Chapter XXXVIII: Part II: , were published in 1697. The passage quoted is from that "On (5)

Page 397, line 7. _Lewis._ "Gentleman" Lewis (1748?-1811), the original Faulkland in "The Rivals." It was he who said that Lamb's farce, "Mr. H.," might easily have been turned into a success by a practical dramatist. Hazlitt called him "the greatest comic mannerist perhaps that ever lived." His full name is William Thomas Lewis.

Page 397, line 8. _Parsons, Dodd, etc._ See note on page 465. Parsons was at Drury Lane practically from 1762 to 1795 and Dodd from 1766 to 1796.

Page 398, line 4. "_Johnny Gilpin._" This benefit, for William Dowton (1764-1851), was held on April 28, 1817. The first piece was "The Rivals," with Dowton as Mrs. Malaprop. In "Johnny Gilpin" (Genest gives no author's name) Munden played Anthony Brittle.

Page 398, line 6. _Liston's Lubin Log._ This was one of Listen's great parts--in "Love, Law and Physic," by Lamb's friend, James Kenney (1780-1849), produced in 1812.

Page 398, at the end. _A gentleman ... whose criticism I think masterly._ This was Talfourd, who several years before had been dramatic critic to _The Champion_. I quote the first portion of his article: "Mr. Munden appears to us to be the most _classical_ of actors. He is that in high farce, which Kemble was in high tragedy. The lines of these great artists are, it must be admitted, sufficiently distinct; but the same elements are in both,--the same directness of purpose, the same singleness of aim, the same concentration of power, the same iron-casing of inflexible manner, the same statue-like precision of gesture, movement and attitude. The hero of farce is as little affected with impulses from without, as the retired Prince of Tragedians. There is something solid, sterling, almost adamantine, in the building up of his most grotesque characters. When he fixes his wonder-working face in any of its most amazing varieties, it looks as if the picture were carved out from a rock by Nature in a sportive vein, and might last for ever. It is like what we can imagine a mask of the old Grecian Comedy to have been, only that it lives, and breathes, and changes. His most fantastical gestures are the grand ideal of farce. He seems as though he belonged to the earliest and the stateliest age of Comedy, when instead of superficial foibles and the airy varieties of fashion, she had the grand asperities of man to work on, when her grotesque images had something romantic about them, and when humour and parody were themselves heroic."

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Page 398. THOUGHTS ON PRESENTS OF GAME, &C.

_The Athenæum_, November 30, 1833. Signed "Elia." Not reprinted by Lamb.

The quoted passage at the head of this little essay is from Lamb's "Popular Fallacy," XV., "That we must not look a gift-horse in the mouth." It was probably placed there by the editor of _The Athenæum_. The present essay may be taken as a postscript to the "Dissertation on Roast Pig." The late Mr. Charles Kent, in his Centenary edition of Lamb, printed it next that essay, under the heading "A Recantation."

Page 399, line 1. _Old Mr. Chambers._ The Rev. Thomas Chambers, Vicar of Radway-Edgehill, in Warwickshire, and father of Charles and John Chambers, who were at Christ's Hospital, but after Lamb's day. John was a fellow clerk of Lamb's at the India House. A letter from Lamb to Charles Chambers is in existence (see Hazlitt's _The Lambs_, page 138), in which Lamb makes other ecstatic remarks on delicate feeding. Incidentally he says that bullock's heart is a substitute for hare. Mr. Hazlitt says that the Warwickshire vicar left a diary in which he recorded little beyond the dinners he used to give or eat.

Page 399, line 10. _Mrs. Minikin._ Writing to his friend Dodwell in October, 1827, concerning the gift of a little pig (which suggests that the "Recantation" was of more recent date than the reader is asked to suppose), Lamb uses "crips" again. "'And do it nice and _crips_.' (That's the Cook's word.) You'll excuse me, I have been only speaking to Becky about the dinner to-morrow." This seems to establish the fact that Mrs. Minikin was Becky's name when she was exalted into print. Becky however had left long before 1833.

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Page 400. TABLE-TALK BY THE LATE ELIA.

