Chapter XIX: Appendix (2)

The first fruits of his secularization was an engagement upon the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre he commenced, as I have been told, with adopting the manner of Parsons in old men's characters. At the period in which most of us knew him, he was no more an imitator than he was in any true sense himself imitable.

He was the Robin Good-Fellow of the stage. He came in to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, himself no whit troubled for the matter. He was known, like Puck, by his note--_Ha! Ha! Ha!_--sometimes deepening to _Ho! Ho! Ho!_ with an irresistible accession, derived perhaps remotely from his ecclesiastical education, foreign to his prototype, of--_O La!_ Thousands of hearts yet respond to the chuckling _O La!_ of Dicky Suett, brought back to their remembrance by the faithful transcript of his friend Mathews's mimicry. The "force of nature could no further go." He drolled upon the stock of these two syllables richer than the cuckoo.

Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his composition. Had he had but two grains (nay, half a grain) of it, he could never have supported himself upon those two spider's strings, which served him (in the latter part of his unmixed existence) as legs. A doubt or a scruple must have made him totter, a sigh have puffed him down; the weight of a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin Good-Fellow, "thorough brake, thorough briar," reckless of a scratched face or a torn doublet.

Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools and jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a loose gait, a slippery tongue, this last the ready midwife to a without-pain-delivered jest; in words light as air, venting truths deep as the centre; with idlest rhymes tagging conceit when busiest, singing with Lear in the tempest, or Sir Toby at the buttery hatch.

Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of personal favourites with the town than any actors before or after. The difference, I take it, was this:--Jack was more _beloved_ for his sweet, good-natured, moral, pretensions. Dicky was more _liked_ for his sweet, good-natured, no pretensions at all. Your whole conscience stirred with Bannister's performance of Walter in the Children in the Wood--how dearly beautiful it was!--but Dicky seemed like a thing, as Shakspeare says of Love, too young to know what conscience is. He put us into Vesta's days. Evil fled before him--not as from Jack, as from an antagonist,--but because it could not touch him, any more than a cannon-ball a fly. He was delivered from the burthen of that death; and, when Death came himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded of him by Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, that he received the last stroke, neither varying his accustomed tranquillity, nor tune, with the simple exclamation, worthy to have been recorded in his epitaph--_O La!--O La! Bobby!_

MR. MUNDEN

Not many nights ago we had come home from seeing this extraordinary performer in Cockletop; and when we retired to our pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by us, in a manner as to threaten sleep. In vain we tried to divest ourselves of it by conjuring up the most opposite associations. We resolved to be serious. We raised up the gravest topics of life; private misery, public calamity. All would not do.

--There the antic sate
Mocking our state--

his queer visnomy--his bewildering costume--all the strange things which he had raked together--his serpentine rod swagging about in his pocket--Cleopatra's tear, and the rest of his relics--O'Keefe's wild farce, and _his_ wilder commentary--till the passion of laughter, like grief in excess, relieved itself by its own weight, inviting the sleep which in the first instance it had driven away.

But we were not to escape so easily. No sooner did we fall into slumbers, than the same image, only more perplexing, assailed us in the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, but five hundred, were dancing before us, like the faces which, whether you will or no, come when you have been taking opium--all the strange combinations, which this strangest of all strange mortals ever shot his proper countenance into, from the day he came commissioned to dry up the tears of the town for the loss of the now almost forgotten Edwin. O for the power of the pencil to have fixed them when we awoke! A season or two since there was exhibited a Hogarth gallery. We do not see why there should not be a Munden gallery. In richness and variety the latter would not fall far short of the former.

There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one face (but what a one it is!) of Liston; but Munden has none that you can properly pin down, and call _his_. When you think he has exhausted his battery of looks, in unaccountable warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He is not one, but legion. Not so much a comedian, as a company. If his name could be multiplied like his countenance, it might fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, literally _makes faces_: applied to any other person, the phrase is a mere figure, denoting certain modifications of the human countenance. Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as easily. We should not be surprised to see him some day put out the head of a river horse; or come forth a pewit, or lapwing, some feathered metamorphosis.

We have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry--in Old Dornton--diffuse a glow of sentiment which has made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one man; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of a people. We have seen some faint approaches to this sort of excellence in other players. But in what has been truly denominated "the sublime of farce," Munden stands out as single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange to tell, had no followers. The school of Munden began, and must end, with himself.

Can any man _wonder_, like him? can any man _see ghosts_, like him? or _fight with his own shadow_--sessa--as he does in that strangely-neglected thing, the Cobler of Preston--where his alternations from the Cobler to the Magnifico, and from the Magnifico to the Cobler, keep the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some Arabian Night were being acted before him, or as if Thalaba were no tale! Who like him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a supernatural interest over the commonest daily-life objects? A table, or a joint stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with constellatory importance. You could not speak of it with more deference, if it were mounted into the firmament. A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and ennobles what it touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand and primal as the seething-pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the commonplace materials of life, like primæval man, with the sun and stars about him.

ELIA.

