf id presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time ; of the executioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the occasion ; and of two faces more, of direr import, because never but in these extremities visible. These were governors ; two of whom, by choice, or charter, were always accus- tomed to officiate at these Ultwia Supplicia ; not to mitigate (so at least we understood it), but to enforce the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber Gas- coigne, and Peter Aubert, I remember, were col- leagues on one occasion, when the beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to pre- pare him for the mysteries. The scourging was, after the old Roman fashion, long and stately. The lictor accompanied the criminal quite round the hall. We were generally too faint with attend- ing to the previous disguising circumstances, to make accurate report with our eyes of the degree of corporal suffering inflicted. Report, of course, gave out the back knotty and livid. After scourg- ing, he was made over, in his San Benito, to his FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 93 friends, if lie had any (but commonly such poor runagates were friendless), or to his parish of&cer, who, to enhance the effect of the scene, had his station allotted to him on the outside of the hall gate. These solemn pageantries were not played off so often as to spoil the general mirth of the commu- nity. We had plenty of exercise and recreation after school hours ; and, for myself, I must confess, that I was never happier, than in them. The Upper and the Lower Grammar Schools were held in the same room ; and an imaginary line only divided their bounds. Their character was as different as that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrennees. The Rev, James Boyer was the Upper Master ; but the Rev. Matthew Field presided over that portion of the apartment, of which I had the good fortune to be a member. We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and did just what we pleased, and nobody molested us. We carried an accidence, or a grammar, for form; but, for any trouble it gave us, we might take two years in get- ting through the verbs deponent, and another two in forgetting all that we had learned about them. There was now and then the formality of saying a lesson, but if you had not learned it, a brush across the shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly), was the sole remonstrance. Field never used the rod; 94 FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. and in truth lie wielded tlie cane with no great good-will ^ — holding it "like a dancer." It looked in his hands rather like an emblem, than an instru- ment of authority; and an emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was a good easy man, that did not care to ruffle his own peace, nor perhaps set any great consideration upon the value of juvenile time. He came among us now and then, but often stayed away whole days from us, and when he came, it made no difference to us — he had his pri- vate room to retire to, the short time he staid, to be out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth and uproar went on. We had classics of our own, with- out being beholden to " insolent Greece or haughty Rome," that passed current among us — Peter Wil- kins — the adventures of the Hon. Capt. Robert Boyle — the Fortunate Blue Coat Boy — and the like. Or we cultivated a turn for mechanic or scientific oj)erations ; making little sun-dials of paper; or weaving those ingenious parentheses, called cat-cradles; or making dry peas to dance upon the end of a tin pipe ; or studying the art military over that laudable game "French and English," — and a hundred other such devices to pass away the time — mixing the useful with the agreeable — as would have made the souls of Rous- seau and John Locke chuckle to have seen us. Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 95 divines who effect to mix in equal proportion the gentleman^ the scholar^ and the Christian ; but, I know not how, the first ingredient is generally found to be the predominating dose in the composi- tion. He was engaged in gay parties, or with his courtly bow at some Episcopal levee, when he should have been attending upon us. He had for many years the classical charge of a hundred children, during the four or five first years of their educa- tion ; and his very highest form seldom proceeded further than two or three of the introductory fables of Phsedrus. How things were suffered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was the proper person to have remedied these abuses, always effect- ed, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a prov- ince not strictly liis own. I have not been without my suspicions, that he was not altogether displeased at the contrast we presented to his end of the school. We were a sort of Helots to his young Spartans. He would sometimes, with ironic defer- ence, send to borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then, with Sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys, "how neat and fresh the twigs looked," While his j)ale students were battering their brains over Xenoj^hon and Plato, with a silence as deep as that enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoying our- selves at our ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of his discipline, and the pros- 96 FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. pect did but tlie more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous for us ; liis storms came near, but never touched us ; contrary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry.* His boys turned out the better scholars ; we, I suspect, have the advantage in temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without something of terror, allaying their gratitude ; the remembrance of Field comes back with all the soothing images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work like play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemp- tions, and life itself a " playing holyday." Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to understand a little of his system. We occasion- ally heard sounds of the Ululantes^ and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His English style was crampt to barbarism. His Eas- ter Anthems (for his duty obliged him to those periodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes.f * Cowley. t In this and every thing B. was the Antipodes of his co-adju- tor. While the former was digging l^s brains for crude anthems, M^orth a pig-nut, F. would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more flowery walks of the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under the name of Vei'tumnus and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers of that sort of literature. It was accepted by Garrick, but the town did not give it their sanction. B. used to say of it, in a way of half-compliment, half-irony, that it was too classical for 7'epresentation. FIVE AND THIKTY YEARS AGO. 97 He would laugh, aye, and heartily, but then it must be at Flaccus's quibble about Rex or at the tristis severitas in vultu^ or inspicere in patinas^ of Terence — thin jests, which at their first broach- ing could hardly have had vis enough to move a Roman muscle. He had two wigs, both pedan- tic, but of differing omen. The one serene, smil- ing, fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old discoloured, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to the school, when he made his morning appear- ance in his passy or passionate wig. No comet expounded surer. J. B. had a heavy hand. I have known him double his knotty fist at a poor trembling child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a "Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits at me ? " Nothing was more com- mon than to see him make a head-long entry into the school-room, from his inner recess, or library, and, with turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, "Od's my life. Sirrah," (his favourite adjura- tion) "I have a great mind to whip you," — then, with as sudden a retracting impulse, fling back into his lair — and, after a cooling lapse of some min- utes (during which all but the culprit had totally forgotten the context) drive headlong out again, piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell — 98 FIVE AND THIKTY YEAES AGO. " and I WILL tooT In liis gentler moods, when the rahidus furor was assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to himself, of whipping the boy, and reading the Debates, at the same time ; a paragraph, and a lash between ; which in those times, when parlia- mentary oratory was most at a height and flourish- ing in these realms, was not calculated to impress the patient with a veneration for the diffuser graces of rhetoric. Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to fall ineffectual from his hand — when droll squinting W — having been caught putting the inside of the master's desk to a use for which the architect had clearly not designed it, to justify him- self, with great simplicity averred, that he did not Icnow that the thing had heen forewarned. This exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral^ or declaratory^ struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that remission was imavoidable. L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor. Coleridge, in his literary life, has pro- nounced a more intelligible and ample encomium on them. The author of the Country Spectator doubts not to compare him with the ablest teachers of antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him bet- ter than with the pious ejaculation of C. — when he FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO - 99 heard that his old master was on his death-bed — "Poor J. B! — may all his faults be forgiven; and may he be wafted to bhss by little cherub boys, all head and wings, with no hottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." Under him were many good and sound scholars l^red. First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys Stevens, kindest of boys and men, since Co-grammar-master (and inseparable companion) with Dr. T— e. What an edifying spectacle did this brace of friends present to those who remem- bered the anti-socialities of their predecessors! You never met the one by chance in the street without a wonder, which was quickly dissipated by the ahnost immediate sub-appearance of the other. Generally arm in arm, these kindly coadjutors lightened for each other the toilsome duties of their profession, and when, in advanced age, one found it convenient to retire, the other was not long in dis- covering that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. O, it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at forty, which at thir- teen helped it to turn over the Cicero De Amicitia, or some tale of Antique Friendship, which the young heart even then was burning to anticipate ! Co-Grecian with S. was Th , who has since executed with ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts. Th was a tall dark 10 FIVE AND THIETY YEARS AGO. saturnine youth, sparing of speech, with raven locks. Thomas Fanshaw MidcUeton followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta) a scholar and a gentle- man in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent critic; and is author (besides the Coun- try Spectator,) of a Treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. M. is said to bear his mitre high in India, where the regni novitas (I dare say) sufficiently justifies the bearing. A humility quite as primitive as that of Jewel or Hooker, might not be exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with a reverence for home institutions, and the church which those fathers watered. The manners of M. at school, though firm, were mild and unassuming. Next to M. (if not senior to him,) was Richards, author of the Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems ; a pale, studious Grecian. Then followed poor S , ill-fated M ! of these the Muse is silent. Finding some of Edward" s race Unhappy, pass their annals by. Come back into memory, like as thou wert m the day-spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee — the dark j)illar not yet turned. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard ! — How have I seen the cas- FIVE AND THIKTY YEARS AGO. 101 ual passer, through the Cloisters, stand still, in- tranced with admiration, (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garh of the young Mirandula,) to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jam- blichus, or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts) or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar — while the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity-hoy I — " Many were the wit-combats," (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller,) between him and C. Y. Le G , "which two I behold like a Spanish great gallion, and an English man of war ; Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. C. V. L., with the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgot- ten, Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, with which thou wert wont to make the old Cloisters shake, in thy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs ; or the anticipation of some more material, and, peradventure, practical one, of thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with that beautiful countenance, with which (for thou wert 102 FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. the Nireus formosus of the school,) in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town-damsel, who, incensed by provok- ing pinch, turning tigress-like round, suddenly con- verted by thy angel-look, exchanged the half-formed terrible "5Z ," for a gentler greeting — ''■hless thy handsome face ! " Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the friends of Elia — the junior Le G and F ; who impelled, the former by a roving tem- per, the latter by too quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of enduring the slights poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in our seats of learning — exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp; per- ishing, one by climate, and one on the plains of Salamanca: — Le G , sanguine, volatile, sweet- natured; F dogged, faitliful, anticipative of insult, warm-hearted, with something of the old Roman height about him. Fine frank-hearted, Fr , the present master of Hertford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Missionaries — and both my good friends still — close the catalogue of Grrecians in my time. FIYE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 103 CHEIST'S HOSPITAL FIYE AND THIKTY YEARS AGO. PAGE 81 — PuhlisTied a year or two since. The essay "On Christ's Hospital," etc., contributed to the Gentleman^ s MagarAne for June, 1813, was repub- lished with other of Lamb's prose and poetry, in 1818. 81 — His friends lived in town. The Lamb family were then living in the Temple. 81 — Sub-treasurer. Randall Norris, referred to in a preceding essay. 83 — The good old relative. In a letter written to Coleridge Jan. 5, 1797, Lamb refers to his aunt, then on her death-bed, "as the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at school ; who used to toddle there to bring me good things, when I, school-boy like, only despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you went into the old grammar-school, and open her apron, and bring out 104 FIVE AND THIETY TEAKS AGO. her bason, witli some nice thing she had caused to be saved for me." 84 — Calne in Wiltshire. " One of Lamb's inno- cent mystifications." Coleridge, whose personality the writer assumes, was born at Ottery St. Mary's in Devonshire, but at one time lived at Calne. Va- rious autobiographical references in the Elian essays were so contradictory, that Lamb was called to account by many readers. Accordingly, in an amus- ing paper, "Elia to His Correspondents," he most ingeniously defends himself, concluding with these defiant words : " He [Elia] hath not so fixed his nativity (like a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but that, if he seeth occasion, or the argument shall demand it, he will be born again, in future papers, in whatever place, and at whatever period, shall seem good unto him." 85 — X.'s governor. Lamb was really presented to the school by Timothy Yeates, one of the gov- ernors of the Hospital, who was doubtless influ- enced by Samuel Salt, here referred to. 86 — H . " Hodges." — Key to Elia. 87 — The nurses. Widows, who had charge of the boys' dormitories, saw to their washing, and carved for them at table. 89 — Mr. Hathaway. "A thin, stiff man of invincible formality of demeanor, admirably fitted to render encroachment impossible." — Leigh Hunt. FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 105 93 — Rev. James Boyer. " A short, stout man, inclining to punchiness, with large face and hands, an aquiline nose, long upper lip, and a sharp mouth. His eye was close and cruel. The spectacles which he wore threw a balm over it. Being a clergyman, he dressed in black, with a powdered wig. His clothes were cut short; his hands hung out of his sleeves, with tight wristbands, as if ready for exe- cution ; and as he generally wore grey worsted stockings, very tight, with a little balustrade leg, his whole appearance presented something formidably succinct, hard, mechanical." — Leigh Hunt. 93 — Hev. Matthew Field. " A man of more handsome incompetence for his situation perhaps did not exist." — Leigh Hunt. 94 — Wielded the cane. " Languidly bearing his cane, as if it were a lily .... When he condescended to hit us with the cane, he made a face as if he was taking physic." — Leigh Hunt. 96 — Terror., allaying their gratitude. In the midst of the eulogy on Boyer, part of which is quoted on page 77, Coleridge confessed that in his advanced manhood he still dreamed of the school-master, who was the terror of his youth. 98 — Author of the Country Spectator. Thomas Tanshawe Middleton, afterwards Archdeacon of Huntingdon, and first Bishop of Calcutta. He laid the foundation of the Bishop's College at Cal- 106 FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. cutta, and establislied a consistory chapter in that city. 98 — a Coleridge. 99 — Lancelot Pepys Stevens. Under Gram- mar Master, when Leigh Hunt was at school. Hunt thus describes him : " Stevens was short and fat, with a handsome, cordial face. You loved him as you looked at him ; and seemed as if you should love him the more, the fatter he became." 99 — Dr. T — e. Dr. TroUope, who succeeded to Boyer's position in 1799. 99—7% . The Right Hon. Sir Edward Thornton, G. C. B., minister and ambassador to Sweden, Brazil and Portugal. 100 — S . " Scott, died in Bedlam." — Key to Elia. 100 — M . '^Maunde, dismissed school" — Ibid. 100 — Samuel Taylor Coleridge. " Coleridge and Lamb were school-fellows for the whole seven years of the latter 's residence, and from this early association arose a friendship as memorable as any in English Literature." — Alfred Ainger. 101 — C. V. Le G . Charles Valentine Le Grice, afterwards tutor, and rector of a CornwMl parish. 102 — Junior Le G . Samuel Le Grice. Hunt says of him : " He was the maddest of all FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO. 107 the great boys in my time ; clever, full of address, and not hampered with modesty." Nevertheless, he was a warm friend, as he proved to Lamb at the time of Mrs. Lamb's death, when he devoted himseK day and night to the unfortunate family. 102 — i^ . "Favell; left Cambrg because he was ashamed of his father, who was a house- painter there." — Key to Elia. 102 — Exchanged their Alma Mater for the camp. While at College, these young men wrote to the Duke of York for commissions in the army, which were granted. 102 — Fr . "Franklin, Gramr Mast., Hert- ford." — Key to Elia. 102 — Ma.rmaduke T . Marmaduke Thomp- son, to whom Lamb dedicated the story of " Rosa- mund Gray." 108 MY KELATIONS, MY EELATIONS. \London Magazine, June, 182 1.] Thou too art dead . . . very kind Hast thou been to me in my childish days, Thou best good creature. I have not forgot How thou didst love thy Charles, when he was yet A prating school-boy. Charles Lamb: Written on the Day of my Aitnfs Funeral. John, you were figuring in the gay career Of blooming manhood with a young man's joy, When I was yet a little peevish boy — Though time has made the difference disappear Betwixt our ages, which then seemed so great — And still by rightful custom you retain, Much of the old authoritative strain. And keep the elder brother up in state. — Charles Lamb : To John Lamb, Esq. MY RELATIONS. 109 MY EELATIONS. I AM arrived at that point of life, at wMcli a man may account it a blessing, as it is a singu- larity, if lie have either of his parents surviving. I have not that felicity — and sometimes think feel- ino-ly of a passage in Browne's Christian Morals, where he speaks of a man that hath lived sixty or seventy years in the world. " In such a compass of time," he says, "a man may have a close appre- hension what it is to be forgotten, when he hath lived to find none who could remember his father, or scarcely the friends of his youth, and may sensi- bly see with what a face in no long time Oblivion will look upon himself." I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one whom single blessedness had soured to the world. She often used to say, that I was the only thing in it which she loved ; and, when she thought I was quitting it, she grieved over me with mother's tears. A partiality quite so exclusive, my reason cannot altogether approve. She was from morning 110 MY RELATIONS. till night poring over good books, and devotional exercises. Her favourite volumes were Thomas a Kempis, in Stanhope's translation; and a Roman Catholic Prayer Book, with the matins and com- plines regularly set down, — terms which I was at that time too young to understand. She persisted in reading them, although admonished daily con- cerning their Papistical tendency; and went to church every Sabbath, as a good Protestant should do. These were the only books she studied; though, I think, at one period of her life, she told me she had read with great satisfaction the Adven- tures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman. Find- ing the door of the chapel in Essex-street open one day — it was in the infancy of that heresy — she w^ent in, liked the sermon, and the manner of wor- ship, and frequented it at intervals for some time after. She came not for doctrinal points, and never missed them. With some little asperities in her constitution, which I have above hinted at, she was a steadfast, friendly being, and a fine old Christian. She was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd mind — extraordinary at a repartee^ one of the few occasions of her breaking silence — else she did not much value wit. The only secular employment I remember to have seen her engaged in, was, the splitting of French beans, and dropping them into a China basin of fair water. The odour MY RELATIONS. Ill of those tender vegetables to this day comes back upon my sense, redolent of soothing recollections. Certainly it is the most delicate of culinary operations. Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none to remember. By the uncles' side I may be said to have been born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never had any — to know them. A sister, I think, that should have been Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. What a comfort, or what a care, may I not have missed in her! — But I have cousins, sprinkled about in Hertfordshire — besides two, with whom I have been all my life in habits of the closest intimacy, and whom I may term cousins par excellence. These are James and Bridget Elia. They are older than myself by twelve, and ten, years; and neither of them seems disposed, in matters of advice and guidance, to waive any of the prerogatives which primogeniture confers. May they continue still in the same mind; and when they shall be seventy-five, and seventy-three, years old (I cannot spare them sooner), persist in treat- ing me in my grand climacteric precisely as a stripling, or younger brother ! James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her unities, which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if we feel, we cannot explain them. The pen of Yorick, and none since his, could have drawn J. E. 112 MY RELATIONS. entire — those fine Shandian lights and shades, which make up his story. I must limp after in my poor antithetical manner, as the fates have given me grace" and talent. J. E. then — to the eye of a common observer at least — seemeth made up of contradictory principles. — The genuine child of impulse, the frigid philosopher of prudence — the phlegm of my cousin's doctrine is invariably at war with his temperament, which is high sanguine. With always some fire-new project in his brain, J. E. is the systematic opponent of innovation, and crier down of everything that has not stood the test of age and experiment. With a hundred fine notions chasing one another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least approach to the romantic in others; and, determined by his own sense in everything, commends you to the guidance of com- mon sense on all occasions. — With a touch of the eccentric in all which he does, or says, he is only anxious that you should not commit yourself by doing anything absurd or singular. On my once lettiiig slip at table, that I was not fond of a cer- tain popular dish, he begged me at any rate not to say so — for the world would think me mad. He disguises a passionate fondness for works of high art (whereof he hath amassed a choice collection), under the pretext of buying only to sell again — that his enthusiasm may give no encouragement to MY RELATIONS. ^^ yours. Yet, if it were so, wliy does that piece of tender, pastoral Domenicliino hang still by his wall?— is the ball of his sight much more dear to him'? — or what picture-dealer can talk like him? Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp their speculative conclusions to the bent of their individual humours, Us theories are sure to be in diametrical opposition to his constitution. He is courageous as Charles of Sweden, upon instmct; chary of his person, upon principle, as a travellmg Quaker. — He has been preachhig up to me, all my life, the doctrine of bowing to the great — the necessity of forms, and manner, to a man's getting on in the world. He himself never aims at either, that I can discover — and has. a spirit, that would stand upright in the presence of the Cham of Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him discourse ot patience — extolling it as the truest wisdom — and to see him during the last seven minutes that his dinner is getting ready. Nature never ran up m her haste a more restless piece of workmanship, than when she moulded this impetuous cousin — and Art never turned out a more elaborate orator than he can display himself to be, upon his favour- ite topic of the advantages of quiet, and contended- ness in the state, whatever it be, that we are placed in. He is triumphant on this theme, when he has you safe in one of those short stages that ply for / 114 MY RELATIONS. the western road, in a very obstructing manner, at the foot of John Murray's street — where you get in when it is empty, and are expected to wait till the vehicle hath completed her just freight — a trying three quarters of an hour to some people. He "wonders at your fidgetiness," — "where could we be better than we are, thus sitting^ thus con- sulting?^^ — "prefers, for his part, a state of rest to locomotion," — with an eye all the while upon the coachman — till at length, waxing out of all pa- tience, at your want of it^ he breaks out into a pathetic remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us so long over the time which he* had professed, and declares peremptorily that "the gentleman in the coach is determined to get out, if he does not drive on that instant." Very quick at inventing an argument, or detect- ing a sophistry, he is incapable of attending you in any chain of arguing. Indeed he makes wild work with logic ; and seems to jump at most admirable conclusions by some process, not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this, he hath been heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that there exists such a faculty at all in man, as reason ; and wondereth how man came first to have a conceit of it — enforcing his negation with all the might of rea- soning he is master of. He has some speculative notions against laughter, and will maintain that MY RELATIONS. 115 laughing is not natural to Mm — when peradvent- ure the next moment his lungs shall crow like Chanticleer. He says some of the best things in the world — and declareth, that wit is his aversion. It was he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their grounds — What a pity to think, that these fine ingenuous lads in a few years will all he changed into frivolous Memhers of Parliament! His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous — and in age he discovereth no symptom of cooling. This is that which I admire in him. I hate people who meet Time half-way. I am for no compromise with that inevitable spoiler. While he lives J. E. will take his swing. — It does me good, as I walk towards the street of my daily avocation, on some fine May morning, to meet him marching in a quite opposite direction, with a jolly handsome presence, and shining sanguine face, that indicates some pur- chase in his eye — a Claude — or a Hobbima — for much of his enviable leisure is consumed at Christie's, and Phillips's — or where not — to pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage a person like me possesses above himself, in having his time occupied with business which he must do — assureth me that he often feels it hang heavy on his hands — wishes he had fewer holidays — and goes off — Westward Ho ! — chant- ^.A 116 MY KELATIONS. ing a tune, to Pall Mall — perfectly convinced, that he has convinced me — while I proceed in my opposite direction tuneless. It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifference doing the honours of his new purchase, when he has fairly housed it. You must view it in every light, till he has found the best — placing it at this distance, and at that, but always suiting the focus of your sight to his own. You must spy at it through your fingers, to catch the aerial per- spective — though you assure him that to you the landscape shows much more agreeable without that artifice. Woe be to the luckless wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his anterior bargains to the present ! — The last is always his best hit — his "Cynthia of the min- ute." — Alas ! how many a mild Madonna have I known to come in — a Raphael ! — keep its ascen- dency for a few brief moons — then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front drawing room to the back gallery, thence to the dark par- lour, — adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall — consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go out at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti ! — which things when I beheld — musing upon the chances and mutabilities of fate MY KELATIONS. 117 below, hath made me to reflect upon the altered condition of great personages, or that woeful Queen of Richard the Second — set forth in pomp, She came adorned hither like sweet May, Sent back like Hollo wmass or shortest day. With great love for you^ J. E. hath but a limited sympathy with what you feel, or do. He lives in a world of his own, and makes slender guesses at what passes in your mind. He never pierces the marrow of your habits. He will tell an old estab- lished playgoer, that Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the theatres), is a very lively come- dian — as a piece of news ! He advertised me but the other day of some pleasant green lanes which he had found out for me, hiowing me to he a great luallcer^ in my own immediate vicinity — who have haunted the identical spot any time these twenty years ! — He has not much respect for that class of feelings, which goes by the name of sentimental. He applies the definition of real evil to bodily sufferings exclusively — and rejecteth all others, as imaginary. He is affected by the sight, or the bare supposition, of a creature in pain, to a degree which I have never witnessed out of womankind. A con- stitutional acuteness to this class of sufferings may 118 MY RELATIONS in part account for this. Tlie animal tribe in par- ticular lie taketh under his especial protection. A broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure to find an advocate in him. An over-loaded ass is his client for ever. He is the apostle to the brute kind — the never-failing friend of those who have none to care for them. The contemplation of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive, will wring him so, that "all for pity he could die." It will take the savour from his palate, and the rest from his pillow, for days and nights. With the intense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of pursuit, and unity of purpose, of that "true yoke- fellow with Time," to have affected as much for the Animal, as he hath done for the Negro Creation. But my uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed for purposes which demand co-operation. He cannot wait. His amelioration-plans must be ripened in a day. For this reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent societies, and com- binations for the alleviation of human sufferings. His zeal constantly makes him to outrun, and put out, his co-adjutors. He thinks of relieving, — while they think of debating. He was black-balled out of a society for the Relief of ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ .^, ^ ^ ^ ^ , because the fervour of his humanity toiled beyond the formal apprehension, and creep- ing processes, of his associates. I shall always con- MY RELATIONS. 119 sider this distinction as a patent of nobility in the Elia family ! Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile at, or upbraid, my unique cousin? Marry! heaven, and all good manners, and the understand- ing that should be between kinsfolk, forbid ! — With all the strangenesses of this strangest of the Elias — I would not have him in one jot or tittle other than he is ; neither would I barter or exchange my wild kinsman for the most exact, reg- ular, and e very-way-consistent kinsman breathing. In my niext, reader, I may perhaps give you some account of my cousin Bridget — if you are not already surfeited with cousins — and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go with us, on an excursion which we made a summer or two since, in search of more cousins — . Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. Till when. Farewell. \ ' 120 mV kelations. t' MY EEfiifiONS. [Perhaps nothing better illustrates Charles Lamb's gentle unselfishness than his untiring devotion to his brother. In spite of the fact that John was selfish, domineering,- unsympathetic, and unappreciative, the younger brother never ceased to love and admire him. Little good can be learned of John Lamb, except from the pen of his brother, and even that testimony, to those vi^ho, knowing the personal histories of the two men, read between the lines, seems a pitiful attempt to present in pleasing light that which is, of itself, not pleasing. Although John Lamb held a clerkship at the South Sea House, received a good salary, and was without family encumbrances, he never- theless seems to have contributed nothing to the support of his imbecile father and deranged sister, and to have opposed rather than aided Charles in his heroic efforts to provide for the unfortunate family. Yet Charles could overlook this, and in a letter to Coleridge, directly after the terrible tragedy, wrote: "Let me not leave one unfavorable impression on your mind respecting my brother. Since this happened, he has been very kind and brotherly; but I fear for his mind; he has taken his ease in the world, and is not fit himself to struggle with difficul- ties, nor has much accustomed himself to throw himself into their way ; and I know his language is already, ' Charles, you must take care of yourself; you must not abridge yourself of a single pleasure you have been used to,' &c., &c., and in that MY RELATIONS. 121 style of talking. But you, a Necessarian, can respect a differ- ence of mind, and love what is amiable in a character not perfect. He has been very good ; but I fear for his mind." E. D. H.] PAGE 109 — Aunt. This was liis father's sister, who lived for many years with the Lamb family, not always on the pleasantest terms with the adult members. 110 — JEssex-street. In Essex-street was the chapel and residence of Theophilus Lindsey, the first pastor of the first professedly Unitarian church in London. On the same site is now the build- ing used as the head-quarters of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. 111 — ElizahetJi. The Register of Baptism in the Temple Church records seven children born to John and Elizabeth Lamb, of whom the fifth was Elizabeth, born August 30, 1768. Ill — James and Bridget Elia. Signifying, of course, John and Mary Lamb. A large part of the charm of the Elian essays lies in the many lov- ing, humorous, and pathetic allusions to Bridget Elia. 111 — Pen of Yorich, "Yorick" was the pseu- donym under which Laurance Sterne published his " Sentimental Journey." 112 — A touch of the eccentric. John Lamb 122 MY EELATIONS. did not escape his share of the family tendency to insanity. 115 — Opposite direction. " We feel that the picture needs no additional touches, ' Marching in a quite opposite direction ' was what John Lamb con- tinued to do, in all respects, as concerned the duti- ful and home-keeping members of his family." — Alfred Ainger. 117 — A limited sympathy. "If not rude, he [John Lamb] was sometimes, indeed generally, abrupt and unprepossessing in manner. He was assuredly deficient in that courtesy which usually springs from a mind at friendship with the world." — Bryan Haller Procter. 118 — * **^****** "Distrest Sailors." — Key to JElia. 119 — Green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. The closing line of a sonnet, unpublished during Lamb's life. As it is found in few of the editions of his works, we give it entire ; " The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed, And 'gins to sprinkle on the earth below Those rays that from his shaken locks do flow; Meantime, by truant love of rambling led, I turn my back on thy deserted walls, Proud city ! and thy sons I leave behind, A sordid, selfish, money-getting kind ; Brute things who shut their ears when Freedom calls. MY RELATIONS. 123 I pass not thee so lightly, well known spire, That minded me of many a pleasure gone, Of merrier days of love and Islington ; Kindling afresh the pleasures of past desire. And I shall muse on that slow journeying on To the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire." 124 MACKERY END. MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. [London Magazine, July, 1821.] Miss Lamb would have been remarkable for the sweetness of her disposition, the clearness of her understanding, and the gentle wisdom of all her acts and words, even if these qualities had not been presented in marvellous contrast with the distrac- tion under which she suffered for weeks, latterly for months, in every year In all its essen- tial sweetness, her character was like her brother's; while, by a temper more placid, a spirit of enjoy- ment more serene, she was enabled to guide, to counsel, to cheer him To a friend in any difficulty she was the most comfortable of advisers, the wisest of consolers. Hazlitt used to say, that he never met with a woman who could reason, and had met with only one thoroughly reasonable — the sole exception being Mary Lamb. — Thomas Noon Talfourd. MACKERY END. 125 MACKEKY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the period of memory. We house together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness ; with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celib- acy. We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits — yet so, as "with a difference." We are generally in harmony, with occasional bickerings — as it should he among near relations. Our sym- pathies are rather understood, than expressed; and once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was altered. We are both great readers in different directions. While I am hang- ing over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, 126 MACKERY END. slie is abstracted in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof our common reading- table is daily fed witb assiduously fresb supplies. Narrative teazes me. I have little concern in the progress of events. She must have a story — well, ill, or indifferently told — so there be life stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The fluctuations of fortune in fiction — and almost in real life — have ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me. Out-of- the-way humours and opinions — heads with some diverting twist in them — the oddities of authorship please me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of any thing that sounds odd or bizarre. Nothing goes down with her, that is quaint, irregular, or out of the road of common sympathy. She "holds Nature more clever." I can pardon her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the Eeligio Medici; but she must apologize to me for certain disrespect- ful insinuations, which she has been pleased to throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear favourite of mine, of the last century but one ■ — the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, — but again somewhat fantastical, and original-brain'd, generous Margaret Newcastle. It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I could have wished, to have had for her asso- ciates and mine, free-thinkers — leaders, and disci- ples, of novel philosophies and systems ; but she MACKERY END. 127 neither wrangles with, nor accepts, their opinions. That which was good -and venerable to her, when she was a child, retains its authority over her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with her understanding. We are both of us inclined to be a little too pos- itive; and I have observed the result of our dis- putes to be almost uniformly this — that in matters of fact, dates, and circumstances, it turns out, that I was in the right, and my cousin in the wrong. But where we have differed upon moral points ; upon something proper to be done, or let alone ; whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of convic- tion, I set out with, I am sure always in the long run, to be brought over to her way of thinking. I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. She hath an aukward trick, (to say no worse of it) of reading in company: at which times she will answer yes or no to a question, without fully understanding its purport — which is provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree to the dignity of the putter of the said question. Her presence of mind is equal to the most pressing trials of life, but will sometimes desert her upon trifling occasions. When the purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment, she can speak to it greatly ; but in matters which are not stuff of the 128 MACKERY END. conscience, she hatli been known sometimes to let slip a word less seasonably. Her education in youtli was not much attended to ; and she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which passeth by the name of accom- plishments. She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be diminished by it ; but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the worst come to the worst) most incom- parable old maids. In a season of distress, she is the truest com- forter; but in the teazing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do not call out the will to meet them, she sometimes maketh matters worse by an excess of participation. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always to treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a play with, or upon a visit ; but best, when she goes a journey with you. We made an excursion together a few summers since, into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our less-known relations in that fine corn country. MACKERY END. 129 The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End; or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more prop- erly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire; a farm- house, — delightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember hav- ing been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget; who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heaj) the remain- der of our joint existences^ that we might share them in equal division. But that is impossible. The house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my grand- mother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grandmother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the country, but the Fields are almost extinct. More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of; and, for the greater por- tion of that period, we had lost sight of the other two branches also. Who, or what sort of persons, inherited Mackery End — kindred or strange folk — we were afraid almost to conjecture, but deter- mined some day to explore. By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble park at Luton in our way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farm-house, though 130 MACKERY END. every trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a pleasure wliicli I had not expe- rienced for many a year. For though I had for- gotten it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, O how unlike it was to ihat^ which 1 had conjured up so many times instead of it 1 Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the sea- son was in the "heart of June," and I could say with the poet. But thou, that didst appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation ! * Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily remembered her old acquaintance again — some altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the scene soon re-confirmed itself in her affections — and she traversed every out-post of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house and birds were alike flown) — with a breathless impa- * Wordsworth, on Yarrow Visited. MACKERY END. 131 tience of recognition, which was more pardonable perhaps than decorous, at the age of fifty odd. But Bridget in some things is behind her years. The only thing left was to get into the house — and that was a difficulty, which to me singly would have been insurmountable ; for I am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in without me ; but she soon returned with a creature, that might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the Gladmans ; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest young women in the county. But this adopted Bruton^ in my mind, was better than they all ^ more comely. She was born too late to have remembered me. She just recol- lected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But the name of kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire, In five minutes we were as thor- oughly acquainted, as if we had been born and bred up together ; were familiar, even to the calling each other by our Christian names. So Chris- 132 MACKERY END. tians should call one another. To have seen Bridget, and her — it was like the meeting of the two Scriptural cousins ! There was a grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and stature, answer- ing to her mind, in this farmer's wife, which would have shined in a palace — or so we thought it. We were made welcome by husband and wife equally — we, and our friend that was with us. — I had almost forgotten him — but B. F. will not so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he shall read this on the far-distant shores where the Kan- garoo haunts The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of our coming; and, after an appropriate glass of native wine, never let me forget, with what honest pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheat- hampstead, to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know something more of us, at a time when she almost knew nothing. — With what corre- sponding kindness we were received by them also — how Bridget's memory, exalted by the occasion, warmed into a thousand half obliterated recollec- tions of things and persons, to my utter aston- ishment, and her own — and to the astoundment of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing that icas not a cousin there, — old effaced images of more than half-forgotten names and circumstances still MACKERY END. 133 crowding back upon her, as words written in lemon come out upon exposure to a friendly warmth^ — when I forget all this, then may my country cous- -ins forget me; and Bridget no more remember, that in the days of weakling infancy I was her tender charge — as I have been her care in foolish manhood since — in those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire. 134 MACKERY END. MACKEEY END, IN HERTFOEDSHIRE. PAGE 125 — Hash hinges offspring. A rather con- torted allusion to Jephthah's daughter. 125 — We are generally in Jiarmony. Mary Lamb once wrote to a friend, " I make it a point of conscience never to interfere or cross my brother in the humor he happens to be in." 125 — Old Burton., or one of Ms strange con- temporaries. Concerning Lamb's peculiarities of taste, Mr. Thomas Westwood says: ''Charles Lamb was a living anachronism — a seventeenth century man, mislaid and brought to light two hundred years too late He belonged to the school of his contemporaries, but they were con- temporaries that never met him in the streets, but were mostly to be found in Poets' Corner, or under other grave-stones of the long ago." 126 — Narrative teazes me. "Lamb never pos- sessed the faculty of constructing a plot either for MACKEEY END. 135 drama or novel ; and while lie luxuriated in the humor of SmoUet, the wit of Fielding, or the sol- emn pathos of Richardson, he was not amused, but perplexed, by the attempt to tread the windings of story which conducts to their most exquisite pas- sages through the mazes of adventures." — Thomas Noon Talfourd. 126 — Rdigio Medici. Lamb used to boast that he first "amongst the moderns" discovered and proclaimed the excellencies of Sir Thomas Browne ; and no author is more frequently quoted or alluded to in the Essays of Elia. 126 — Margaret Newcastle. It was among Lamb's idiosyncracies to admire the works of Mar- garet Cavenish, Duchess of Newcastle, a prolific and amusing writer, of the seventeenth century. Her works are " remarkable for absurdity and bad grammar," says one critic; she possessed "not one particle of judgment or taste," adds another; while Horace Walpole describes her as a "fertile pedant, with an unbounded passion for scribbling." 127 — Trials of life. During one of Mary's frequent illnesses. Lamb wrote thus to Miss Words- worth : " All my strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her co-operation. I dare not think, lest I should think wrong ; so used am I to look up to her in the least and biggest perplexity. . . . She is older and wiser and better than I, and all 136 MACKEEY END. jnj wretched imperfections I cover to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness." 128 — Spacious closet of * * , reading. Samuel Salt's library, in the Inner Temple. 128 — An excursion. Hardly a year passed without a similar expedition, and many of these are commemorated in the Elian Essays. 