_The Athæneum_, January 4, May 31, June 7, July 19, 1834. Not reprinted by Lamb.

The phrase, "the late Elia," has reference to the preface to the _Last Essays of Elia_, published in 1833, in which his death is spoken of.

Page 400, line 3 of essay. _'Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar._ A different note is struck in the Elia essay "On the Decay of Beggars": "Reader, do not be frightened at the hard words, imposition, imposture--_give, and ask no questions_."

Page 400, line 4 from foot. _Will Dockwray._ I have not been able to find anything about this Will Dockwray. Such Ware records as I have consulted are silent concerning him. There was a Joseph Dockwray, a rich Quaker maltster, at Ware in the eighteenth century. In the poem "Going or Gone," which mentions many of Lamb's acquaintances in his early Widford days (Widford is only three miles from Ware), there is mentioned a Tom Dockwra, who also eludes research.

Page 401, line 15. "_We read the 'Paradise Lost' as a task._" Johnson, in his "Life of Milton," in the _Lives of the Poets_, says: "'Paradise Lost' is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure." For other remarks on Milton see page 428.

Page 401, foot. _So ends "King Lear."_ Lamb means that the tragedy is virtually done. There are of course some dozen lines more, after the last of those quoted in Lamb's piecemeal; which I have corrected by the Globe Edition. Lear's praise of Caius--"he's a good fellow ... and will strike"--was applied by Lamb to his father in the character sketch of him in the Elia essay "On the Old Benchers" (see also the essay on the "Genius of Hogarth," for earlier remarks, 1810, on this subject).

Page 402, first quotation. "_Served not for gain...._" From the Fool's song in "Lear," Act II., Scene 4:--

That, sir, which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm.

Page 402, second and third quotations. "_The Nut-Brown Maid._" This poem is given in the _Percy Reliques_. The oldest form of it is in Arnolde's _Chronicle_, 1502. Lamb quotes from the penultimate stanza. Matthew Prior (1664-1721), who wrote a version under the title "Henry and Emma," was a favourite with Lamb. In Miss Isola's Extract Book he copied Prior's "Female Phaeton." In this connection a passage from the obituary notice of Lamb, written by Barren Field in the _Annual Biography and Obituary_, 1836, has peculiar interest. The doctrine referred to is "suppression in writing":--

We remember, at the very last supper we ate with him (Mr. Serjeant
Talfourd will recollect it too), he quoted a passage from Prior's
"Henry and Emma," in illustration of this doctrine and discipline;
and yet he said he loved Prior as much as any man, but that his
"Henry and Emma" was a vapid paraphrase of the old poem of "The
Nutbrowne Mayde." For example, at the _dénouement_ of the ballad,
Prior made Henry rant out to his devoted Emma:--

"In me behold the potent Edgar's heir,
Illustrious earl; him terrible in war
Let Loire confess, for she has felt his sword,
And trembling fled before the British Lord,"

and so on for a dozen couplets, heroic, as they are called. And
then Mr. Lamb made us mark the modest simplicity with which the
noble youth disclosed himself to his mistress in the old poem:--

"Now understand,
To Westmoreland,
_Which is my heritage_,
(in a parenthesis, as it were,)
I will you bring;
And with a ring,
By way of marriage,
I will you take
And lady make
As shortly as I can:
Thus have ye won
_An earle's son_
And not a banish'd man."

Page 403, line 14 from foot. _M---- sent to his friend L----._ M---- probably stands for Basil Montagu, Lamb's friend, and the editor of the volume in which "Confessions of a Drunkard" appeared. L---- was probably Lamb himself.

Page 403, line 11 from foot. _Penotier._ The friend disguised under this name has not been identified. Nor has Parson W---- or F---- in a later paragraph. Mr. B. B. MacGeorge tells me that he has a copy of _John Woodvil_ inscribed in Lamb's hand to the Rev. J. Walton (or Watson).

Page 404, line 19. _39th of Exodus._ Lamb meant 39th of Genesis--the story of Joseph.

Page 405, line 12. _C----._ See Allsop's _Letters and Conversations of S. T. Coleridge_, 1836, Vol. I., page 206, or where Allsop quotes Lamb as saying, "I made that joke first (the _Scotch_ corner in hell, _fire without brimstone_), though Coleridge somewhat licked it into shape."