NOTES

ELIA

Lamb took the name of Elia, which should, he said, be pronounced Ellia, from an old clerk, an Italian, at the South-Sea House in Lamb's time: that is, in 1791-1792. Writing to John Taylor in July, 1821, just after he had taken over the magazine (see below), Lamb says, referring to the South-Sea House essay, "having a brother now there, and doubting how he might relish certain descriptions in it, I clapt down the name of Elia to it, which passed off pretty well, for Elia himself added the function of an author to that of a scrivener, like myself. I went the other day (not having seen him [Elia] for a year) to laugh over with him at my usurpation of his name, and found him, alas! no more than a name, for he died of consumption eleven months ago, and I knew not of it. So the name has fairly devolved to me, I think; and 'tis all he has left me."

In the library at Welbeck is a copy of a pamphlet, in French, entitled _Considérations sur l'état actuel de la France au mois de Juin 1815, par un Anglais_, which was presented to the Duke of Portland by the author, F.A. Elia. This was probably Lamb's Elia. The pamphlet is reprinted, together with other interesting matter remotely connected with Lamb, in _Letters from the Originals at Welbeck Abbey_, privately printed, 1909.

_Elia. Essays which have appeared under that signature in the London Magazine_, was published early in 1823. Lamb's original intention was to furnish the book with a whimsical preface, as we learn from the following letter to John Taylor, dated December 7, 1822:--

"DEAR SIR,--I should like the enclosed Dedication to be printed,
unless you dislike it. I like it. It is in the olden style. But if
you object to it, put forth the book as it is; only pray don't let
the printer mistake the word _curt_ for _curst_.

"C.L.

"DEDICATION.

"TO THE FRIENDLY AND JUDICIOUS READER,
who will take these Papers, as they were meant; not understanding
every thing perversely in its absolute and literal sense, but
giving fair construction, as to an after-dinner conversation;
allowing for the rashness and necessary incompleteness of first
thoughts; and not remembering, for the purpose of an after taunt,
words spoken peradventure after the fourth glass, the Author
wishes (what he would will for himself) plenty of good friends to
stand by him, good books to solace him, prosperous events to all
his honest undertakings, and a candid interpretation to his most
hasty words and actions. The other sort (and he hopes many of them
will purchase his book too) he greets with the curt invitation of
Timon, 'Uncover, dogs, and lap:' or he dismisses them with the
confident security of the philosopher,--'you beat but on the case
of Elia.'

"On better consideration, pray omit that Dedication. The Essays
want no Preface: they are _all Preface_. A Preface is nothing but
a talk with the reader; and they do nothing else. Pray omit it.

"There will be a sort of Preface in the next Magazine, which may
act as an advertisement, but not proper for the volume.

"Let ELIA come forth bare as he was born.

"C.L.

"N.B.--_No_ Preface."

The "sort of Preface in the next number" was the character sketch of the late Elia on page 171.

_Elia_ did not reach a second edition in Lamb's lifetime--that is to say, during a period of twelve years--although the editions into which it has passed between his death and the present day are legion. Why, considering the popularity of the essays as they appeared in the _London Magazine_, the book should have found so few purchasers is a problem difficult of solution. Lamb himself seems to have attributed some of the cause to Southey's objection, in the _Quarterly Review_, that _Elia_ "wanted a sounder religious feeling;" but more probably the book was too dear: it was published at 9s. 6d.

Ordinary reviewers do not seem to have perceived at all that a rare humorist, humanist and master of prose had arisen, although among the finer intellects who had any inclination to search for excellence for excellence's sake Lamb made his way. William Hazlitt, for example, drew attention to the rich quality of _Elia_; as also did Leigh Hunt; and William Hone, who cannot, however, as a critic be mentioned with these, was tireless in advocating the book. Among strangers to Lamb who from the first extolled his genius was Miss Mitford. But _Elia_ did not sell.

Ten years passed before Lamb collected his essays again, and then in 1833 was published _The Last Essays of Elia_, with Edward Moxon's imprint. The mass of minor essays in the _London Magazine_ and elsewhere, which Lamb disregarded when he compiled his two collections, will be found in Vol. I. of the present edition. _The Last Essays of Elia_ had little, if any, better reception than the first; and Lamb had the mortification of being asked by the Norris family to suppress the exquisite and kindly little memoir of Randal Norris, entitled "A Death-Bed" (see page 279), which was held to be too personal. When, in 1835, after Lamb's death, a new edition of _Elia_ and _The Last Essays of Elia_ was issued, the "Confessions of a Drunkard" took its place (see Vol. I.).