132 — B. F. Barron Field, a friend since school-days. 132 — Shores ichere the Kangaroo haunts. Field had at that time removed to Sydney, New South Wales, where Lamb addressed to him the fantastic "Letter to Distant Correspondents." BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 137 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. [London Magazine, September, 1824.] There are few of his papers in which the past years of his life are more delightfully revived. The house had been "reduced to an antiquity." But we go with him to the grass plat, where he used to read Cowley; to the tapestried bedrooms where the mythological people of Ovid used to stand forth, half alive; even to "that haunted bed- room in which old Sarah Battle died," and into which he "used to creep in a passion of fear." These things are all touched with a delicate pen; mixed and incorporated with tender reflections; for " The solitude of childhood " (as he says) " is not so much the mother of thought as the feeder of love." With him it was both. — Bryan Waller Procter, 138 BLAKESMOOE IN H SHIKE. BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. I DO not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better passion than envy ; and contemplations on the great and good, whom we fancy in succession to have been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions, incompatible with the bustle of modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish pres- ent aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, attends us between entering an empty and a crowded church. In the latter it is chance but some present human frailty — an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory — or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory, on that of the preacher — puts us by our best thoughts, dishar- monising the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness? — go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 139 church — think of the piety that has kneeled there — the congregations, old and young, that have found consolation there — the meek pastor — the docile parishioner — with no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons — drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee. Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some few miles out of my road, to look upon the remains of an old great house with which I had been impressed in this way in infancy. I was apprized that the owner of it had lately pulled it down; still I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished, that so much solidity with magnificence could not have been crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish which I found it. The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to — an antiquity. I was astonished at the indistinction of every- thing. Where had stood the great gates? What bounded the court-yard? Whereabout did the out- houses commence ? a few bricks only lay as repre- sentatives of that which was so stately and so spacious. Death does not shrink up his human victim at 140 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. this rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their porportion. Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of destruction, at the plucking of every pannel I should have felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful store-room, in whose hot-window seat I used to sit, and read Cow- ley, with the grass-plat before, and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it, about me — it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns — or a pannel of the yellow room. Why, every plank and pannel of that house for me had magic in it. The tapestried bed-rooms — tapestry so much better than painting — not adorn- ing merely, but peopling the wainscots — at which childhood ever and anon would steal and look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a momentary eye- encounter with those stern bright visages, staring reciprocally — all Ovid on the walls, in colours vivider than his descriptions. Actaeon in mid sprout, with the unappeasable prudery of Diana; and the still more provoking, and almost culinary coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting of Marsyas. Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs. Battle died — whereinto 1 have crept, but always BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIEE. 141 in the day-time, with a passion of fear; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold commu- nication with the past. — How shall they build it up again f It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but that traces of the splendour of past inmates were everywhere apparent. Its furniture was still standing — even to the tarnished gilt leather battledores, and crumbling feathers of shut- tlecocks, in the nursery, which told that children had once played there. But I was a lonely child, and had the range at will of every apartment, knew every nook and corner, wondered and wor- shipped everywhere. The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of thought, as it is the feeder of love, and silence, and admiration. So strange a passion for the place possessed me in those years, that, though there lay — I shame to say how few roods distant from the mansion — half hid by trees, what I judged some romantic lake — such was the spell which bound me to the house, and such my care- fulness not to pass its strict and proper precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored for me ; and not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder devotion, I found, to my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had been the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. Variegated views, extensive pros- 142 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. pects — and those at no great distance from the house — I was told of such — what were they to me, being out of the boundaries of my Eden ? — So far from a wish to roam, I would have drawn, methought, still closer the fences of my chosen prison; and have been hemmed in by a yet securer cincture of those excluding garden walls. I could have exclaimed with that garden-loving poet — Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines j Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; And oh so close your circles lace, That I may never leave this place : But, lest your fetters prove too weak, Ere I your silken bondage break. Do you, O brambles, chain me too. And, courteous briars, nail me through.* I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides — the low-built roof — parlours ten feet by ten — frugal boards, and all the homeliness of home — these were the condition of my birth — the whole- some soil which I was planted in. Yet, without impeachment to their tenderest lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of something beyond; and to have taken if but a peep, in childhood, at the contrasting accidents of a great fortune. *Marvell, on Appleton House, to the Lord Fairfax. BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIEE. 143 To have tlie feeling of gentility, it is not neces- sary to have been born gentle. The pride of ances- try may be had on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an importunate race of ancestors; and the coat-less antiquary, in his unemblazoned cell, revolving the long line of a Mowbray's or De Clif- ford's pedigree ^ — at those sounding names may warm himself into as gay a vanity as those who do inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal merely: and what herald shall go about to strip me of an idea? Is it trenchant to their swords? can it be hacked off as a spur can? or torn away like a tarnished garter? What, else, were the families of the great to us? what pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or their capitulatory brass monuments? What to us the uninterrupted current of their bloods, if our own did not answer within us to a cognate and correspondent elevation? Or wherefore, else, O tattered and diminished 'Scutcheon — that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely stairs, Blakesmoor ! — have I in childhood so oft stood poring upon thy mystic characters — thy emblematic supporters, with their prophetic "Eesurgam" — till, every dreg of peas- antry purging off, I received into myself Very Gen- tility? — Thou wert first in my morning eyes; and, of nights, hast detained my steps from bedward, 144 BLAKESMOOK IN H SHIEE. till it was but a step from gazing at thee to dream- ing on tliee. This is the only true gentry by adoption; the veritable change of blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, by transfusion. Who it was by dying that had earned the splen- did trophy, I know not, I inquired not; but its fading rags, and colours cobweb-stained, told, that its subject was of two centuries back. And what if my ancestor at that date was some Damoetas — feeding flocks, not his own, upon the hills of Lincoln — did I in less earnest vindicate to myself the family trappings of this once proud ^gon ? — repaying by a. backward triumph the insults he might possibly have heaped in his life- time upon my poor pastoral progenitor. If it were presumption so to speculate, the pres- ent owners of the mansion had least reason to com- plain. They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers for a newer trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to myself what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy, or to soothe my vanity. I was the true descendent of those old W s ; and not the present family of that name, who had fled the old waste places. Mine was that gallery of good old family por- traits, which as I have traversed, giving them in fancy my own family name, one — and then an- BLAKESMOOK IN H SHIRE. 145 otlier — would seem to smile, reaching forward from the canvas, to recognise the new relationship ; while the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity. That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a lamb — that hung next the great bay window — with the bright yellow H shire hair, and eye of watchet hue — so like my Alice! — I am per- suaded, she was a true Elia — Mildred Elia, I take it. From her, and from my passion for her — for I first learned love from a picture — Bridget took the hint of those pretty whimsical lines, which thou mayest see, if haply thou hast never seen them, Reader, in the margin.* But my Mildred grew not old, like the imaginary Helen. * " High-born Helen, round your dwelling These twenty years I've paced in vain : Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty Hath been to glory in his pain. , High-born Helen, proudly telling Stories of thy cold disdain ; I starve, I die, now you comply, And I no longer can complain. These twenty years I've lived on tears, Dwelling for ever on a frown ; On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread ; And I perish now you kind are grown. 146 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. Mine too, Blakesmoor, was tliy noble Marble Hall, with its mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars — stately busts in marble — ranged round : of whose countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my wonder, but the mild Galba had my love. There they stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of immortality. Mine too thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of authority, high-backed, and wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden — so common since, that bats have roosted in it. Mine too — whose else ? — thy costly fruit-garden, with its sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler pleas- ure-garden, rising backwards from the house, in Can I, who loved my beloved But for the scorn ' was in her eye *, Can I be moved for my beloved, When she returns me sigh for sigh ? In stately pride, by my bed-side, High-born Helen's portrait hung; Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays Are nightly to the portrait sung. To that I weep, nor ever sleep. Complaining all night long to her," — Helen, grown old, no longer cold. Said — "you to all men T prefer." BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 147 triple terraces, witli flower-pots now of palest lead, save tliat a speck here and there, saved from the elements, bespake their pristine state to have been gilt and glittering; the verdant quarters back- warder still; and, stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long murmuring woodpigeon — with that antique image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist not; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that fragmental mystery. Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too frevently in your idol worship, walks and wind- ings of Blakesmoor! for this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed over your pleasant places? I sometimes think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of their extinguished habita- tions there may be a hope — a germ to be revivified. 148 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. [The house here described was, as Mr. P. G. Patmore first pointed out, Gilston Park, the seat of Mr. Robert Plumer Ward, the eminent statesman and novelist. Here Lamb's maternal grandmother had for years been housekeeper, and here he had often visited her. The destruction described in this essay is exaggerated, the account given in " Dream Children " being more accurate. Mr. P. G. Patmore says, " When I first became acquainted with it (in 1831) nothing could be more perfect of its kind ; and so it remains to the present day. In fact, on com- ing into possession of it, by his marriage with its widowed owner, Mr. Plumer Ward had restored it in every part and par- ticular, with a scrupulous attention to its pristine character." This, however, was in 1831, and the visit here mentioned, according to Mr. Procter, was made in 1799, at which time the house was doubtless in a dilapidated condition. E. D. H.] PAGE 144 — My ancestor. In Lamb's sonnet on " The Family Name," are these lines : " Perchance some shepherd on Lincolnian plains, In manners guileless as his own sweet flocks, Received thee first amid the merry mocks And arch allusions of his fellow swains." BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 149 144 — A newer trifle. Blakesware, the seat of Mr. Ward, situated but a few miles from Gilston. 144 -—TT s. Wards. 145 — That Beauty. In his description of Gilston, Mr. Ward notices a portrait of the Count- ess of Abercorn, as a shepherdess, which hung in the dining room. Mrs. Plumer Ward was a grand- daughter of the Countess of Abercorn. 145 — My Alice: See notes on "Dream Chil- dren." 150 DREAM CHILDEEM. DEEAM CHILDKEN; A EEYEEIE. [London Magazine, January, 1822.] This essay appeared in the London Magazine for January, 1822. Lamb's elder brother John was then lately dead The death o£ this brother, wholly unsympathetic as he was with Charles, served to bring home to him his loneliness. He was left in the world with but one near rela- tive, and that one too often removed from him for months at a time by the saddest of afflictions. No wonder if he became keenly aware of his solitude. No wonder if his thoughts turned to what migJit have been, and he looked back to those boyish days when he wandered in the glades of Blakesware with Alice by his side Inexpressibly touching, when we have once learned to penetrate the thin disguise in which he clothes them, are the hoarded memories, the tender regrets, which Lamb, writing by his "lonely hearth," thus ventured to DREAM CHILDREN. 151 commit to tlie uncertain sympathies of tlie great public. More touching still is the almost super- human sweetness with which he deals with the character of his lately lost brother. . . . And there is something of the magic of genius, unless, indeed, it was a burst of uncontrollable anguish, in the revelation with, which his dream ends. — Alfred Ainger, 152 DREAM CHILDREN. DEEAM CHILDEEN; A EEYERIE. Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children ; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great- grandmother Eield, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and Papa lived) which had been the scene — so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country — of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Eobin Eedbreasts, till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its .stead, with DEE AM CHILDREN. 153 no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of lier dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother Field was, how beloved and respected by every body, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoin- ing county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them uj) in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say " that would be foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman ; so good indeed that she knew 154 DREAM CHILDREN. all the Psaltery by heart, aye, and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmother Field once was ; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer — here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain ; but it could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; and how she believed that an appari- tion of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but she said "those innocents would do her no harm ;" and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eye-brows, and tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her grand-children, having us to the great house in the holydays, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the Twelve Caesars, that had been DREAM CHILDREN. 155 Emperors of Rome, till tlie old marble lieads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with tliem ; liow I never could be tired with roam- ing about that huge mansion, with its vast empty- rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken pannels, with the gild- ing almost rubbed out — sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gar- dening man would cross me — and how the necta- rines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, — and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but to look at — or in lying about upon the fresh grass, with all the fine garden smells around me — or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth — or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the gar- den, with here and there a great sulky pike hang- ing midway down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings, — I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions, than in all the sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, 156 DREAM CHILDREN. and sucli like common baits of children. Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both seemed will- ing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though their great-grandmother Field loved all her grand-children, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John L , because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of mop- ing about in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out — and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries — and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of every body, but of their great-grandmother Field most espe- cially; and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy — for he was a good bit older than me — many a mile when I could not walk for pain ; — and how in after-life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough for him when DREAM CHILDREN. 157 he was impatient, and in pain, nor remember suffi- ciently how considerate lie had been to me when I was lame-footed; and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but after- wards it haunted and haunted me ; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kind- ness, and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy without him, as he their poor uncle must have been when the doctor took off his limb. Here the children fell a cry- ing, and asked if their little mourning which they had on was not for Uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in des- pair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W n; and, as much as children could under- stand, I explained to them what coyness, and diffi- culty, and denial meant in maidens — when sud- 158 DREAM CHILDREN. denly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-pre- sentment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was, — and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two mourn- ful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech; "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The chil- dren of Alice call Bartrum father. We are noth- ing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name " and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bache- lor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side — but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever. DEE AM CHILDKEN. 159 DEEAM CHILDKEN: A EEYEKIE. PAGE 152 — Great house in Norfolk. With his usual love of mystification, Lamb places Blakesmoor (or Gilston) in Norfolk, although in other particulars following the description of the preceding essay. 153 — How religious and how good. In the poem, "The Grandame," Lamb writes thus of his grandmother Eield: " For she had studied patience in the school Of Christ ; much comfort she had thence derived, And was 2^ follower of the Nazarene." 153 — Not indeed the mistress. In the poem quoted above are also these lines : " For lowly born was she, and long had eat, Well-earn'd the bread of service I remember well Her reverend image : I remember too, With what a zeal she served her master's house." 160 DREAM CHILDREN. 155 — Unless novj and then. A graphic ac- count of the picking of one peach is given in his easay, " The Last Peach." 156 — John L . John Lamb, who was his mother's, as well as his grandmother's favorite. 156 — He became lame-footed too. About the time of his mother's death, John Lamb hurt his leg and never recovered from his lameness. 157 — When he died. Of John Lamb's death and its effect on Charles and Mary, Miss Words- worth wrote to Henry Crabb Robinson, in 1822 : " The death of their brother, no doubt, has afflicted them m.uch more than the death of any brother, with whom there had, in near neighborhood, been so little personal or family communication, would afflict any other minds." 158 — Call Bartrum father. There is very insufficient and inconclusive evidence that Lamb's Alice married one Bartrum, a London pawn-broker. The use of the name here seems, however, to dis- prove this theory. We must be content to leave Alice, as Lamb left her, an unsolved mystery, all the more fascinating for her illusiveness. THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. 161 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. [London Magazine, August, 1820.] Situated at tlie nortli-west corner of Thread- needle Street, opposite the church of St. Martin's Outwich, was a large and stately edifice, con- structed of brick and stone, with stone copings, rustic quoins, three ranges of windows, and a mag- nificent portal, above which rose a grand central window, ornamented, like the angles of the pile, with rustic work. The portal, provided with richly-carved gates, opened upon a spacious quad- rangular court-yard, surrounded by a handsome piazza, formed by columns of the Doric order. The entire pile, with its grand court- yard and appendages, occupied a vast space of ground, running backward as far as Old Broad Street, where it had another frontage opposite St. Peter-le-Poor 162 THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. The principal feature of the edifice was the great hall, in which the Courts of the Directors were held, where sales of stock took place, where sub- scriptions were announced, and dividends pro- claimed. This hall was hung round with huge maps of Mexico, and ornamented with portraits of Queen Anne, of the reigning Sovereign, George I., and of the governor, the sub-governor, and the deputy-governor of the South Sea Company. Un- derneath the building were immense arched vaults, wherein the treasures of the Company were depos- ited. . . . Such was the South Sea House in 1720 — the period of its greatest splendor. It is now a gloomy pile, and its courts are deserted. — William Harrison AinswortJi. THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. 163 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. Reader, in thy passage from the Bank — where thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself) — to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other thy subur- ban retreat northerly, — didst thou never observe a melancholy-looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the left — where Threadneedle-street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters, and pillars, with few or no traces of goers- in or comers-out — a desolation something like Balclutha's.* This was once a house of trade, — a centre of busy interests. The throng of merchants was here * I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate. — OSSIAN 164 THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. — the quick pulse of gain — and here some forms of business are still kept up, though the soul be long since lied. Here are still to be seen stately porticos ; imposing staircases ; offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks ; the still more sacred interiors of court and committee rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door- keepers — directors seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend), at long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver ink- stands long since dry ; — the oaken wainscot hung with pictures of deceased governors and sub-gov- ernors, of Queen Anne, and the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty ; — huge charts, which subsequent discoveries have antiquated; — dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, — and soundings of the Bay of Panama 1 — The long passages hung with buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, whose substance might defy any, short of the last, confla- gration : — with vast ranges of cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces of eight once lay, an "unsunned heap," for Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart withal, — long since dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the brealdng of that famous Bubble. Such is the South Sea-house. At least, such it THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. 