Page 405, line 7 from foot. _Chapman's Homer._ It would have been quite possible for Shakespeare to have read part of Chapman's Homer before he wrote "Troilus and Cressida." That play was probably written in 1603, and seven books of Chapman's _Iliad_ came out in 1598, and the whole edition somewhere about 1609. Mr. Lee thinks that Shakespeare had read Chapman. The whole of the _Odyssey_ was published in 1614. It was from this version that Lamb prepared his _Adventures of Ulysses_, 1808.

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Page 406. THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE.

Not printed by Lamb. These reflections were copied from the album of Mr. Keymer by John Forster, and quoted in the memorial article upon Lamb written by him in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for February, 1835, which he then edited. "Lamb never fairly recovered from the death of Coleridge," said Forster.

He thought of little else (his sister was but another portion of
himself) until his own great spirit joined his friend. He had a
habit of venting his melancholy in a sort of mirth. He would, with
nothing graver than a pun, "cleanse his bosom of the perilous stuff
that weighed" upon it. In a jest, or a few light phrases, he would
lay open the last recesses of his heart. So in respect of the death
of Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two or three weeks
ago, and remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind.
He interrupted himself and them almost every instant with some play
of affected wonder, or astonishment, or humorous melancholy, on the
words, "_Coleridge is dead._" Nothing could divert him from that,
for the thought of it never left him.

It was then that Forster asked Lamb to inscribe something in Mr. Keymer's album: the passage on Coleridge was the result. Keymer was a London bookseller--the same to whom Bernard Barton, after Lamb's death, sent a character sketch of Lamb (see _Bernard Barton and His Friends_, page 113). Lamb, I might add, was much offended, as he told Mr. Fuller Russell, by a request from _The Athenæum_, immediately after Coleridge's death, for an article upon him.

Coleridge died in the house of James Gillman, in the Grove, Highgate, July 25, 1834, five months before Lamb's death. On his deathbed Coleridge had written, in pencil, in a copy of his _Poetical Works_, against the poem "This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison," the words: "_Ch. and Mary Lamb--dear to my heart, yea, as it were, my heart. S. T. C. Aet. 63, 1834. 1797-1834--37 years!_"

Coleridge's will contained this clause:--

And further, as a relief to my own feelings by the opportunity of
mentioning their names, that I request of my executor, that a small
plain gold mourning ring, with my hair, may be presented to the
following persons, namely: To my close friend and ever-beloved
schoolfellow, Charles Lamb--and in the deep and almost life-long
affection of which this is the slender record; his equally-beloved
sister, Mary Lamb, will know herself to be included ...

The names of five other friends followed.

* * * * *

Page 407. CUPID'S REVENGE.

This paraphrase of Beaumont and Fletcher's play of the same name is placed here on account of the mystery of its date. Probably it belongs to a stage in Lamb's career some years earlier. It was printed first in _Harper's Magazine_, December, 1858, with the following prefatory note:--

The autograph MS. of this unpublished Tale by Charles Lamb came
into our hands in the following manner: Thomas Allsop, Esq., who
came to this country a few months since in consequence of his
alleged complicity in the attempt made upon the life of Louis
Napoleon by Orsini, was for many years an intimate friend and
correspondent of Coleridge and Lamb. He is known as the author of
the _Recollections, etc., of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, published
nearly a quarter of a century ago. He brought with him in his
flight to America a number of manuscripts of his friends. Among
these were a volume of "Marginalia" by Coleridge; a series of notes
by Lamb, nearly a hundred in all, many of them highly
characteristic of the writer; and the tale of "Cupid's Revenge"
which appears to have remained unpublished in consequence of the
cessation of the magazine for which it was written. These MSS. have
all been placed in our hands. In an early number we propose to
publish a selection from the letters of Lamb, and the "Marginalia"
of Coleridge.

(_Editors of Harper's Magazine._)

A large number of the notes from Lamb to Allsop were published, as promised, under the editorship of George William Curtis. Allsop died in 1880.