Meanwhile a Philadelphian firm had been beforehand with Lamb, and had issued in 1828 a second series of _Elia_. The American edition of _Elia_ had been the same as the English except for a slightly different arrangement of the essays. But when in 1828 the American second series was issued, it was found to contain three pieces not by Lamb at all. A trick of writing superficially like Lamb had been growing in the _London Magazine_ ever since the beginning; hence the confusion of the American editor. The three articles not by Lamb, as he pointed out to N.P. Willis (see _Pencillings by the Way_), are "Twelfth Night," "The Nuns and Ale of Caverswell," and "Valentine's Day." Of these Allan Cunningham wrote the second, and B.W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) the other two. The volume contained only eleven essays which Lamb himself selected for _The Last Essays of Elia_: it was eked out with the three spurious pieces above referred to, with several pieces never collected by Lamb, and with four of the humorous articles in the _Works_, 1818. Bernard Barton's sonnet "To Elia" stood as introduction. Altogether it was a very interesting book, as books lacking authority often are.

In the notes that follow reference is often made to Lamb's Key. This is a paper explaining certain initials and blanks in _Elia_, which Lamb drew up for R.B. Pitman, a fellow clerk at the East India House. I give it here in full, merely remarking that the first numerals refer to the pages of the original edition of _Elia_ and those in brackets to the present volume:--

M. . . . Page 13 [7] Maynard, hang'd himself.

G.D. . . " 21 [11] George Dyer, Poet.

H. . . . " 32 [16] Hodges.

W. . . . " 45 [23]

Dr. T----e . " 46 [24] Dr. Trollope.

Th. . . " 47 [24] Thornton.

S. . . " 47 [24] Scott, died in Bedlam.

M. . . " 47 [24] Maunde, dismiss'd school.

C.V. le G. . " 48 [25] Chs. Valentine le Grice.

F. . . . " 49 [25] Favell; left Camb'rg because he was
asham'd of his father, who was a
house-painter there.

Fr. . . " 50 [26] Franklin, Gramr. Mast., Hertford.

T. . . " 50 [26] Marmaduke Thompson.

K. . . " 59 [30] Kenney, Dramatist. Author of
_Raising Wind_, &c.

S.T.C. . . " 60 [31] Samuel Taylor Coleridge. [Not in
Lamb's autograph.]

Alice W----n . " 63 [32] Feigned (Winterton).

*** . . " 64 [32] No Meaning.

**** . . " 64 [32] No Meaning.

*** . . " 64 [32] No Meaning.

Mrs. S. . . " 87 [44] Mrs. Spinkes.

R. . . . " 98 [50] Ramsay, London Library, Ludg. St.;
now extinct.

Granville S. . " 98 [50] Granville Sharp. [Not in Lamb's
autograph.]

E.B. . . " 130 [65] Edward Burney, half-brother of Miss
Burney.

B. . . . " 141 [71] Braham, now a Xtian.

*********** . " 170 [85] Distrest Sailors.

J----ll. . " 195 [97] Jekyll.

Susan P. . " 198 [99] Susan Peirson.

R.N. . . " 206 [103] Randal Norris, Subtreasr, Inner Temple.

C. . . . " 216 [108] Coleridge.

F. . . . " 222 [111] Field.

B.F. . . " 238 [118] Baron Field, brother of Frank.

Lord C. . " 243 [121] Lord Camelford.

Sally W----r . " 248 [123] Sally Winter.

J.W. . . " 248 [123] Jas. White, author of _Falstaff's
Letters_.

St. L. . . " 268 [133] No meaning.

B., Rector of ---- " 268 [133] No meaning.

The _London Magazine_, with John Scott (1783-1821) as its editor was founded in 1820 by Baldwin, Cradock & Joy. Its first number was dated January, 1820, and Lamb's first contribution was in the number for August, 1820. Lamb had known Scott as editor of _The Champion_ in 1814, but, according to Talfourd, it was Hazlitt who introduced Lamb to the _London Magazine_.

John Scott, who was the author of two interesting books of travel, _A Visit to Paris in 1814_ and _Paris Re-visited_ in 1815, was an admirable editor, and all was going exceedingly well until he plunged into a feud with _Blackwood's Magazine_ in general, and John Gibson Lockhart in particular, the story of which in full may be read in Mr. Lang's _Life and Letters of Lockhart_, 1896. In the duel which resulted Scott was shot above the hip. The wound was at first thought lightly of, but Scott died on February 27, 1821--an able man much regretted.

The magazine did not at first show signs of Scott's loss; it continued to bear the imprint of its original publishers and its quality remained very high. With Lamb and Hazlitt writing regularly this could hardly be otherwise. But four months after the death of Scott and eighteen months after its establishment the _London Magazine_ passed into the hands of the publishers Taylor & Hessey, the first number with their imprint being dated August, 1821. Although for a while no diminution of merit was perceptible and rather an access of gaiety--for Taylor brought Hood with him and John Hamilton Reynolds--yet the high editorial standards of Scott ceased to be applied. Thenceforward the decline of the magazine was steady.

John Taylor (1781-1864), senior partner in the firm of Taylor & Hessey, was known as the identifier of Sir Philip Francis with the author of "Junius," on which subject he had issued three books. Although unfitted for the post, he acted as editor of the _London Magazine_ until it was again sold in 1825.