165 was forty years ago, when I knew it, — a magnifi- cent relic ! Wlaat alterations may have been made in it since, I have had no opportunities of verify- ing. Time, I take for granted, has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the face of the sleep- ing waters. A thicker crust by this time stagnates upon it. The moths, that were then battening upon its obsolete ledgers and day-books, have rested from their depredations, but other light generations have succeeded, making fine fretwork among their single and double entries. Layers of dust have accumulated (a superf oetation of dirt !) upon the old layers, that seldom used to be dis- turbed, save by some curious finger, now and then, that wished to explore the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign ; or, with less hallowed curi- osity, sought to unveil some of the mysteries of that tremendous HOAX, whose extent the petty pecula- tors of our day look back upon with the same expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modern conspiracy contemplating the Titan size of V^aux's superhuman plot. Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence and destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a memorial ! Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring and living commerce, — amid the fret and fever of 166 THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. speculation — with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India-house about thee, in the hey-day of pres- ent prosperity, with their important faces, as it were insulting thee, their ^oor neiglibour out of business — to the idle, and merely contemplative, — to such as me, old house ! there is a charm in thy quiet : — a cessation — a coolness from business — an indolence almost cloistral — which is delight- ful ! With what reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide ! They spoke of the past : — the shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and accountants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day could lift from their enshrining shelves — with their old fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric inter lacings — their siuns in triple columniations, set down with formal superfluity of cyphers — with pious sentences at the beginning, without which our religious ancestors never ven- tured to open a book of business, or bill of lading — the costly vellum covers of some of them almost persuading us that we are got into some better library, — are very agreeable and edifying specta- cles. I can look upon these defunct dragons with complacency. Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled penknives (our ancestors had everything on a THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. 167 larger scale than we have hearts for) are as good as anything from Herculaneum. The pounce-boxes of our days have gone retrograde. The very clerks which I remember in the South Sea-house — I speak of forty years back — had an air very different from those in the public offices that I have had to do with since. They partook of the genius of the place ! There were mostly (for the establishment did not admit of superfluous salaries,) bachelors. Gen- erally (for they had not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative turn of mind. Old-fash- ioned, for a reason mentioned before. Humourists, for they were of all descriptions ; and, not having been brought together in early life (which has a tendency to assimilate the members of corporate bodies to each other), but, for the most part, placed in this house in ripe or middle age, they necessa- rily carried into it their separate habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may so speak, as into a common stock. Hence they formed a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. Domestic retainers in a great house, kept more for show than use. Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat — and not a few among them had arrived at considerable proficiency on the German flute. The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cam- bro-Briton. He had something of the choleric com- 168 THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. plexion of Ms countrymen stamped on his visnomy, but was a worthy sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, to the last, powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion which I remember to have seen in caricatures of what were termed, in my young days, llaccaronies. He was the last of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a gib-cat over his counter all the forenoon, I think I see him, making up his cash (as they call it) with tremulous fingers, as if he feared every one about him was a defaulter; in his hypochondry ready to imagine himself one ; haunted, at least, with the idea of the possibility of his becoming one : his tristful visage clearing up a little over his roast neck of veal at Anderton's at two (where his picture still hangs, taken a little before his death by desire of the master of the coffee-house, which he had frequented for the last five-and-twenty years), but not attain- ing the meridian of its animation till evening brought on the hour of tea and visiting. The simul- taneous sound of his well-known rap at the door with the stroke of the clock announcing six, was a topic of never failing mirth in the families which tliis dear old bachelor gladdened with his presence. Then was his forte, his glorified hour ! How would he chirp, and expand, over a muffin I How would he dilate into secret history I His country- man, Pennant himself, in particular, could not be THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. 169 more eloquent than lie in relation to old and new London — the site of old theatres, churches, streets gone to decay — where Rosomund's j^ond stood ■ the Mulberry-gardens ~ and the Conduit in Cheap — with many a pleasant anecdote, derived from paternal tradition, of those grotesque figures which Hogarth has immortalized in his picture of Nooii^ — the worthy decendants of those heroic confessors, who, flying to this country, from the wrath of Louis the Fourteenth and his dragoons, kept alive the flame of pure religion in the sheltering obscuri- ties of Hog-lane, and the vicinity of the Seven Dials ! Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken him for one, had you met him in one of the passages leading to Westminster-hall. By stoop, I mean that gentle bending of the body forwards, which, in great men, must be supposed to be the effect of an habitual condescending attention to the applications of their inferiors. While he held you in converse, you felt "strained to the height " in the colloquy. The conference over, you were at leisure to smile at the comparative insignifi- cance of the pretensions which had just awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest order. It did not reach^to a saw or a proverb. His mind was in its original state of white paper. A sucking babe 170 THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. miglit liave posed him. What was it then? Was he rich ? Alas, no ! Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife looked outwardly gentle-folks, when I fear all was not well at all times within. She had a neat meagre person, which it was evi- dent she had not sinned in over-pampering ; but in its veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, by some labyrinth of relationship, which I never thoroughly understood, — much less can explain with any heraldic certainty at this time of day, — to the illustrious, but unfortunate house of Der- wentwater. This was the secret of Thomas's stoop. This was the thought — the sentiment — the bright solitary star of your lives, — ye mild and happy pair, — which cheered you in the night of intellect, and in the obscurity of your station ! This was to you instead of riches, instead of rank, instead of glittering attainments : and it was worth them all together. You insulted none with it; but, while you wore it as a j^iece of defensive armour only, no insult likewise could reach you through it. Decus et solamen. Of quite another stanlp was the then accountant, John Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor in good truth cared one fig about the matter. He "thought an accountant the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest accountant in it." Yet John was not without his hobby. The THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE, 171 fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly, ''with other notes than to the Orphean lyre." He did, indeed, scream and scrape most abominably. His fine suite of official rooms in Threadneedle- street, which, without anything very substantial appended to them, were enough to enlarge a man's notions of himself that lived in them, (I know not who is the occupier of them now*) resounded fort- nightly to the notes of a concert of " sweet breasts," as our ancestors would have called them, culled from club-rooms and orchestras — chorus singers — first and second violincellos — double basses — and clarionets — who ate his cold mutton, and drank his punch, and praised his ear. He sate like Lord Midas among them. But at the desk Tipp was quite another sort of creature. Thence all ideas, that were purely ornamental, were banished. You could not speak of anything romantic without rebuke. Politics were excluded. A newspaper was thought too refined and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in writing off dividend warrants. The striking of the annual balance in *I have since been informed, that the present tenant of them is a Mr. Lamb, a gentleman who is happy in the possession of some choice pictures, and among them a rare portrait of Milton, which I mean to do myself the pleasure of going to see, and at the same time to refresh my memory with the sight of old scenes. Mr. Lamb has the character of a right courteous and communicative collector. 172 THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. the company's books (wliicli, perhaps, differed from the balance of last year in the sum of 251. Is. 6cZ.) occupied his days and nights for a month previous. Not that Tipp was blind to the deadness of things (as they call them in the city) in his beloved house, or did not sigh for a return of the old stirring days when South Sea hopes were young — (he was indeed equal to the weilding of any the most intri- cate accounts of the most flourishing company in these or those days) : — but to a genuine accountant the difference of proceeds is as nothing. The frac- tional farthing is as dear to his heart as the thou- sands which stand before it. He is the true actor, who, whether his part be a prince or a peasant, must act it with like intensity. With Tipp form was everything. His life was formal. His actions seemed ruled with a ruler. His pen was not less erring than his heart. He made the best executor in the world : he was plagued with incessant execu- torships accordingly, which excited his spleen and soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He would swear (for Tipp swore) at the little orphans, whose rights he would guard with a tenacity like the grasp of the dying hand, that commended their interests to his protection. With all this there was about him a sort of timidity — (his few enemies used to give it a worse name) — a something which, in reverence to the dead, we will place, if you THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. 1^3 please, a little on this side of the heroic. Nature certainly had been pleased to endow John Tipp with a sufficient measure of the principle of self- preservation. There is a cowardice which we do not despise, because it has nothing base or treach- erous in its elements; it betrays itself, not you: it is mere temperament; the absence of the romantic and the enterprising; it sees a lion in the way, and will not, with Fortinbras, "greatly find quarrel m a straw," when some supposed honour is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned against the rails of a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked down a precipice; or let off a gun; or went upon a water-party; or would willingly let you go if he could have helped it: neither was it recorded of him, that for lucre, or for intimidation, he ever forsook friend or principle. Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in whom common qualities become uncom- mon?— Can I forget thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of letters, the author, of the South Sea House? who never enteredst thy office in a morning, or quitted it in mid-day — (what didst thou in an office ?)— without some quirk that left a sting! Thy gibes and thy jokes are now extinct, or survive but in two forgotten vol- umes, which I had the good fortune to rescue from 174 THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. a stall in Barbican, not three days ago, and found tliee terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as alive. Thy wit is a little gone by in these fastidious days — thy topics are staled by the " new-born gauds " of the time : — but great thou used to be in Public Led- gers, and in Chronicles, upon Chatham, and Shel- bourne, and E-ockingham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war which ended in the tear- ing' from Great Britain her rebellious colonies, — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond, — and such small politics. A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstreperous, was fine rattling rattleheaded Plumer. He was descended, — not in a right line, reader, (for his lineal pretensions, like his personal, favoured a little of the sinister bend) from the Plumer s of Hertfordshire. So tradition ^ave him out; and certain family features not a little sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter Plumer (his reputed author) had been a rake in his days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen the world. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old Whig still living, who has represented the county in so many successive parliaments, and has a fine old mansion near Ware. Walter flourished in George the Second's days, and was the same who was summoned before the House of Commons about THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. 175 a business of franks, with tlie old Ducliess of Marl- borough. You may read of it in Johnson's Life of Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that business. It is certain our Plumer did nothing to discounte- nance the rumour. He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, with all gentleness, insinuated. But, besides his family pretensions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang gloriously. Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, child-like, pastoral M ; a flute's breathing less divinely whispering than thy Arcadian melo- dies, when, in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, which proclaims the winter wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrateful. Thy sire was old surly M , the unapproachable church- warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering winter : — only unfortunate in thy end- ing, which should have been mild, conciliatory, swan-like. Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, but they must be mine in private : — already I have fooled the reader to the top of his bent ; — else could I omit that strange creature WooUett, who existed in trying the question, and hought litigations f — and still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton 176 THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. might liave deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib a pen — with what delib- eration would he wet a wafer ! But it is time to close — night's wheels are rat- tling fast over me — it is proper to have done with this solemn mockery. Reader, what if 1 have been playing with thee all this while — peradventure the very names^ which I have summoned up before thee, are fan- tastic — insubstantial — like Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece : Be satisfied that something answering to them has had a being. Their importance is from the past. THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. I'^T RECOLLECTIONS OE THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. rCharles Lamb left Christ's Hospital Nov. 23, 1789, and obtained his appointment in the East India House Apr 5, I7Q2 During most or all of the time between these two da es, he was employed at the South Sea House, under his brother John; but of this period no account is left to us e-ep ^hat furnished in this essay, written thirty years after he left the South Sea House, and containing almost nothmg of personal value. This was the first publication over the name of Eha. E. D. H.] PAGE V J! xl, \^4,^ That famous Biibhle. The story of the South Sea Bubble, which, bursting in 1720, caused almost universal bankruptcy, is one of the strang- est stories of the early part of the 18th century. During the nine years following 1711, all England went mad over stock companies. The fruitful mother of these bogus companies was that known as "The Governor and Company of Merchants of Great Britain trayding to the South Seas." By 178 THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. grossest fraud, tlie stock advanced as liigli as 1000 per cent, and princes, nobles, members of parliament were alike involved in its transactions. When at last, in accordance with the royal proclamation declaring the illegality of such companies, the Bub- ble was burst, the extent of the fraud was apparent. At the parliamentary investigation, opened Dec. 8, 1720, the directors were ordered to produce ail their books of accounts, and the property of all the directors was confiscated for the relief of the sufferers. It was many years, however, before England recovered from this blow to her prosperity. 165 — Forty years. In reality, but thirty years. 166 — No skill in figuring. One of Lamb's fellows in the East India House has corroborated this statement, by the remark that Lamb was neither a neat nor an accurate accountant, and that he made frequent errors which he wiped out with Jils little finger. Perhaps for this reason. Lamb whimsically refers to himself as a remarkably neat accountant, in his " Character of the Late Elia." 168 — Pennant. Thomas Pennant, a famous naturalist and antiquary. 171 — A Mr. Lamh. One of Elia's innocent mystifications, in which he refers to his brother John Lamb, a retired official of the South Sea House. THE SOUTH SEA HOUSE. 179 173 — Greatly find quarrel in a straw. Hamlet : Act lY, Sc. 1. ** Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honor's at the stake." 173 — Two forgotten volumes. "Miscellanies in Prose and Yerse." 2 vols. 1802. Man also wrote many political articles for the Morning Post. 175 — A business of franks. "A slight mis- take. It was Cave the Printer that was brought before the House for too conscientiously exercising his inspection of Mr. Plumer's franks." — Percy Fitzgerald. 175 — Song sung hy Amiens. As You Like It: Actll, Sc. 7. 176 — Henry Pimpernel^ and old John Naps of Greece. Taming of the Shrew. Induction: Sc. 2. 180 OXrORD IN THE VACATION. OXFORD IN THE VACATION. [London Magazine, October, 1820.] I was not train'd in Academic bowers, And to those leam'd streams I nothing owe Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow; Mine have been any thing but studious hours. Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap ; My blow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, And I -walk gowned ; feel unusual powers. Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain ; And my scull teems with notions infinite. ■ Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach Truths, which transcend the searching Schoolmen's vein, And half had stagger'd that stout Stagirite. — Charles Lamb : Sonnet Written at Cambridge. OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 181 OXFOED IN THE VACATION. Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article — as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, while it reads, seems as though it read not,) never fails to consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces some rare piece to be a Yivares, or a Woollet — me- thinks I hear you exclaim. Reader, Who is Elia ? Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half -forgotten humours of old clerks defunct, in an old house of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you have already set me down in your mind as one of the self -same college — a votary of the desk — a notched and cropt scrivener — one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick people are said to do, through a quill. Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I con- fess that it is my humour, my fancy — in the fore- part of the day, when the mind of your man of 182 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. letters requires some relaxation — (and none better than such as at first seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies) — to while away some good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigos, cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the first place ***** and then it sends you home with such increased appetite to your books ******* not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and naturally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays — so that the very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the settings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures and cyphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the flowery carpet- ground of a midnight dessertation. — It feels its promotion. * * * * go that you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of ^lia is very little, if at all, compromised in the condescension. Not that, in my anxious detail of the many com- modities incidental to the life of a public oflice, I would be thought blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be able to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing-away-with altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, through the OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 183 four seasons, — tlie red-letter days^ now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days. There was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas — Andrew and John, men famous in old times — we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as I was at school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by the same token, in the old Basket Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his uneasy posture holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagno- letti. 1 honoured them all, and could almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred : — only methought I a little grudged at the coalition of the better Jude with Simon — clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together, to make up one poor gaudy-day between them — as an economy unworthy of the dispensation. These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's life — "far off their coming shone." — I was as good as an almanac in those days. I could have told you such a saint's-day falls out next week, or the week after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little better than one of the profane. Let me nol be thouo'ht to 184 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, who have judged the further observation ,of these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious. Only in a custom of such long standing, methinks, if their Holinesses the Bishops had, in decency, been first sounded but I am wading out of my depths. I am not the man to decide the limits of civil and ecclesiastical authority 1 am plain Elia — no Selden, nor Archbishop Usher — though at present in the thick of their books, here in the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley. I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. To such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in his young years of the sweet food of academic institution, nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a few idle weeks at, as one or other of the Universi- ties. Their vacation too, at this time of the year, falls in so pat with ours. Here 1 can take my walks unmolested, and fancy myself of what degree or standing I please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up past opportunities. 1 can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein rises, I strut a Grentleman Commoner. In graver moments I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do not think I am much unlike that respectable character. I have seen your dim- eyed vergers, and bed-makers in spectacles, drop a OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 185 bow or curtsey, as I pass, wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favours the notion. Only in Christ Church rever- end quadrangle, I can be content to pass for noth- ing short of a Seraphic Doctor. The walks at these times are so much one's own, — the tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Mag- dalen ! The halls deserted, and with open doors, inviting one to slip in unperceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal Bene- factress (that should have been ours) whose portrait seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman, and to adopt me for their own. Then, to take a peep in by the way at the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique hospitality: the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen fire-places, cordial recesses; ovens whose first pies were baked four centuries ago; and spits which have cooked for Chaucer! Not the meanest minister among the dishes but is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the Cook goes forth a Manciple. Antiquity I thou wondrous charm, what art thou ? that, being nothing, art everything! When thou wert^ thou wert not antiquity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity^ as thou called'st it, to look back to with blind veneration ; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern ! What mystery lurks in this retroversion ? or what 186 OXFOKD IN THE YACATIOi^. half Januses are we, tliat cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert I The mighty future is as nothing, being everything ! the past is everything, being nothing 1 What were thy darh ages f Surely the sun rose as brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in the morning. Why is it that we can never hear mention of them without an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had dimmed the face of things, and that our ancestors wandered to and fro groping ! Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most arride and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering learning, thy shelves What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers, that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the lea,ves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dis- lodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage ; and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings, is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard. Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of MSS. Those varice lectiones, so tempt- ing to the more erudite palates, do but disturb and OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 187 unsettle my faith.* I am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three witnesses might have slept unimpeached for me. I leave these curiosities to Porson, and to G. D. — whom, by the way, I found busy as a moth over some rotten archive, rum- maged out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. He stood as passive as one by the side of the old shelves. I longed to new-coat him in Russia, and assign him his place. He might ha;ve mustered for a tall Scapula. D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. No inconsiderable portion of his moder- ate fortune, I apprehend, is consumed in journeys between them and Cliff ord's-inn where, like a * There is something to me repugnant, at any time, in written hand. The text never seems determinate. Print settles it. I had thought of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty — as spring- ing up with all its parts absolute — till, in evil hour, I was shown the original written copy of it, together with the other minor- poems of its author, in the Library of Trinity, kept like some treasure to be proud of. I wish they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent them, after the latter cantos of Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the fine things in their ore ! interlined, corrected ! as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at pleasure ! as if they might have been otherwise, and just as good! as if inspiration were made up of parts, and those fluctuating, successive, indifferent ! I will never go into the workshop of any great artist again, nor desire a sight of his picture, till it is fairly off the easel; no, not if Raphael were to be alive again, and painting another Galatea. 18o OXFORD IN THE VACATION. dove on the asp's nest, he has long taken up his unconscious abode, amid an incongruous assembly of attorneys, attorneys' clerks, apparitors, promoters, vermin of the law, among whom he sits, "in calm and sinless peace." The fangs of the law pierce him not — the winds of litigation blow over his humble chambers — the hard sheriff's officer moves his hat as he passes — legal nor illegal discourtesy touches him — none thinks of offering violence or injustice to him* — you would as soon "strike an abstract idea." D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course of laborious years, in an investigation into all curious matter connected with the two Uni- versities ; and has lately lit upon a MS. collection of charters, relative to C , by which he hopes to settle some disputed points — particularly that long controversy between them as to priority of foun- dation. The ardour with which he engages in these liberal pursuits, I am afraid, has not met with * Violence or injustice certainly none, Mr. Elia. But you will acknowledge, that the charming unsuspectingness of our friend has sometimes laid him open to attacks, which, though savouring (we hope) more of waggery than malice — such is our unfeigned respect for G. D. — might, we think, much better have been omitted. Such was that silly joke of L , who, at the time the question of the Scotch Novels was first agitated, gravely assured our friend — who as gravely went about repeating it in all companies — that Lord Castlereagh had acknowledged him- self to be the author of Waverley ! — A^ote — not by Elia, OXrOKD IN THE VACATION. 189 all the encouragement it deserved, either here, or at C . Your caputs and heads of colleges, care less than anybody else about these questions. — Contented to suck the milky fountains of their Ahna Maters, without inquiring into the venerable gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such curiosi- ties to be impertinent — unreverend. They have their good glebe lands i7i manu, and care not much to rake into the title-deeds. I gather at least so much from other sources, for D. is not a man to complain. D. started like an unbroken heifer, when I inter- rupted him. A priori it was not very probable that we should have met in Oriel. But D. would have done the same, had I accosted him on the sud- den in his own walks in Clifford's Inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a provoking shortsighted- ness (the effect of late studies and watchings at the midnight oil) D. is the most absent of men. He made a call the other morning at our friend MJ's in Bedford-square; and, finding nobody at home, was ushered into the hall, where, asking for pen and ink, with great exactitude of purpose he enters me his name in the book — which ordinarily lies about in such places, to record the failures of the untimely or unfortunate visitor — and takes his leave with many ceremonies, and professions of regret. Some two or three hours after, his walking destinies 190 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. returned Mm into tlie same neiglibourhood again, and again the quiet image of the fire-side circle at MJ's Mrs. M. presiding at it like a Queen Lar, with pretty A. S. at her side striking irresistibly on his fancy, he makes another call (forgetting that they were " certainly not to return from the country before that day week ") and dis- aj)pointed a second time, inquires for pen and paper as before : again the book is brought, and in the line just above that in which he is about to print his second name, (his re-script) — his first name (scarce dry) looks out upon him like another Sosia, or as if a man should suddenly encounter his own duplicate ! The effect may be conceived. D. made many a good resolution against any such lapses in future. I hope he will not keep them too rigorously. For with G. D. — to be absent from i;he body, is sometimes (not to speak it profanely) to be pres- ent with the Lord. At the very time when, per- sonally encountering thee, he passes on with no recognition or, being stopped, starts like a thing surprized — at that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor — or Parnassus — or co-sphered with Plato — or, with Harrington, framing "immortal commonwealths" — devising some plan of amelior- ation to thy country, or thy species perad- venture meditating some individual kindness or OXFORD m THE VACATION. 191 courtesy, to be done to thee thyself^ the returning consciousness of which made him to start so guiltily at thy obtruded personal presence. D. commenced life, after a course of hard study in the "House of pure Emanuel," as usher to a knaidsh fanatic schoolmaster at * * *, at a sal- ary of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend, he never received above half in all the laborious years he served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when pov- erty, staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, Dr. * * * would take no immediate notice, but, after supper, when the school was called together to even-song, he would never fail to introduce some instructive homily against riches, and the corruption of the heart occasioned through the desire of them — ending with "Lord, keep thy servants, above all things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having food and raiment, let us therewith be content. Give me Agar's wish," and the like ; which, to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and simplicity, — but to j)oor D. was a receipt in full for that quarter's demands at least. And D. has been under-working for himself ever since; — drudging at low rates for unappreciating 192 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. booksellers, — wasting Ms fine erudition in silent corrections of the classics, and in those unostenta- tious but solid services to learning, v/hich com- monly fall to the lot of laborious scholars, who have not the art to sell themselves to the best advantage. He has published poems, which do not sell, because their character is inobstrusive like his own, — and because he has been too much absorbed in ancient literature, to know what the popular mark in poe- try is, even if he could have hit it. And, there- fore, his verses are properly, what he terms them, crotchets ; voluntaries ; odes to Liberty, and Spring ; effusions ; little tributes, and offerings, left behind him, upon tables and window-seats, at parting from friends' houses ; and from all the inns of hospitality, where he has been courteously (or but tolerably) received in his pilgrimage. If his muse of kindness halt a little behind the strong lines, in fashion in this excitement-craving age, his prose is the best of the sort in the world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own healthy natural mind, and cheerful, innocent tone of conversation. D. is delightful any where, but he is at the best in such places as these. He cares not much for Bath. He is out of his element at Buxton, at Scarborow, or Harrowgate. The Cam, and the Isis, are to him "better than all the waters of Da- OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 193 mascus." On the Muses' hill he is happy, and good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains; and when he goes about with you to show you the haUs and colleges, you think you have with you the Interpreter at the House Beautiful. Aug. bth, 1820. From my rooms facing the Bodleian. 194 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. OXFOED IN THE VACATION. PAGE 181 — My last. The essay on the South Sea House, which this followed as second in the Elian series. 181 — Agnize. Procter notices this as one of the obsolete words which Lamb chose to rescue from oblivion. 182 — ******* The meaning of these asterisks is not apparent. 182 — Waste lurappers. Lamb, in reality, was in the habit of writing his letters, poems, and essays on all sorts of waste paper. 183 — Red-letter days. Saints' days, King's birthday, 5th of November, etc., etc., formerly kept as holidays, and printed in the almanacs with red ink. 183 — Bashet Prayer Boole. The Prayer Book taking its name from the publisher, John Basket, who issued several editions. OXFOKD IN THE VACATION. 195 184 — Such a one as myself. Owing- to the impediment in his speech, Lamb was nnfitted for the church, and accordingly was prevented from becoming a Grecian at Christ's Hospital and enjoy- ing the opportunity of getting an exhibition. This deprivation of academic instruction was one which he never ceased to mourn. 185 — J^ go about in hlach. "Lamb had laid aside his snuff-colored suit long before I knew him, and was never seen in any thing but a suit of black, with knee breeches and gaiters, and black worsted or silk stockings Though his dress was, by courtesy, ' black ', he always contrived that it should exist in a condition of rusty brown." — P. G. Patmore, 186 — Half Januses. "Januses of one face." — Sir Thomas Browne. 186 — Arride. Another of the obsolete words affected by Lamb. 187 — G. D. The gentle and eccentric scholar, George Dyer, whom Lamb had known since his school-days. Lamb loved and honored him so much that he felt free to make sport of his pecul- iarities, and occasionally, though rarely, Dyer per- ceived the fact. Leigh Hunt wrote of him that his "life was one unbroken dream of learning and goodness;" Talfourd says: "On he went, however, placid if not rejoicing, through the difficulties of 196 OXFOED IN THE VACATION. a life illustrated only by scholarship ; encounter- ing tremendous labors ; unresting yet serene ; until at eighty-five he breathed out the most blameless of lives, which began in a struggle to end in a learned dream ! " 188 — L . Lamb, himself. 188 — Lord Castlereagh. Kobert Stewart, Lord Viscount, Marquis of Londonderry, secretary of state for foreign affairs, and leader of the Tory party. At the time of Lamb's famous joke, he was just returned from the Congress of Sovereigns at Vienna. 188 — Investigation into all curious matter. Dyer was the author of the "History of the Uni- versity of Cambridge," also of the "Charters of Cambridge," here alluded to. 188 — C . Cambridge. 189 — Our friend M. Basil Montagu, an emi- nent lawyer, whose house was the rendezvous of many literary people. 190 — A. S. Anne Skipper, who afterward mar- ried Bryan Waller Procter ("Barry Cornwall."} 191 — Under-worhing for himself ever since. Henry Crabb Robinson says of Dyer, "He was a scholar, but to the end of his days (and he lived to be eighty-five) was a bookseller's drudge." [Even George Dyer's kindly spirit remonstrated against this detailed account of his peculiarities, which was quite recogniz- OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 197 able, without the initials. In the correspondence of the Lotidon Magazine for December, 1820, is this note in which Lamb attempts the amende honorable : " Elia requests the Editor to inform W. K. that in his article on Oxford, under the initials G. D. it was his ambition to make more familiar to the public, a character, which, for »integrity and single-heartedness, he has long been accustomed to rank among the best patterns of his species. That, if he has failed in the end which he proposed, it was an error of judgment merely. That, if in pursuance of his purpose, he has drawn forth some personal peculiarities of his friend into notice, it was only from conviction that the public, in living subjects especially, do not endure pure panegyric. That the anecdotes, which he produced, were no more than he conceived necessary to awaken attention to charac- ter, and were meant solely to illustrate it. That it is an entire mistake to suppose, that he undertook the character to set off his own wit or ingenuity. That, he conceives, a candid interpreter might find something intended, beyond a heartless jest. That G. D., however, having thought it necessary to disclaim the anec- dote respecting Dr. , it becomes him, who never for a moment can doubt the veracity of his friend, to account for it from an imperfect remembrance of some story he heard long ago, and which, happening to tally with his argument, he set down too hastily to the account of G. D. That, from G. D.'s strong affirmations and proofs to the contrary, he is bound to believe it belongs to no part of G. D.'s biography. That the transaction, supposing it true, must have taken place more than forty years ago. That, in consequence, it is not likely to 'meet the eye of many, who might be justly offended.' " Finally, that what he has said of the Booksellers, referred to a period of many years, in which he had the happiness of G. D.'s acquaintance; and can have nothing to do with any present or prospective engagements of G. D. with those gentlemen, to the nature of which he professes himself an entire stranger." Probably as a balm to Dyer's wounded feelings, the para- graphs beginning "D. commenced life" and "And D. has been 198 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. * under-working," as well as the foot notes, were omitted from the first edition of the essays, publislied in 1823. But Lamb seems not to have profited by this unfortunate experience, and in De- cember, 1823, publislied " Amicus Redivivus," a still more fantas- tical and exaggerated account of poor Dyer's peculiarities. Again, in 1831, he seems to be in the same kind of trouble, for we find him writing a most humble letter to Dyer, explaining the motif of some new joke he had been making at his friend's expense. Nevertheless, good friends they remained from their boyish days at Christ's till Lamb's death, in spite of these little ripples caused by the keen humor of the one and the gentle unworldliness of the other. E. D. H.] THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 199 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. [London Magazine, May, 1825.] I CAME home FOR EVER on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition over- whehned me. It was like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three, i. e. to have three times as much real time (time that is my own) in it ! I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultu- ousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys ; their conscious fugitiveness ; the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all is holyday, there are no holy- days. I can sit at home, in rain or shine, without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steady- ing, and shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master, as it has been irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an 200 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. obscure feeling that some good has happened to us. — Charles Lamb : Letter to Wordsworth. (^April 6, 1825.) You will ask how I bear my freedom? Faith, for some days I was staggered ; could not compre- hend the magnitude of my deliverance ; was con- fused, giddy ; knew not whether I was on my head or my heel, as they say. But those giddy feelings have gone away, and my weather-glass stands at a degree or two above Content. — Charles Lamh : Letter to Miss Hutchinson. (April 18, 1825.) THE SUPERANKUATED MAN. 201 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. Sera tamen respexit Libertas. If peradventure, Reader, it lias been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in the irksome confinement of an office; to have thy prison days prolonged through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance. It is now six and thirty years since I took my seat at the desk in Mincing-lane. Melancholy was the transition at fourteen from the abundant play- time, and the frequently-intervening vacations of school days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day attendance at a counting-house. But 202 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. time partially reconciles us to any thing. I gradu- ally became content — doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages. It is true I liad my Sundays to myself ; but Sun- days, admirable as tlie institution of tliem is for purposes of worship, are for that very reason the very worst adapted for days of unbending and rec- reation.* In particular, there is a gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheerful cries of London, the music, and the ballad singers — the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless succession of knacks and gew-gaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a week-day saunter through the less busy parts of the metropolis so delightful — are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle over — No busy faces to recreate the idle man who contemplates them ever passing by — the very face *Our ancestors, the noble old Puritans of Cromwell's day, could distinguish between a day of religious rest and a day of recreation ; and while they exacted a rigorous abstinence from all amusements (even to the walking out of nursery maids with their little charges in the fields) upon the Sabbath ; in the lieu of the superstitious observance of the Saints days, which they abro- gated, they humanely gave to the apprentices, and poorer sort of people, every alternate Thursday for a day of entire sport and recreation. A strain of piety and policy to be commended above the profane mockery of the Stuarts and their Book of Sports. THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 203 of business a charm by contrast to liis temporary relaxation from it. Nothing to be seen but un- happy countenances — or half-hai3py at best — of emancipated prentices and Kttle tradesfolks, with here and there a servant maid that has got leave to go out, who, slaving all the week, with the habit has lost almost the capacity of enjoying a free hour; and livelily expressing the hoUowness of a day's pleasuring. The very strollers in the fields on that day look anything but comfortable. But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a day at Christmas, with a full week in the sum- mer to go and air myseK in my native fields of Hertfordshire. This last was a great indulgence; and the prospect of its recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up through the year, and made my durance tolerable. But when the week came round, did the glittering phantom of the distance keep touch with me? or rather was it not a series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the most of them? Where was the quiet, where the promised rest? Before I had a taste of it, it was vanished. I was at the desk again, counting upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene before such another snatch would come. Still the prospect of its coming threw something of an illu- mination upon the darker side of my captivity. 204 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. Without it, as I liave said, I could scarcely have sustained my thraldom. Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business. This, during my latter years, had increased to such a degree, that it was visible in all the lines of my countenance. My health and my good spirits flagged. I had perpetually a dread of some crisis, to which I should be found unequal. Besides my day-light servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imagin- ary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years of age, and no prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had grown to my desk, as it were ; and the wood had entered into my soul. My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me upon the trouble legible in my countenance; but I did not know that it had raised the suspicions of any of my employers, when, on the 5th of last month, a day ever to be remembered by me, L , the junior partner in the firm, calling me on one side, directly taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I honestly made confession of my infirmity, and added that I was afraid I should eventually be obliged to resign his service. He spoke some words of course to THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 205 hearten me, and there the matter rested. A whole week I remained labouring under the impression that I had acted imprudently in my disclosure; that I had foolishly given a handle against myself, and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A week passed in this manner, the most anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life, when on the even- ing of the 12th of April, just as I was about quit- ting my desk to go home (it might be about eight o'clock) I received an awful summons to attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in the for- midable back parlour. I thought, now my time is surely come, I have done for myself, I am going to be told that they have no longer occasion for me. L , I could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which was a little relief to me, — when to my utter astonishment B , the eldest partner, began a formal harangue to me on the length of my services, my very meritorious conduct during the whole of the time (the deuce, thought I, how did he find out that? I protest I never had the confidence to think as much). He went on to descant on the expediency of retiring at a certain time of life (how my heart panted!) and asking me a few questions as to the amount of my own property, of which I have a little, ended with a proposal, to which his tln-ee partnerg nodded a grave assent, that I should accept from the house, which I had served so well, 206 THE SUPEKANNUATED MAN. a pension for life to the amount of two-thirds of my accustomed salary — a magnificent offer ! I do not know what I answered between surprise and grati- tude, but it was understood that I accepted their proposal, and I was told that I was free from that hour to leave their service. I stammered out a bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I v/ent home — for ever. This noble benefit — gratitude forbids me to conceal their names — I owe to the kindness of the most munificent firm in the world — the house of Boldero, Merry weather, Bosanquet, and Lacy. Esto perpetua ! For the first day or two I felt stunned, over- whelmed. I could only apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy, and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity — for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I had more Time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; I could see no end of my possessions ; I wanted some steward, THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 207 or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. And here let me caution persons grown old in active business, not lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, to forego their cus- tomary employment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I feel it by myseK, but I know that my resources are sufficient; and now that those first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon me, I could walk it away ; but I do not walk all day long, as I used to do in those old transient holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most of them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it away, but I do not read in that violent measure, with which, having no Time my own but candle-light Time, I used to weary out my head and eye-sight in by-gone winters. I walk, read or scribble (as now) just when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure ; I let it come to me. I am like the man That's born, and has his years come to him, In some green desart. "Years," you will say! "what is this superannu- ated simpleton calculating upon ? He has already told us, he is past fifty." I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but 208 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true Time, which a man can properly call his own, that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, in other peo- ple's time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me three- fold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair rule- of-three sum. Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the commencement of my freedom, and of which all traces are not yet gone, one was, that a vast tract of time had intervened since I quitted the Counting House. I could not conceive of it as an affair of yesterday. The partners, and the clerks, with whom I had so many years and for so many hours in each day of the year been closely associated — being suddenly removed from them — they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine passage, which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a friend's death: 'Twas but just now he went away; I have not since had time to shed a tear ; And yet the distance does tlie same appear As if he had been a thousand years from me. Time takes no measure in Eternity. THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 209 To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain to go among them once or twice since ; to visit my old desk-fellows — my co-brethren of the quill — that I had left below in the state militant. Not all the kindness with which they received me could quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity, which I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We cracked some of our old jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. My old desk, the peg where I hung my hat, were appropriated to another. I knew it must be, but I could not take it kindly. D 1 take me, if I did not feel some remorse — beast, if I had not, — at quitting my old compeers, the faith- ful partners of my toils for six and thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes and conun- drmiis the ruggedness of my professional road. Had it been so rugged then after all? or was I a coward simply ? Well, it is too late to repent ; and I also know, that these suggestions are a common fallacy of the mind on such occasions. But my heart smote me. I had violently broken the bands betwixt us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some time before I get quite reconciled to the separation. Farewell, old cronies, yet not 'for long, for again and again I will come among ye, if I shall have your leave. Farewell Ch , dry, sarcastic, and friendly! Do , mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly! PI , officious to do, and to vol- 210 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. unteer, good services ! — and thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a Wittington of old, stately House of Merchants ; with thy labyrinthine passages, and light-excluding, pent-up offices, where candles for one half the year supplied the place of the sun's light ; unhealthy contributor to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! In thee remain, and not in the obscure collection of some wandering bookseller, my "works!" There let them rest, as I do from my labours, piled on thy massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aqui- nas left, and full as useful I My mantle I bequeath among ye. THE SUPEEANNUATED MAN. 211 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.— No. II. A Clerk I was in London gay. — O'Keefe. A Fortnight has passed since the date of my first communication. At that period I was approach- ing to tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Some- thing of the first flutter was left ; an unsettling sense of novelty ; the dazzle to weak eyes of unac- customed light. I missed my old chains, forsooth, as if they had been some necessary part of my apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, from strict cellular discipline suddenly by some revolution returned upon the world. I am now as if I had never been other than my own master. It is natu- ral to me to go where I please, to do what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in the day in Bond- street, and it seems to me that I have been saunter- ing there at that very time for years past. I digress into Soho, to explore a book-stall. Me- 212 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. thinks I have been thirty years a collector. There is nothing strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine picture in a morning. Was it ever otherwise? What is become of Fish-street Hill? Where is Fenchurch-street ? Stones of old Minc- ing-lane which I have worn with my daily pilgrim- age for six and thirty years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are your everlasting flints now vocal? I indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is Change time, and I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no hyperbole when I ven- tured to compare the change in my condition to a passing into another world. Time stands still in a manner to me. I have lost all distinction of sea- son. I do not know the day of the week, or of the month. Each day used to be individually felt by me in its reference to the foreign post days ; in its distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' sensations. The genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the whole of it, affecting my appe- tite, spirits, &c. The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? What is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself — that unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugi- THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 213 tiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it — is melted down into a week day. I can spare to go to cliurch now, without grudging the huge cantle, which it used to seem to cut out of the holyday. I have Time for every- thing. I can visit a ,sick friend. I can interrupt the man of much occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over him with an invitation to take a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this fine May- morning. It is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round — and what is it all for? I recite those verses of Cowley, which so mightily agree with my constitution. Business ! the frivolous pretence Of human lusts to shake off innocence Business ! the grave impertinence : Business ! the thing which I of all things hate : Business ! the contradiction of my fate. Or I repeat my own lines, written in my Clerk state : Who first invented work — and bound the free And holyday-rejoicing spirit down To the ever-haunting importunity Of business, in the green fields, and the town — To plough, loom, anvil, spade — and oh ! most sad, To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood? Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, 214 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 9 Sabbathless Satan ! he who his unglad Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, That round and round incalculably reel — For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel — In that red realm from whence are no returnings; Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye He, and his thoughts, keep pensive worky-day! this divine Leisure ! — Reader, if thou art furnished with the Old Series of the London, turn incontinently to the third volume (page 367), and you will see my present condition there touched in a "Wish" by a daintier pen than I can pretend to. I subscribe to that Sonnet toto corde. A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him NoTHiNG-TO-DO ; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contempla- tive. Will no kindly earthquake come and swallow up those accursed cotton mills? Take me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it down As low as to the fiends. 1 am no longer J s D n. Clerk to the Firm of, &c. I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim gardens. I am already come to be known byimy vacant and careless gesture, per- ambulating at no fixed pace, nor with any settled THE SUPERANNUATED MAN, 215 purpose. I walk about; not to and from. They tell me, a certain cum dignitate air, that has been buried so long with my other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my person. I grow into gentility perceptibly. When I take up a newspaper, it is to read the state of the opera. Opus operatum est. I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task-work, and have the rest of the day to myself. Beaufort-terrace^ Regent-street ; Late of Iron- monger s-court^ Fenchurch-street. 216 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. PAGE 201 — Six and thirty years. More exactly three and thirty, as he entered the East India House in 1792, but probably he counted here the three years spent at the South Sea House. In the March of 1822, Lamb wrote to Wordsworth, "My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice is against it. I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breath the air of four pent walls without relief, day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four, without ease or interposition . . . Oh for a few years between the grave and the desk ! " 202 — Our ancestors. This note was suppressed in the 1823 edition. 204 — The wood had entered into my soul. In the letter to Wordsworth quoted above is this sen- THE SUPEEANNUATED MAN. 217 tence, "I sit like Philomel all day (but not sing- ing), with my breast against this thorn of a desk." 204— X- . Laey. 205 — The most anxious one^ . . in my whole life. In a letter to Bernard Barton, March 23rd, 1825, Lamb wrote: "I have offered my res- ignation, and it is neither accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fearful suspense. Guess what an absorbing stake I feel it." 205 — B . Boldero. 206 — A inagnijicent offer. The amount of the pension was =£450, of which <£9 was deducted as an annuity for Mary. 206 — Most munificent firm in the world. " With the one exception that he transforms the Directors of the India House into a private firm of merchants, and with one or two other slight changes of detail, the account seems to be a faitliful description of what actually happened." — Alfred Ainger. 207 — Walk it away. One of his dreams of a "green old age" had been, "to have retired to Bon- der's End .... there to have made u}^ my accounts with Heaven and the company, toddling about between it and Cheshunt; anon stretching, on some fine Izaak Walton morning, to Hoddesdon or Am well, careless as a begger; but walking, walking ever till I fairly walked myself off my legs, dying walking ! " 218 THE SUPEKANNUATED MAN. 209 — Pleasant familiarity. One of his desk- fellows has said: "In spite of his pleasantries of all sorts, his popidarity with his fellow-clerks was unbounded. He allowed the same familiarity that he practised, and they all called him 'Charley'." 210 — Dreary pile. The old building was taken down in 1862. 210 — " Works. ^^ A favorite reference to the account books. 214 — Divine Leisure. Lamb wrote a sonnet on " Leisure," companion to the one already quoted on '^Work." 214 — A " TFisA." The sonnet referred to is this: " Wou'd heaven but grant my desire A small request I wou'd require, A decent house, and a good fire : A pot of beer to give a friend. And wealth enough but to extend My charity to th' abject poor, And drive penury from my door. But, join to this, a loving wife, A stranger to conjugal strife. My happiness wou'd be compleat, I'd envy not the rich and great. But spend my days exempt from care, Or anxious thoughts of 'proaching war ; And quiet sleep under my roof. And ask no more : think that's enough." 214 — Nothing -to-do. In 1827, Lamb wrote to THE SUPEKANNUATED MAN. 219 Bernard Barton, "Positively, the best thing a man can have to do is nothing, and next to that per- haps — good works." 214 — J 8 D n. When this essay was published in the second Elian series, asterisks were substituted for these letters, and the signature "J. D." was omitted. 220 OLD CHINA. OLD CHINA. [London Magazine, March, 1823.] Of the incidents in the happier days of his life, when Mary was in good health, and the daily sharer in all interests and pleasures, he has written with a special charm. There is a passage in the essay called Old China without which any picture of their united life would be incomplete. — Alfred Ainger. These realities of poverty, very imperfectly cov- ered over by words of fiction, are very touching. It is deeply interesting, that Essay, where the rare enjoyments of a poor scholar are brought into con- trast and relief with the indifference that grows upon him when his increased income enables him to acquire any objects he pleases. — Bryan Waller Procter. OLD CHINA, 221 OLD CHINA. I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. When I go to see any great house, I enquire for the china closet, and next for the picture gal- lery. I cannot defend the order of preference, but by saying, that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering dis- tinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to mind the first play, and the first exhibition, that I was taken to; but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagination. I had no repugnance then — why should I now have? — to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured gro- tesques, that under the notion of -men and women, float about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that world before perspective — a china tea-cup. I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot diminish — figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on terra firma still — for 222 OLD CHINA. SO we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent absurd- ity, has made to spring up beneath their sandals. I love the men with women's faces, and the •women, if possible, with still more womanish expressions. Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver — two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or another — for likeness is identity on tea-cups — is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infal- libly land her in the midst of a flowery mead — a furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream ! Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of their world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-exten- sive — so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay. I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Plyson, (which we are old fashioned enough to drink unmixed still of an afternoon) some of these speciosa miracula upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent purchase) OLD CHINA. 223 which we were now for the first time using; and could not help remarking, how favourable circum- stances had been to us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort — when a passing sentiment seemed to over-shade the brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget. "I wish the good old times would come again," she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean, that I want to be poor ; but there was a middle state;" — so she was pleased to ramble on, — "in which I am sure we were a great deal hap- pier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O I how much ado I had to get you to con- sent in those times !) we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against^ and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it. "Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so thread-bare — and all because of that folio Beaumount and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night, from Bar- ker's in Co vent-garden ? Do you remember how we 224 OLD CHINA. eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a deter- mination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late — and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedv/ards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures — and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome — and when you presented it to me — and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating you called it) — and while I was repair- ing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till day-break — was there no pleasure in being "a poor man ? or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity, with which you flaunted it about in that pver-worn suit — your old corbeau — for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen — or sixteen shillings was it ? — a great affair we thought it then — which you had lavished on the old folio? Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now. " When you came home with twenty apologies OLD CHINA. 225 for laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, which we christened the ' Lady Blanche ; ' when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money — and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture — was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's (as W calls it) and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you? "Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holyday — holydays, and all other fun, are gone, now we are rich — and the little hand-basket in which I used to deposit our day's fare of savoury cold lamb and salad — and how you would pry about at noon-tide for some decent house, where we might go in, and produce our store — only paying for the ale that you must call for — and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-cloth, — and wish for such another honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a fishing — and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us — but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and would eat our plain food savourily, scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall? Now, when we go out a day's pleasuring, 226 OLD CHINA. whicli is seldom moreover, we ride part of the way — and go into a fine inn, and order the best of din- ners, never debating the expense — which after all, never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a precarious welcome. " You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit or boxes. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of Calais, and Bannis- ter and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood — when we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery — where you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me — and more strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me — and the pleasure was the better for a little shame — and when the curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Kosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of lUyria ? You used to say, that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoy- ing a play socially — that the relish of such exhibi- tions must be in proportion to the inf requency of going — that the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the stage — because a word lost would have been a OLD CHINA. 227 chasm, wMch it was impossible for them to fill up. With such reflections we consoled our pride then — and I appeal to you, whether, as a woman, I met generally with less attention and accommodation, than I have done since iiil more expensive situations in the house? The getting in indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough, — but there was still a law of civility to women recognised to quite as great an extent as we ever found in the other passages — and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat, and the play, afterwards ! Now we can only pay our money, and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then — but sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty. " There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they became quite common — in the first dish of peas, while they were yet dear — to have them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can we have now? If we were to treat ourselves now — that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat — when two people living together, as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like ; while each apologises, and is will- 228 OLD CHINA. ing to take both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people making much of themselves in that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to make much of others. But now — what I mean by the word — we never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above poverty. " I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet — and much ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of December to account for our exceedings — many a long face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had spent so much — or that we had not spent so much — or that it was impossible we should spend so much next year — and still we found our slender capital decreasing — but then, betwixt ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without that for the future — and the hope that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were never poor till now), we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with 'lusty brim- mers ' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheer- ful Mr. Cotton^ as you called him), we used to welcome in the 'coming guest.' Now, we have no reckoning at all at the end of an old year — no OLD CHINA. 229 flattering promises about tlie new year doing better for us." Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occa- sions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear income of poor — hundred pounds a year. "It is true we were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves. That we had much to strusrsie with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened, and knit our com- pact closer. We could never have been what we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The resist- ing power — those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten — with us are long since passed away. Competence to age is supplemental youth; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride, where we formerly walked : live better, and lie softer — and shall be wise to do so — than we had means to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could those days return — could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a-day — could 230 OLD CHINA. Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you and I be young to see tliem — could the good old one sliilling gallery days return — they are dreams, my cousin, now — but could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument by our well- carpeted fire-side, sitting on this luxurious sofa — be once more struggling up those inconvenient stair-cases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers — could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours — and the delicious Thanh God^ lue are safe^ which always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheer- ful theatre down beneath us — I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half-Madonna-ish chit of a lady in that very blue summer-house." OLD CHINA. 231 OLD CHINA. PAGE 221 — The first play. This has been graphic- ally described in the essay, "My First Play." 225 — Print after Lionardo. This seems to have been a great favorite with Lamb, and allusions to it are frequent. Mary Lamb wrote two poems on this print, both of which were published in the 1818 edition of Lamb's works. 230 — Jew R . Kothschild. 232 BOOKS AND READING. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND EEADING. Me. Lamb's taste in books is also fine, and it is peculiar. It is not the worse for a little idiosyii- crasy. He does not go deep into the Scotch nov- els, but he is at home in Smollett and Fielding. He is little read in Junius or Gibbon, but no man can give a better account of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, or Sir Thomas Brown's Urn-Burial, or Fuller's Worthies, or John Bunyan's Holy War. No one is more unimpressible to a specious decla- mation ; no one relishes a recondite beauty more. His admiration for Shakespear and Milton does not make him despise Pope ; and he can read Parnell with patience, and Gay with delight. His taste in French and German literature is somewhat defec- tive : nor has he made much progress in the science of Political Economy or other abstruse studies, though he has read vast folios of controversial divinity, merely for the sake of the intricacy of style, and to save himself the pain of thinking. — William Ilazlitt, BOOKS AND BEADING. 233 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND EEADING. To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own. Lord Foppington in the Relapse. An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright sally of his Lord- ship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose my- self in other men's minds. When I am not walk- ing, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can 234 BOOKS AND READING. read anything wMcli I call a hoolc. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. In this catalogue of books which are no books — biblia a-biblia — I reckon Court Calendars, Direc- tories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards bound and lettered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Alma- nacks, Statutes at Large ; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Kobertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which " no gentleman's library should be without:" the Histories of Fla- vins Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books^ clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occu- pants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what "seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find — Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Encylopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus him- BOOKS AND READING. 