With the beginning of 1825 Taylor made a change in the magazine. He started a new series, and increased the size and the price. But the experiment did not answer; the spirit had evaporated; and in the autumn he sold it to Henry Southern (1799-1853), who had founded the _Retrospective Review_ in 1820. The last number of the _London Magazine_ to bear Taylor & Hessey's name, and (in my opinion) to contain anything by Lamb, was August, 1825. We have no definite information on the matter, but there is every indication in Lamb's _Letters_ that Taylor was penurious and not clever in his relations with contributors. Scott Lamb seems to have admired and liked; but even in Scott's day payment does not seem to have been prompt. Lamb was paid, according to Barry Cornwall, two or three times the amount of other writers, who received for prose a pound a page. But Lamb himself says that the rate for him was twenty guineas a sheet, a sheet being sixteen pages; and he told Moore that he had received £170 for two years' Elia. In a letter to Barton in January, 1823, Lamb remarks: "B---- [Baldwin] who first engaged me as 'Elia' has not paid me up yet (nor any of us without repeated mortifying appeals)."

The following references to the _London_ in Lamb's letters to Barton tell the story of its decadence quite clearly enough. In May, 1823:--"I cannot but think _the London_ drags heavily. I miss Janus [Wainewright]. And O how it misses Hazlitt--Procter, too, is affronted (as Janus has been) with their abominable curtailment of his things."

Again, a little later, in September:--"The 'London' I fear falls off.--I linger among its creaking rafters, like the last rat. It will topple down, if they don't get some Buttresses. They have pulled down three, W. Hazlitt, Procter, and their best stay, kind light-hearted Wainwright, their Janus."

In January, 1824, at the beginning of his eight months' silence:--"The London must do without me for a time, a time, and half a time, for I have lost all interest about it."

Again, in December, 1824:--"Taylor & Hessey finding their magazine goes off very heavily at 2s. 6d., are prudently going to raise their price another shilling; and having already more authors than they want, intend to increase the number of them. If they set up against the New Monthly, they must change their present hands. It is not tying the dead carcase of a Review to a half-dead Magazine will do their business."

In January, 1825 (to Sarah Hutchinson):--"You ask about the editor of the Lond. I know of none. This first specimen [of a new series] is flat and pert enough to justify subscribers, who grudge at t'other shilling."

Next month Lamb writes, again to Barton:--"Our second Number [of the new series] is all trash. What are T. & H. about? It is whip syllabub, 'thin sown with aught of profit or delight'. Thin sown! not a germ of fruit or corn. Why did poor Scott die! There was comfort in writing with such associates as were his little band of scribblers, some gone away, some affronted away, and I am left as the solitary widow [in one of Barton's poems] looking for watercresses."

Finally, in August, 1825:--"Taylor has dropt the 'London'. It was indeed a dead weight. It was Job in the Slough of Despond. I shuffle off my part of the pack, and stand like Christian with light and merry shoulders."

In addition to Lamb and Hazlitt the _London Magazine_ had more or less regular contributions, in its best days, from De Quincey, Allan Cunningham (Nalla), T.G. Wainewright, afterwards the poisoner, but in those days an amusing weaver of gay artificial prose, John Clare, Bernard Barton, H.F. Cary, Richard Ayton, George Darley, Thomas Hood, John Hamilton Reynolds, Sir John Bowring, John Poole, B.W. Procter; while among occasional writers for it were Thomas Carlyle, Landor and Julius Hare.

The essay, "Stage Illusion," in the number for August, 1825, was, I believe, the last that Lamb contributed. (In this connection see Mr. Bertram Dobell's _Sidelights on Charles Lamb_, 1903.) Lamb then passed over to Colburn's _New Monthly Magazine_, where the "Popular Fallacies" appeared, together with certain other of his later essays. His last contribution to that magazine was dated September, 1826. In 1827 he was chiefly occupied in selecting Garrick play extracts for Hone's _Table Book_, at the British Museum, and for a while after that he seems to have been more interested in writing acrostics and album verses than prose. In 1831, however, Moxon's _Englishman's Magazine_ offered harbourage for anything Lamb cared to give it, and a brief revival of Elia (under the name of Peter) resulted. With its death in October, 1831, Lamb's writing career practically ceased.

* * * * *

Page 1. THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.

_London Magazine_, August, 1820.

Although the "Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People," "Valentine's Day," and "On the Acting of Munden," were all written before this essay, it is none the less the first of the essays of Elia. I have remarked, in the notes to a small edition of _Elia_, that it is probably unique in literature for an author to find himself, as Lamb did, in his forty-fourth year, by recording impressions gathered in his seventeenth; but I think now that Lamb probably visited his brother at the South-Sea House from time to time in later years, and gathered other impressions then. I am led to this conclusion partly by the fact that Thomas Tame was not appointed Deputy-Accountant until four or five years after Lamb had left.

We do not know exactly what Lamb's duties were at the South-Sea House or how long he was there: probably only for the twenty-three weeks--from September, 1791--mentioned in the receipt below, discovered by Mr. J.A. Rutter in a little exhibition of documents illustrative of the South Sea Bubble in the Albert Museum at Exeter:--

Rec'd 8th feby 1792 of the Honble South Sea Company by the hands
of their Secretary Twelve pounds 1s. 6d. for 23 weeks attendance
in the Examiners Office.

£12 1 6. CHAS. LAMB.

This shows that Lamb's salary was half a guinea weekly, paid half-yearly. His brother John was already in the service of the Company, where he remained till his death, rising to Accountant. It has been conjectured that it was through his influence that Charles was admitted, with the view of picking up book-keeping; but the real patron and introducer was Joseph Pake, one of the directors, whom we meet on page 92. Whether Lamb had ideas of remaining, or whether he merely filled a temporary gap in the Examiners' Office, we cannot tell. He passed to the East India House in the spring of 1792.

The South Sea Company was incorporated in 1710. The year of the Bubble was 1720. The South-Sea House, remodelled, is now a congeries of offices.

Page 2, line 11. _Forty years ago_. To be accurate, twenty-eight to thirty.

Page 3, line 1. _Accounts ... puzzle me_. Here Elia begins his "matter-of-lie" career. Lamb was at this time in the Accountants' Office of the India House, living among figures all day.

Page 3, line 7 from foot. _Evans_. William Evans. The Directories of those days printed lists of the chief officials in some of the public offices, and it is possible to trace the careers of the clerks whom Lamb names. All are genuine. Evans, whose name is given one year as Evan Evans, was appointed cashier (or deputy-cashier) in 1792.

Page 4, line 4. _Ready to imagine himself one_. Lamb was fond of this conceit. See his little essay "The Last Peach" (Vol. I.), and the mischievous letter to Bernard Barton, after Fauntleroy's trial, warning him against peculation.

Page 4, line 7. _Anderton's_. Either the coffee-shop in Fleet Street, now Anderton's Hotel, or a city offshoot of it. The portrait, if it ever was in existence, is no longer known there.

Page 5, line 17. _John Tipp_. John Lamb succeeded Tipp as Accountant somewhen about 1806.

Page 5, line 27. _I know not, etc._ This parenthesis was not in the _London Magazine_, but the following footnote was appended to the sentence:--

"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."

Mr. Lamb was, of course, John Lamb, or James Elia (see the essay "My Relations"), then (in 1820) Accountant of the South-Sea House. He left the Milton to his brother. It is now in America.

Page 6, line 5 from foot. _Henry Man_. This was Henry Man (1747-1790), deputy-secretary of the South-Sea House from 1776, and an author of light trifles in the papers, and of one or two books. The _Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose of the late Henry Man_ was published in 1802, among the subscribers being three of the officials named in this essay--John Evans, R. Plumer, and Mr. Tipp, and also Thomas Maynard, who, though assigned to the Stock Exchange, is probably the "childlike, pastoral M----" of a later paragraph. Small politics are for the most part kept out of Man's volumes, which are high-spirited rather than witty, but this punning epigram (of which Lamb was an admirer) on Lord Spencer and Lord Sandwich may be quoted:--

Two Lords whose names if I should quote,
Some folks might call me sinner:
The one invented _half a coat_,
The other _half a dinner_.

Such lords as these are useful men,
Heaven sends them to console one;
Because there's now not one in ten,
That can procure a _whole one_.

Page 7, line 13. _Plumer_. Richard Plumer (spelled Plomer in the directories), deputy-secretary after Man. Lamb was peculiarly interested in the Plumers from the fact that his grandmother, Mrs. Field, had been housekeeper of their mansion at Blakesware, near Ware (see notes to "Dream-Children" and "Blakesmoor in H----shire"). The fine old Whig was William Plumer, who had been her employer, and was now living at Gilston. He died in 1821.

The following passage from the memoir of Edward Cave (1691-1754), which Dr. Johnson wrote for the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (which Cave established) in 1754, shows that Lamb was mistaken about Plumer:--

He [Cave] was afterwards raised to the office of clerk of the
franks, in which he acted with great spirit and firmness; and
often stopped franks which were given by members of parliament to
their friends; because he thought such extension of a peculiar
right illegal. This raised many complaints, and having stopped,
among others, a frank given to the old dutchess of _Marlborough_
by Mr. _Walter Plummer_, he was cited before the house, as for
breach of privilege, and accused, I suppose very unjustly,
of opening letters to detect them. He was treated with great
harshness and severity, but declining their questions by pleading
his oath of secrecy, was at last dismissed. And it must be
recorded to his honour, that when he was ejected from his office,
he did not think himself discharged from his trust, but continued
to refuse to his nearest friends any information about the
management of the office.

I borrow from Canon Ainger an interesting note on Walter Plumer, written in the eighteen-eighties, showing that Lamb was mistaken on other matters too:--

The present Mr. Plumer, of Allerton, Totness, a grandson of
Richard Plumer of the South-Sea House, by no means acquiesces in
the tradition here recorded as to his grandfather's origin. He
believes that though the links are missing, Richard Plumer was
descended in regular line from the Baronet, Sir Walter Plumer,
who died at the end of the seventeenth century. Lamb's memory
has failed him here in one respect. The "Bachelor Uncle," Walter
Plumer, uncle of William Plumer of Blakesware, was most certainly
not a bachelor (see the pedigree of the family in Cussans'
_Hertfordshire_).