235 self, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desid- eratum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress a set of Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or haK-binding (with Russia backs ever) is our costume. A Shakespeare, or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere fop- pery to trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner. Thomson's Sea- sons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn, and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond Russia,) if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidious- ness, of an old " Circulating Library " Tom Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield ! How they speak of the thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages with delight ! — of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working man- tua-maker) after her long day's needle-toil, running 236 BOOKS AND EEADING. far into midniglit, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cnp, in spelling out their enchanting con- tents ! Who would have them a whit less soiled ? What better condition could we desire to see them in ? In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, aiid all that class of perpetually self-repro- ductive volumes — Great Nature's Stereotypes — we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be " eterne." But where a book is at once both good and rare — where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes. We know not where is that Promethean torch That can its light relumine — such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted ; but old edi- tions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose- works. Fuller — of whom we have reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go about, and are talked of here and BOOKS AND READING. 237 there, we know, liave not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever will) in tlie national heart, so as to become stock books — it is good to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do not care for a First Folio of Shakespeare. I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with plates^ which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest remembrancers, to the text ; and without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakespeare gallery engravings^ which did. I have a community of feeling with my countrymen about his Plays, and I like those editions of him best, which have been oftenest tumbled about and handled. — On the contrary, I cannot read Beau- mont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo edi- tions are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them. If they were as much read as the cur- rent editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the Anat- omy of Melancholy. What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becomins" popular? — The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford 238 BOOKS AND READING. cliurcli to let Mm white-wasli the painted effigy of old Shakespeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eye-brow, hair, the very dress he used to wear — the only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and par- cels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By , if I had been a justice of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapt both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets. I think I see them at their work — these sapient trouble-tombs. Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear — to mine, at least — than that of Milton or of Shakespeare ? It may be, that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are. Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley. Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the ^lyq or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of tak- ing up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andre wes' sermons ? Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he BOOKS AND READING. 239 brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears. Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such a season, the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale — These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud — to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one — and it degen- erates into an audience. Books of quick interest, that hurry on for inci- dents, are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness. A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the Bank offices it is the custom (to save so much individual time) for one of the clerks — who is the best scholar — to commence upon the Times, or the Chronicle, and recite its entire contents aloud 'pro hono publico. With every advantage of lungs and elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow will get up, and spell out a paragraph, which he communi- cates as some discovery. Another follows with Ms selection. So the entire journal transpires at length by piece-meal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, without this expedient no one in the company 240 BOOKS AND READING. would probably ever travel througli the contents of a whole paper. Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment. What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's, keeps the paper! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out incessantly, " The Chronicle is in hand, Sir." Coming in to an inn at night — having ordered your supper — what can be more delightful than to find lying in the window-seat, left there time out of mind by the carelessness of some former guest — two or three numbers of the old Town and Country Magazine, with its amusing tete-a-tete pictures — ■ ''The Royal Lover and Lady G ;" "The Meltino- Platonic and the old Beau;" — and such like antiquated scandal? Would you exchange it — at that time, and in that place — for a better book? • Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading — the Paradise Lost, or Comus, he could have read to him — but he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine, or a light pamphlet. I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral alone, and reading Candide. > BOOKS AND READING. 241 I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been once detected -by a famihar damsel-reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading - Pamela. There was nothing in the book to make a man seri- ously ashamed at the exposure; but as she seated herseH down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I could have wished it had ^een-any other book. We read on very sociably for a few pa-es; and, not finding the author much to her Lte, she got up, and -went away. Gentle casu- ist I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the blush Cfor there was one between us) was the prop- erty of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret. I am not much a friend to out-of-doors read- in. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generaUy to be seen upon Snow-hill (as yet Skinner's-street was not), between the hours of ten and eleven in the morn- ing, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keepmg clear of secular contacts. An illiterate enoomiter with a porter's knot, or a bread basket, would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and Lve left me worse than indifferent to the five points. 242 BOOKS AND READING. There is a class of street-readers, whom I can never contemplate without affection — the poor gen- try, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls — the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they "snatch a fearful joy." Martin B , in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares, that under no cir- cumstances of his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralized upon this subject in two very touching but homely stanzas. I saw a boy with eager eye Open a book upon a stall, And read, as he'd devour it all ; Which when the stall-man did espy, Soon to the boy I heard him call, " You, Sir, you never buy a book, Therefore in one you shall not look." The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh He wish'd he never had been taught to read, Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need. BOOKS AND READING. 243 Of sufferings the poor have many, Which never can the rich annoy : I soon perceiv'd another boy, Who look'd as if he'd not had any Food, for that day at least — enjoy The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny, Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. 244 BOOKS AND READING. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. PAGE 234 — My shivering folios. "I looked over Lamb's library in part. He has the finest collec- tion of shabby books I ever saw; such a number of first-rate works in very bad condition is, I think, nowhere to be found." — Henry Crahh Rohinson. 236 — Lifo of the Duke of Newcastle. The full title of this odd and bizarre memoir, which Lamb so much affected, is "The LIFE of the Thrice Noble, High and Puissant Prince, William Cavendishe, Duke, Marquess, and Earl of New- castle ; Earl of Ogle; Viscount Mansfield; and Baron of Bolsover^ of Ogle^ Bothal and Hepple: Gentleman of His Majesties Bed-chamber; one of His Majesties most Honourable Privy-Councel ; Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter; His Majesties Lieutenant of the County and Town of Nottingham ; and Justice in Ayre Trent-North : who had the honour to be Governour to our most Glorious King, and Gracious Soveraign, in his BOOKS AND READING. 245 Youtli, when He was Prince of Wales; and soon after was made Captain General of all the Prov- inces beyond the River of Trent, and other Parts of the Kingdom of England, with Power, by a special Commission, to make Knights. Written By the thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess, Margaret, Duchess o/* Newcastle, His 2d Wife,'' 238 — Kit Marlowe, Drayton, &c. "If it is too much to say that he [Lamb] singly revived the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries, it is because we see clearly that that revival was coming, and would have come even without his help. But he did more then recall attention to certain forgotten writers. He flashed a light from himself upon them, not only heightening every charm and deepening every truth, but making even their eccentricities beautiful and lovable. And in doing this he has linked his name forever with theirs." ^ — Alfred Ainger. 240 — Candide. Voltaire's famous novel attack- ing religious and philosophical optimism. 241 — Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded. By Sam- uel Richardson. 242 — Martin B . Martin Burney, one of Lamb's dearest friends, whose judgment in literary matters was highly esteemed. 242 — / saw a hoy &c. This is one of Mary Lamb's contributions to " Poetry for Children," referred to on page 14. 246 IMPEEEECT SYMPATHIES. JEWS, QUAKERS, SCOTCHMEN, AND OTHER IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. \London Alagazine, August, 182 1.] He [Lamb] was more pleasant to some persons (more pleasant, I confess to me) for the few faults or weaknesses that he had. He did not daunt us, nor throw us to a distance, by his formidable vir- tues. We sympathized with him ; and this sym- pathy, which is an union between two similitudes, does not exist between perfect and imperfect na- tures. Like all of us, he had a few prejudices : he did not like Frenchmen ; he shrunk from Scotch- men (excepting, however. Burns) ; he disliked bank- rupts ; he hated close bargainers. For the Jewish nation he maintained a mysterious awe. He liked chimney-sweepers — the young ones — the " innocent blacknesses " ; and with beggars he had a strong sympathy. — Bryan Waller Procter. IMPEEFECT SYMPATHIES. 217 JEWS, QUAKERS, SCOTCHMEN, AND OTHER IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympa- thizeth with all things, I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in anything. Those national repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — Religio Medici. That the author of the Religio Medici, mounted upon the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about notional and conjectural essences, in whose catego- ries of Being the possible took the upper hand of the actual, should have overlooked the impertinent individualities of such poor concretions as mankind, is not much to be admired. It is rather to be won- dered at, that in the genus of animals he should have condescended to distinguish that species at all. For myself — earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my activities, — 248 IMPEKFECT SYMPATHIES. Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no indifferent eye upon things or per- sons. Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste ; or when once it becomes indifferent, it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings and dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, dis- pathies, antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me, that I am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indifferently, but I cannot feel towards them all equally. The more purely-English word that expresses sympathy will better explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man, who upon another account cannot be my mate or fellow, I cannot like all people alike.* *I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imperfect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct antipathy. There may be individuals born and constel- lated so opposite to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and instantly fighting. We by proof find there should be 'Twixt man and man such an antipathy. That though he can show no just reason why For any former wrong or injury, IMPERFECT SPMPATHIES. 249 I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot like me — and in truth, I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. There is something more plain and ingenuous in their mode of proceeding. We know one another at first sight. There is an order of imperfect intel- lects (under which mine must be content to rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti-Caledo- nian. The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to have minds rather suggestive than comprehen- sive. They have no pretences to much clearness or precision in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are content with fragments and scattered pieces of Can neither find a blemish in his fame, Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. The lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchie of Angels," and he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack could give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy which he had taken to the fi.rst sight of the King. The cause which to that act compell'd him Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 250 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. Truth. She presents no full front to them — a fea- ture or side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. They beat up a little game per- adventure — and leave it to knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights them, is not steady and polar, but mutable and shifting; waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is accordingly. They will throw out a random word in or out of season, and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath — but must be understood, speaking or writing, with some abate- ment. They seldom wait to mature a proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. They delight to impart their defective discoveries as they arise, without waiting for their full developement. They are no systematizers, and would but err more by attempting it. Their minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. The brain of a true Caledo- nian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted upon quite a different plan. Its Minerva is born in pan- oply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their growth — if indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put together upon principles of clock- work. You never catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order and completeness. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 251 He has no falterings of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, suppositions, half -intuitions, demi-conscious- nesses, misgiving's, partial illuminations, "dim in- stincts," embryo conceptions and every stage that stops short of absolute certainty and conviction — his intellectual faculty seems a stranger to. He brings his total wealth into company, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about him. He never stoops to catch a glittering something in your pres- ence, to share it with you before he quite knows whether it be true touch or not. You cannot cry halves to anything that he j&nds. He does not find, but bring. You never witness his first apprehen- sion of a thing. His understanding is always at its meridian — you never see the first dawn, the early streaks. The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none either. Between the affirma- tive and the negative there is no border-land with him. You cannot hover with him upon the confines of truth, or wander in the maze of a probable argu- ment. He always keeps the j)ath. You cannot make excursions with him — for he sets you right. His taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. He cannot compromise, or understand mid- dle actions. There can be but a right and a wrong. His conversation is as a book. His affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. You must speak upon 252 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. the square with him. He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country. "A healthy book!" — said one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that appellation to John B uncle, — "did I catch rightly what you said? I have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a Caledo- nian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. — I have a print of a grace- ful female after Leonardo da Yinci, which I was showinof off to Mr. ****. After he had examined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how he liked my BEAUTY (a foolish name it goes by among my friends) — when he very gravely assured me, that " he had considerable respect for my character and talents " (so he was pleased to say), " but had not given himself much thought about the degree of my personal pretensions." The misconception staggered me, but did not seem much to disconcert him. — Persons of this nation are particularly fond of affirming a truth — which nobody doubts. They do not so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do indeed appear to have such a love of truth — as if, like virtue, it were valuable for itself — that all truth becomes equally valuable, whether the propo- IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 253 sition that contains it be new or old, disputed, or such as is impossible to become a subject of disputa- tion. I was present not long since at a party of North Britons where a son of Burns was expected ; and happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British way), that I wished it were the father instead of the son — when four of them started up at once to inform me, that "that was impossible, because he was dead." An impractica- ble wish, it seems, was more than they could con- ceive. Swift has hit off this part of their character, namely their love of truth, in his biting way, but with an illiberality that necessarily confines the pas- sage to the margin.* The tediousness of the Scotch is certainly proverbial. I wonder if they ever tire one another ! — In my early life I had a passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I have some- times foolislily hoped to ingratiate myself with his countrymen by expressing it. But I have always found that a true Scot resents your admiration of * There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves, and entertain their company with relating facts of no consequence, not at all out of the road of such common incidents as happen every day ; and this I have observed more frequently among the Scots than any other nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gesture peculiar to that coun- try, would be hardly tolerable. — Hints towards an Essay on Conversation. 254 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. his compatriot, even more than he would your con- tempt of him. The latter he imputes to your "im- perfect acquaintance with many of the words which he uses ; " and the same objection makes it a pre- sumption in you to suppose that you can admire him. I have a great mind to give up Burns. There is certainly a bragging spirit of generosity, a swag- gering assertion of independence, and all that^ in his writings. Thomson they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven for his delineation of Rory and his companion, upon their first introduction to our metropolis. — Speak of Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon you Hume's History compared with Jiis Con- tinuation of it. What if the historian had continued Humphrey Clinker? I have in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which, Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the pyramids. But I should not care to be in habits of familiar intercourse with any of that nation. I confess that I have not the nerves to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling about me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of Lincoln. Centuries of injury, contempt, and hate, on the one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on the other, between our and their fathers, must, and ought, to affect the blood of the children. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 255 I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly yet ; or that a few fine words, such as candour, liberality, the light of a nineteenth century, can close up the breaches of such a mighty antipathy. A Hebrew is no where congenial to me. He is least distasteful on 'Change — for the mercantile spirit levels all dis- tinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the approximation of Jew and Christian, which has become so fashiona- ble. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, some- thing hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and congeeing in awkward postures of an affected civil- ity. If they are converted, why do they not come over to us altogether? Why keep up a form of sep- aration, when the life of it is fled? If they can sit with us at table, why do they kick at our cookery? I do not understand these half convertites. Jews christianizing — Christians judaizing — puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more con- founding piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is essentially separative. B would have been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of his forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, which nature meant to be of Christians. The Hebrew spirit is strong in him in spite of his proselytism. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it breaks out, when he sings. 256 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. "The Children of Israel passed through the Red Sea! " The auditors, for the moment, are as Egyp- tians to him, and he rides over our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him. — B has a strong expression of sense in his countenance, and it is comfirmed by his singing. The foundation of his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with under- standing, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the Commandments, and give an appropriate character to each prohibition. His nation, in gen- eral, have not over-sensible countenances. How should they? — but you seldom see a silly expres- sion among them. Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard of an idiot being born among them. — Some admire the Jewish female physiognomy. I admire it — but with trembling. Jael had those full dark inscrutable eyes. In the negro countenance you will often meet with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearn- ings of tenderness towards some of these faces — or rather masks — that have looked out kindly upon one in casual encounters in the streets and high- ways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls — these "images of God cut in ebony." But I should not like to associate with them, to share my meals and my good-nights with them — because they are black. IMPEKFECT SYMPATHIES. 257 I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I ven- erate the Quaker prmciples. It does me good for the rest of the day, when I meet any of their people in my path. When I am ruffled or disturbed by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice of a Quak- er, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom. But I can- not like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) "to live with them." I am all over sophisticated — with humours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim- whams, which their simpler taste can do without. I should starve at their primitive banquet. My appetites are too high for the sallads which (accord- ing to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto too excited To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to return to a question put to them, may be explained, I think, without the vulgar assumption, that they are more given to evasion and equivoca- ting than other people. They naturally look to their words more carefully, and are more cautious of committing themselves. They have a peculiar character to keep up on this head. They stand in 258 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from taking an oath. The custom of resorting to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth — the one applica- ble to the solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the common proceedings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon the conscience by an oath can be but truth, so in the common affirmations of the shop and the market-place, a latitude is expected, and conceded upon questions wanting this solemn cove- nant. Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to hear a person say, "You do not expect me to speak, as if I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; and a kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath-truth, by the nature of the cir- cumstances, is not required. A Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple affirmation being received, upon the most sacred occasions, with- out any further test, stamps a value upon the words which he is to use upon the most indifferent top- ics of life. He looks to them, naturally, with more severity. You can have of him no more than his word. He knows, if he is caught tripping in a casual expression, he forfeits, for himseK at least, IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 259 his claim to the invidious exemption. He knows, that his syllables are weighed — and how far a con- sciousness of this particular watchfulness, exerted against a person, has a tendency to produce indirect answers, and a diverting of the question by honest means, might be illustrated, and the practice justi- fied, by a more sacred example than is proper to be more than hinted at upon this occasion. The admir- able presence of mind, which is notorious in Quak- ers upon all contingencies, might be traced to this imposed self -watchfulness — if it did not seem rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock of religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the Primitive Friends, or gave way to the winds of persecution, to the violence of judge or accuser, under trials and racking examinations. " You will never be the wiser, if I sit here answer- ing your questions till midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling subtlety. "Thereafter as the answers may be," retorted the Quaker. The astonishing composure of this j)eople is sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter instances. I was travelling in a stage-coach v/ith three male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest non-conformity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends confined themselves to the 260 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. tea-table. I in my way took supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my com- panions discovered that she had charged for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their money, and formally tendered it — so much for tea — I, in humble imitation, tendering mine — for the supper which I ha,d taken. She would not relax in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the exam- ple of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in. f The steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time inaudible — and now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had foi' a while suspended, begin- ning to give some twitches, I waited, in - the hope that some justification would be offered by these > serious persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct. To my great i^urprise, not a syllable was dropped on the subject. They sate as mute as at a IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 261 a meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, by enquiring of his next neighbour, "Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India House?" and the question operated as a soporific on my moral feeling as far as Exeter. 262 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. JEWS, QUAKEKS, SCOTCHMEN, AND OTHER IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. PAGE 248 — A lover of my species. " The truth then is, that Lamb was what is by no means so uncom- mon or so contradictory a character as the unobser- vant may deem it; he was a gentle, amiable, and tender-hearted misanthrope. He hated and despised men with his mind and judgment, in proportion as (and precisely because) he loved and yearned towards them in his heart; and individually, he loved those best whom everybody else hated, and for the very reasons for which others hated them." • — P. G. Pat'}nore. 253 — Passionate fondness for the poetry of Burns. "Burns, indeed, was always one of his [Lamb's] greatest favorites I have more than once heard him repeat, in a fond tender IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 263 ■| voice, when the subject of poets or poetry came under discussion, the following beautiful lines from the Epistle to Simpson of Ochiltree. * The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, Till by himsel he learn'd to wander, Adown some trotting burn's meander An' no think 't lang.' " — Bryan Waller Procter, 254 — Hugh of Lincoln. A boy, eight years old, said to have been stolen, tortured, and crucified by the Jews, in 1255, for taking part in which affair, eighteen of the wealthiest Jews of Lincoln were hanged. 255 — B . John Braliam, a celebrated Eng- lish vocalist, converted from Judaism to Christianity. 257 — I love Quaher ways. In a letter to Col- eridge, Feb. 13, 1797, Lamb wrote: "Tell Lloyd I have had thoughts of turning Quaker, and have been reading William Penn's No Cross, no Crown. I like it immensely. Unluckily I went to one of his meetings, tell him, in St. John Street, yesterday .... That cured me of Quakerism. I love it in the books of Penn and. Woolman ; but I detest the vanity of a man think- ing he speaks by the Spirit, when what he says an ordinary man might say without all that quaking and trembling." 264 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 259 — Three, male Quakers. In 1823, Lamb wrote to liis friend, Bernard Barton, himself a Quaker ; " The Quaker story did not happen to me, but to Carlisle, the surgeon, from whose mouth 1 have twice heard it." AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 265 CHAKLES LAMB. AHi AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. [JVew Monthly Magazine, April, 1835.] We have been favored, by the kindness of Mr. Upcott, with the following sketch, written in one of his manuscript collections by Charles Lamb. It will be read with deep interest by all, but with the deepest interest by those who had the honor and happiness of knowing the writer. It is so singularly characteristic that we can hardly persuade ourselves we do not hear it, as we read, spoken from his living lips. Slight as it is, it conveys the most exquisite and perfect notion of the personal man- ners and habits of our friend Mark its humor, crammed into a few thinking words ; its pathetic sensibility in the midst of contrast; its wit, truth, and feeling; and, above all, its fanciful retreat, at the close, under a phantom cloud of death. — Prefatory note, to the sketchy hy editor of the magazine. 266 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. CHAELES LAMB. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Charles Lamb, born in tlie Inner Temple, lOtli February, 1775, educated in Christ's Hospital; afterwards a clerk in the Accountant's Office, East India House ; pensioned off from that service, 1825, after thirty-three years service ; is now a gentleman at large ; — can remember few specialties in his life worth noting, except that he once caught a swallow flying (teste sua mantT) ; below the middle stature ; cast of face slightly Jewish, with no Judaic tinge in his complexional religion ; stammers abominably, and is therefore more apt to discharge his occa- sional conversation in a quaint aphorism or a j)oor quibble, than in set and edifying speeches ; has con- sequently been libelled as a person always aiming at wit, which, as he told a dull fellow that charged him with it, is at least as good as aiming at dull- ness. A small eater but not drinker ; confesses a partiality for the production of the jmiiper berry; AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 267 was a fierce smoker of tobacco, but may be resem- bled to a volcano burnt out, emitting only now and then a casual puff. Has been guilty of obtruding upon the public a tale in prose, called Eosamund Gray ; a dramatic sketch, named John Woodvil ; a Farewell Ode to Tobacco; with sundry other poems, and light prose matter, collected in two slight crown octavos, and pompously christened his works, though in fact they were his recreations, and his true works may be found on the shelves of Leadenhall-street, filling some hundred folios. He is also the true Elia, whose essays are extant in a little volume, published a year or two since, and rather better known from that name without a meaning, than from any thing he has done, or can hope to do, in his own. • He also was the first to draw the public attention to the old English Dram- atists, in a work called "Specimens of English Dramatic Writers," who lived about the time of Shakspeare, published about fifteen years since. In short, all his merits and demerits to set forth, would take to the end of Mr. Upcott's book, and then not be told truly. He died 18 much lamented.* Witness his hand, Charles Lamb. 18th April, 1827. * To anybody — please to fill up these blanks. 268 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. CHAELES LAMB. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. [Mr. Upcott, referred to in the prefatory note and in the essay, was assistant librarian of the London Institution, and one of the contributors to a " Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland," in 1816. Mr. Ainger thinks it proba- ble that it was for a proposed new edition of this Dictionary, that Lamb wrote this autobiographical sketch. E. D. H.] PAGE 266 — Face slightly Jewish. "I do not know whether Lamb had any oriental blood in his veins ; but certainly the most marked complexional charac- teristic of his head was a Jewish look, which per- vaded every portion of it, even to the sallow and uniform complexion The nose, too, was large and slightly hooked, and the chin rounded and elevated to correspond. There was altogether a Rahhinical look about Lamb's head which was at once striking and impressive." — P. G. Patmore. 266 — Stammers abominably. " He stammered a little, pleasantly, just enough to prevent his AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 269 making speeches; just enough to make you listen eagerly for his words." — Bryan Waller Procter. 266 — Quaint aphorism. "The habit of playing on words was a part of him through life, and as in the case of most who indulge in it, became an outlet for whatever mood was for the moment dominant in Charles Lamb's mind. When he was ill at ease, and in an attitude (as he often was) of antagonism to his company, it would take the shape of a wanton interruption of the argument under discus- sion .... When he was annoyed, he made annoying puns; when he was frivolous, he made frivolous j)uns ; but when he was in the cue, and his surroundings were such as to call forth his better powers, he put into this form of wit humor and imagination of a high order." — Alfred Aijiger. 267 — Farewell Ode to Tobacco. "It was one of those very few pieces in metre which are worthy of the prose Elia^ and deserve to be bound up with it." — William Carew Hazlitt. 270 CHARACTER Of THE LATE ELIA. A CHAKACTER OF THE LATE ELIA, BY A FRIEND. [London Magazine, January, 1823.] Charles Lamb lias drawn for us a character of himself, but, so fond was he of hoaxes and mystifi- cations of this kind, that we might have hesitated to accept it as faithful, were it not in such precise accord with the testimony of others When a man's account of himself — his foibles and eccentricities — is confirmed in minatest detail by those who knew and loved him best, it is reasonable to conclude that we are not far wrong in accepting it ... . The peculiarities which Lamb here enumerates are just those which are little likely ever to receive gentle consideration from the world. — Alfred Ainger. CHAKACTER OF THE LATE ELI A. 271 A GHARACTEE OF THE LATE ELIA, BY A FRIEND. This gentleman, who for some months past had been in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature. He just lived long enough (it was what he wished) to see his papers collected into a volume. The pages of the LONDON MAGAZINE will henceforth know him no more. Exactly at twelve last night his queer spirit departed, and the bells of Saint Bride's rang him out with the old year. The mournful ^dbrations were caught in the dining room of his friends T. and H. ; and the company, assembled there to wel- come in another First of January, checked their carousals in mid-mirth, and were silent. Janus wept. The gentle P r, in a whisper, signified his intention of devoting an Elegy; and Allan C , nobly forgetful of his countrymen's wrongs, 2T2 CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELI A. vowed a Memoir to Ms manes^ full and friendly as a Tale of Lyddalcross. To say truth, it is time lie were gone. The humour of the thing, if there was ever much in it, was pretty well exhausted ; and a two years' and a half existence has been a tolerable duration for a phantom. I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard objected to my late friend's writings was well-founded. Crude they are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked, incondite things — villianously pranked in an effected array of antique modes and phrases. They had not been his^ if they had been other than such; and better it is, that a writer should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness (so called) that should be strange to him. Egotistical they have been pro- nounced by some who did not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, was often true only (histor- ically) of another ; as in his Fourth Essay (to save many instances) — where under the first person (his favourite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a country-boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and connections — in direct opposition to his own early history. If it be ego- tism to imply and twine with his own identity the griefs and affections of another — making himself many, or reducing many unto himself — then is the CHAEACTER OF THE LATE ELI A. 273 skilful novelist, who all along brings in his hero, or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all; who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless vent to his most inward feelings, and expresses his own story modestly? My late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those who did not like him, hated him ; and some, who once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little concern what he uttered, and in whose presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would e'en out with what came uppermost. With the severe religionist he would pass for a free- thinker ; while the other faction set him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied his sentiments. Few understood him; and I am not certain that at all times he quite understood him- self. He too much affected that dangerous figure — irony. He sowed doubtfid speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. — He would interrupt the gravest discussion with some light jest ; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The informal habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of speech, forbade him to be 274 CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. an orator ; and lie seemed determined that no one else should play that part when he was present. He was jjetit and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have seen him sometimes in what is called good company, but where he has been a stranger, sit silent, and be suspected for an odd fel- low ; till some unlucky occasion provoking it, he would stutter out some senseless pun (not alto- gether senseless perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped his character for the evening. It was hit or miss with him ; but nine times out of ten, he contrived by this device to send away a whole com- pany his enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and his happiest wijjrom'ptiis had the appearance of effort. He has been ac- cused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was but struggling to give his poor thoughts articula- tion. He chose his companions for some individu- ality of character which they manifested. — Hence, not many persons of science, and few professed lit- erati^ were of his councils. They were, for the most part, persons of an uncertain fortune ; and, as to such people commonly nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though moderate) income, he passed with most of them for a great miser. To my knowledge this was a mistake. His intimados^ to confess a truth, were in the world's eye a ragged regiment. He found them floating on CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 275 the surface of society ; and the colour, or something else, in the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck to him but they were good and loving burrs for all that. He never greatly cared for the society of what are called good people. If any of these were scandalised (and offences were sure to arise), he could not help it. When he has been remonstrated with for not making more concessions to the feel- ings of good people, he would retort by asking, what one point did these good people ever concede to him ? He was temperate in his meals and diver- sions, but always kept a little on this side of abste- miousness. Only in the use of the Indian weed he might be thought a little excessive. 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 ! I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He felt the approaches of age ; and while he pretended to cling to life, you saw how slender were the ties left to bind him. Discoursing with him latterly on this subject, he expressed him- self with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of him. In our walks about his suburban retreat 276 CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELI A. (as he called it) at Sliacklewell, some children belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed and curtseyed, as he thought, in an especial manner to Mm. "They take me for a visiting gov- ernor," he muttered earnestly. He had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like any- thing important and parochial. He thought that he approached nearer to that stamp daily. He had a general aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable character, and kept a wary eye upon the advances of age that should so entitle him. He herded always, while it was possible, with people younger than himself. He did not conform to the march of time, but was dragged along in the pro- cession. His manners lagged behind his years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never sate gracefully on his shoulders. The impres- sions of infancy had burnt into him, and he resented the impertinence of manhood. These were weak- nesses ; but such as they were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings. He left little property behind him. Of course, the little that is left (chiefly in India bonds) devolves upon his cousin Bridget. A few critical dissertations were found in his escrutoire, which have been handed over to the Editor of this Mag- azine, in which it is to be hoped they will shortly appear, retaining his accustomed signature. CHAEACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 277 He has himself not obscurely hinted that his employment lay in a public office. The gentlemen in the Export department of the East India House will forgive me, if I acknowledge the readiness with which they assisted me in the retrieval of his few manuscripts. They pointed out in a most obliging manner the desk, at which he had been planted for forty years ; showed me ponderous tomes of figures, in his own remarkably neat hand, which, more properly than his few printed tracts, might be called his "Works." They seemed afPectionate to his memory, and universally commended his expertness in book-keeping. It seems he was the inventor of some ledger, which should combine the precision and certainty of the Italian double-entry (I think they called it) with the brevity and facility of some newer German system — but I am not able to appreciate the worth of the discovery. I have often heard him express a warm regard for his asso- ciates in office, and how fortunate he considered himself in having his lot thrown in amongst them. There is more sense, more discourse, more shrewd- ness, and even talent, among these clerks (he would say) than in twice the number of authors by pro- fession that I have conversed with. He would brighten up sometimes upon the "old days of the India House," when he consorted with Woodroffe and Wissett, and Peter Corbet (a descendant and 278 CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELI A. worthy representative, bating the point of sanctity, of old facetious Bishop Corbet), and Hoole who translated Tasso, and Bartlemy Brown whose father (God assoil him therefore) modernized Walton — and sly warm-hearted old Jack Cole (King Cole they called him in those days), and Campe, and Fombelle — , and a world of choice spirits, more than I can remember to name, who associated in those days with Jack Burrell (the hon vivant of the South Sea House), and little Eyton (said to be a /ac simile of Pope — he was a miniature of a gentleman) that was cashier under him, and Dan Voight of the Custom House, that left the famous library. Well, Elia is gone — for aught I know, to be reunited with them — and these poor traces of his pen are all we have to show for it. How little sur- vives of the wordiest authors ! Of all they said or did in their life-time, a few glittering words only ! His Essays found some favourers, as they appeared separately; they shuffled their way in the crowd well enough singly ; how they will read^ now they are brought together, is a question for the j)ublish- ers, who have thus ventured to draw out into one piece his " weaved-up follies." CHARACTER OP THE LATE ELIA, 279 A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. [The first issue of the London for 1823 contained an essay, *' Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age," signed Elia^s Ghost, and this pseudo-biographical sketch, signed Phil-Elia, in which, it would seem. Lamb seriously contemplated abandoning his fictitious name, and, possibly, retiring altogether from maga- zine-writing. Yet, the next issue contained an announcement of a new series of articles by " the author of the Essays of Elia," and, although not so regularly as heretofore, they continued to appear as long as the Magazine was published. So that the object of the farewell is not clear, unless it be that Lamb did really intend to renounce the name ("the sickening Elia," he called it), and was persuaded to change his mind after the fare- well was written, or even in type. We know that he was tired of writing, for in a letter to Bernard Barton written about this time, he says : " They have dragged me again into the magazine, but I feel the spirit of the thing in my own mind quite gone. ' Some brains' (I think Ben Jonson says it) 'will endure but one skim- ming'." Again, a little later, he writes to the same friend, "The same indisposition to write has stopped my ' Elias ', but you will see a futile effort in the next number, 'wrung from me with slow pain'." Yet this "futile effort" was the exquisite memory-sketch, *'Blakesmoor in H shire! " E. D. H.] PAGE 271 — T. and H. Taylor and Hessey, pub- lishers of the London Magazine. When they 280 CHAKACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. purchased the magazine, they opened a house in Waterloo Place, where the contributors met once a month at an excellent dinner. In his Memoir of Charles Lamb, Procter has graphically described these dinners and the assembled company. 271 — Janus. The notorious Thomas Griffiths Waine Wright, then writing art criticisms over the name of " Janus Weathercock." 271 — P T. Bryan Waller Procter, who afterward^ wrote a memoir of Lamb. 271 — Allan C . Allan Cunningham, who, in spite of his Scotch birth and breeding, was one of Lamb's friends. 272 — Antique modes and phrases. "The style of the Essays of Elia is liable to the charge of a certain mannerism. His sentences are cast in the mould of old authors ; his expressions are borrowed from them; but his feelings and observations are genuine and original, taken from actual life." — William Hazlitt. 272 — Egotistical. "This egotism — it is almost superfluous to mark — is a dominant characteristic of Lamb's manner .... This ' I ' of Lamb is no concession to an idle curiosity, nor is it in fact biographical at all." — Alfred Ainger. 272 — Fourth Essay. "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," the fourth in the Elian series. CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELI A. 281 273 — Those who did not like him. "To those ^ wlio did not know him, or, knowing, did not or could not appreciate him. Lamb often passed for something between an imbecile, a brute, and a buf- foon ; and the first impression he made on ordinary people was always unfavorable sometimes to a violent and repulsive degree." — P. G. Patmore, 273 — Sowed doubtful sjjeeehe 8. William Haz- litt says of Lamb's conversation: "No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things in half a dozen half sentences as he does. His jests scald like tears : and he probes a question with a play upon words. What a keen, laughing, hair-brained vein of home-felt truth I What choice venom ! " 274 — Senseless pun. "His [Lamb's] puns were admirable, and often contained as deep tilings as the wisdom of some who have greater names." — Leigh Hunt. 214: — His companions. "None of Lamb's inti- mates were persons of title or fashion, or of any political importance. They were reading men, or authors, or old friends who had no name or preten- sions None of them ever forsook him : they loved him." — Brya7i Waller Procter. FINIS. ^ ^ '& ^^%l liilliP LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 494 841 5