Page 7, line 10 from foot. M----. According to the Key to the initials and blanks in some of the essays, which Lamb filled in for a curious correspondent, M---- stood for one Maynard. "Maynard, hang'd himself" is Lamb's entry. He was chief clerk in the Old Annuities and Three Per Cents, 1788-1793.

* * * * *

Page 8. OXFORD IN THE VACATION.

_London Magazine_, October, 1820, where it is dated at the end, "August 5, 1820. From my rooms facing the Bodleian." My own belief is that Lamb wrote the essay at Cambridge, under the influence of Cambridge, where he spent a few weeks in the summers of 1819 and 1820, and transferred the scene to Oxford by way of mystification. He knew Oxford, of course, but he had not been there for some years, and it was at Cambridge that he met Dyer and saw the Milton MSS.

Concerning a visit to Oxford (in 1810), Hazlitt had written, in his _Table Talk_ essay "On the Conversation of Authors," in the preceding (the September) number of the _London Magazine_:--

L---- [that is, Lamb] once came down into the country to see us.
He was "like the most capricious poet Ovid among the Goths." The
country people thought him an oddity, and did not understand his
jokes. It would be strange if they had; for he did not make any
while he staid. But when we crossed the country to Oxford, then he
spoke a little. He and the old colleges were hail-fellow well-met;
and in the quadrangles, he "walked gowned."

The quotation is a reference to Lamb's sonnet, "I was not Trained in Academic Bowers," written at Cambridge in 1819:--

Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers,
Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap;
My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap,
And I walk _gownèd_.

Page 8, line 6 from foot. _Agnize_. Lamb was fond of this word. I have seen it stated ingeniously that it was of his own coinage--from _agnus_, a lamb--but the derivation is _ad gnoscere_, to acknowledge, to recognise, and the word is to be found in other places--in "Othello," for example (Act I., Scene 3, line 232):--

I do agnise
A natural and prompt alacrity.

Page 9, middle. _Red-letter days_. See note on page 351. The holidays at the India House, which are given in the London directories of Lamb's early time there, make a considerable list. But in 1820 the Accountants' Office, where Lamb was, kept only five days in the year.

Page 10, line 11. _I can here ... enact the student._ Lamb had distilled the matter of this paragraph into his sonnet, "I was not Trained in Academic Bowers," written at Cambridge in August of the preceding year (see above and Vol. IV.).

Page 11, line 12 from foot. _Unsettle my faith._ At this point, in the _London Magazine_, Lamb appended the footnote:--

"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 springing 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 inspirations were made up of parts, and those
fluctuating, successive, indifferent! I will never go into the
work-shop 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."

In the Appendix to Vol. I., page 428, I have printed a passage from the original MS. of _Comus_, which there is reason to believe was contributed to the _London Magazine_ by Lamb.

Page 11, line 9 from foot. _G.D._ George Dyer (1755-1841), Lamb's friend for many years. This is the first mention of him in the essays; but we shall meet him again, particularly in "Amicus Redivivus." George Dyer was educated at Christ's Hospital long before Lamb's time there, and, becoming a Grecian, had entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He became at first an usher in Essex, then a private tutor to the children of Robert Robinson, the Unitarian, whose life he afterwards excellently wrote, then an usher again, at Northampton, one of his colleagues being John Clarke, father of Lamb's friend, Charles Cowden Clarke. In 1792 he settled in Clifford's Inn as a hack; wrote poems, made indexes, examined libraries for a great bibliographical work (never published), and contributed "all that was original" to Valpy's classics in 141 volumes. Under this work his sight gave way; and he once showed Hazlitt two fingers the use of which he had lost in copying out MSS. of Procrus and Plotinus in a fine Greek hand. Fortunately a good woman took him under her wing; they were married in 1825; and Dyer's last days were happy. His best books were his _Life of Robert Robinson_ and his _History of the University and Colleges of Cambridge_. Lamb and his friends laughed at him and loved him. In addition to the stories told by Lamb in his letters and essays, there are amusing characteristics of Dyer in Crabb Robinson's diary, in Leigh Hunt, in Hazlitt, in Talfourd, and in other places. All bear upon his gentleness, his untidiness and his want of humour. One of the most famous stories tells of Dyer's criticism of Williams, the terrible Ratcliffe Highway murderer. Dyer, who would never say an ill word of any one, was asked his opinion of this cold-blooded assassin of two families. "He must," he replied after due thought, "be rather an eccentric character."

Page 12, line 10. _Injustice to him._ In the _London Magazine_ the following footnote came here, almost certainly by Lamb:--

"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[amb], 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 himself to be the author of Waverly!
_Note--not by Elia."_

Page 12, line 11. _"Strike an abstract idea."_ I do not find this quotation--if it be one; but when John Lamb once knocked Hazlitt down, during an argument on pigments, Hazlitt refrained from striking back, remarking that he was a metaphysician and dealt not in blows but in ideas. Lamb may be slyly remembering this.

Page 12, line 15. C----. Cambridge. Dyer added a work on _Privileges of the University if Cambridge_ to his _History_.

Page 12, line 8 from foot. _Our friend M.'s._ Basil Montagu, Q.C. (1770-1851), legal writer, philanthropist, editor of Bacon, and the friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The Mrs. M. here referred to was Montagu's third wife, a Mrs. Skepper. It was she who was called by Edward Irving "the noble lady," and to whom Carlyle addressed some early letters. A.S. was Anne Skepper, afterwards Mrs. Bryan Waller Procter, a fascinating lady who lived to a great age and died as recently as 1888. The Montagus then lived at 25 Bedford Square.

Page 13, line 17. _Starts like a thing surprised._ Here we have an interesting example of Lamb's gift of fused quotation. Wordsworth's line in the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality,"

Tremble like a guilty thing surprised,

and Shakespeare's phrase in "Hamlet" (Act I., Scene 1, line 148),

Started like a guilty thing,

were probably both in his mind as he wrote.

Page 13, line 24. _Obtruded personal presence._ In the _London Magazine_ the following passage came here:--

"D. commenced life, after a course of hard study in the 'House of
pure Emanuel,' as usher to a knavish fanatic schoolmaster at ***,
at a salary 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 poverty, 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,
us therewithal 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 poor 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 booksellers,--wasting his fine
erudition in silent corrections of the classics, and in those
unostentatious but solid services to learning, which commonly 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 inobtrusive like his
own,--and because he has been too much absorbed in ancient
literature, to know what the popular mark in poetry is, even if he
could have hit it. And, therefore, 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."

The foregoing passage called forth a protest from one W.K. necessitating the following reply from Lamb, which was printed in the _London Magazine_, under the "Lion's Head," for December, 1820:--

"Elia requests the Editor to inform W.K. that in his article on
Oxford, under the initials G.D., it is 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 the
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
character, 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 anecdote 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
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 has 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."

The result of the protest was that Lamb omitted the passage objected to when he collected _Elia_ in 1823. It might well be restored now; but I have preferred to print everything in the body of this edition as Lamb arranged it for press.

* * * * *

Page 14. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO.

_London Magazine_, November, 1820.

This essay, which is based upon the "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" in Vol. I., is a curious blend of Lamb's own experiences at school with those of Coleridge. Both boys entered at the same time--on July 17, 1782: Coleridge was then nearly ten, Lamb was seven and a half. Coleridge was "clothed" on July 18 and went to Hertford for a while; Lamb was clothed on October 9. Lamb left the school in November, 1789, Coleridge in September, 1791.

The school which Lamb knew is now no more. The boys are now all in new buildings in the midst of green fields near Horsham, many miles from Lamb's city and its roar.

Page 14, line 15. _The worthy sub-treasurer._ Randal Norris (see note to "A Death-Bed"). I have not been able to discover the cause of his influence.

Page 14, lines 18, 19. _Crug ... piggins._ Crug is still current slang. In the school museum one of these piggins is preserved.

Page 14, line 25. _Three banyan days._ Three vegetarian days. Coleridge complains (in a letter to Poole) that he was never sufficiently fed except on Wednesdays. He gives the following table of food:--

Our diet was very scanty. Every morning a bit of dry bread and
some bad small beer. Every evening a larger piece of bread, and
cheese or butter, whichever we liked. For dinner,--on Sunday,
boiled beef and broth; Monday, bread and butter, and milk and
water; Tuesday, roast mutton; Wednesday, bread and butter, and
rice milk; Thursday, boiled beef and broth; Friday, boiled mutton
and broth; Saturday, bread and butter, and pease-porridge. Our
food was portioned; and, excepting on Wednesdays, I never had a
bellyfull. Our appetites were damped, never satisfied; and we had
no vegetables.

Page 14, line 8 from foot. _Caro equina._ Horseflesh. Mr. Pearce's chapter on food at the school in his excellent _Annals of Christ's Hospital_ is very interesting, and records great changes. Rotten-roasted or rare, _i.e._, over-roasted or under-done.

Page 15, line 3. _The good old relative._ Aunt Hetty, or more properly, Sarah Lamb. Compare the "Lines written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral," Vol. IV.:--

I have not forgot
How thou didst love thy Charles, when he was yet
A prating schoolboy: I have not forgot
The busy joy on that important day,
When, childlike, the poor wanderer was content
To leave the bosom of parental love,
His childhood's play-place, and his early home,
For the rude fosterings of a stranger's hand,
Hard, uncouth tasks, and schoolboys' scanty fare.
How did thine eyes peruse him round and round
And hardly knew him in his yellow coats,
Red leathern belt, and gown of russet blue.

Page 15, line 13. _I was a poor friendless boy._ Here Lamb speaks as Coleridge, who came all the way from Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire (not Calne, in Wiltshire), and had no London friends. In _John Woodvil_ Lamb borrowed St. Mary Ottery again (see Vol. IV.). Coleridge has recorded how unhappy he was in his early days at school.

Page 15, line 12 from foot. _Whole-day-leaves._ In this connection the following passage from Trollope's _History of Christ's Hospital_, 1834, is interesting:--

Those days, on which _leave_ is given to be absent from the Hospital during the whole day, are called _whole-day leaves_.... A _ticket_ is a small oval medal attached to the button-hole, without which, except on leaves, no boy is allowed to pass the gates. Subjoined is a list of the holidays, which have been hitherto kept at Christ's Hospital; but it is in contemplation to abridge them materially. Of the policy of such a measure great doubts may fairly be entertained, inasmuch as the vacations are so short as to give sufficient respite neither to master nor scholar; and these occasional breaks, in the arduous duties of the former more especially, enable him to repair the exhausted energies of body and mind by necessary relaxation. If those days, which are marked with an asterisk, fall on a Sunday, they are kept on the Monday following; and likewise the state holidays.

HOLIDAYS KEPT AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL

Jan. 25. St. Paul's conversion.
*30. King Charles's martyrdom.
Feb. 2. Candlemas Day.
24. St. Matthias.
Shrove Tuesday.
Ash Wednesday.
March 25. Lady Day.
April 23. St. George.
25. St. Mark.
May 1. St. Philip and St. James.
*29. Restoration of King
Charles II.
Ascension Day.
Whit Monday.
Whit Tuesday.
June 11. St. Barnabas.
24. St. John Baptist.
29. St. Peter.
July 25. St. James.
Thursday after St.
James. (Nurses' Holiday.)
Aug. 24. St. Bartholomew.
Sept. *2. London burnt.
*21. St. Matthew.
29. St. Michael.
Oct. 18. St. Luke.
*23. King Edward VI. born.
28. St. Simon and St. Jude.
Nov. 1. All Saints.
*5. Gunpowder Plot.
*9. Lord Mayor's Day.
*17. Queen Elizabeth's birthday.
30. St. Andrew.
Dec. 21. St. Thomas.

Also the birthdays of the King and Queen, and the Prince and Princess of Wales: and the King's accession, proclamation, and coronation.

In addition to the generous allowance of holidays above given the boys had every alternate Wednesday for a whole day; eleven days at Easter, four weeks in the summer, and fifteen days at Christmas. In 1837 the holiday system was remodelled. Compare Lamb's other remarks on his whole-day rambles in "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" (Vol. I.) and in the essays in the present volume entitled "Amicus Redivivus" and "Newspapers."

Page 16, line 14. _The Tower_. Blue-coat boys still have this right of free entrance to the Tower; but the lions are no more. They were transferred to the Zoological Gardens in 1831.

Page 16, line 16. _L.'s governor_. Meaning Samuel Salt, M.P.; but it was actually his friend Mr. Timothy Yeats who signed Lamb's paper. More accurately, Lamb's father lived under Salt's roof.

Page 16, line 7 from foot. _H----_. According to Lamb's Key this was Hodges; but in the British Museum copy of _Elia_, first edition, some one has written Huggins. It is immaterial. Nevis and St. Kitt's (St. Christopher's) are islands in the British West Indies. Tobin would be James Webbe Tobin, of Nevis, who died in 1814, the brother of the playwright John Tobin, author of "The Honeymoon."

Page 17, line 2. _A young ass_. The general opinion at Christ's Hospital is that Lamb invented this incident; and yet it has the air of being true.

Page 17, line 18. _L.'s admired Perry_. John Perry, steward from 1761 to 1785, mentioned in Lamb's earlier essay.

Page 17, foot. _Gags_. Still current slang.

Page 17, foot. ----. No name in the Key. The quotation is an adaptation of:--

It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh
Which some did die to look on.

"Antony and Cleopatra," Act I., Scene 4, lines 67-68.

It is perhaps worth remarking that in _David Copperfield_ Dickens has a school incident of a similar character.

Page 18, line 14 from foot. _Mr. Hathaway_. Matthias Hathaway, steward from 1790 to 1813.

Page 19, line 8. _I was a hypochondriac lad_. Here Lamb drops the Coleridge mask and speaks as himself.

Page 20, line 15. _Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert_. Bamber Gascoigne, M.P. (1725-1791), of Bifrons, in Essex. Of Peter Aubert I can find nothing, except that the assistant secretary of the East India Company at the time Lamb wrote this essay was Peter Auber, afterwards full secretary. His name here may be a joke.

Page 20, line 6 from foot. _Matthew Field_. The Rev. Matthew Feilde, also vicar of Ugley and curate of Berden. For the Rev. James Boyer see below.

Page 21, line 18. _"Peter Wilkins," etc. The Adventures of Peter Wilkins_, by Robert Paltock, 1751, is still read; but _The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle_, 1736, has had its day. It was a blend of unconvincing travel and some rather free narrative: a piece of sheer hackwork to meet a certain market. See Lamb's sonnet to Stothard, Vol. IV. _The Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy_ I have not seen. Canon Ainger describes it as a rather foolish romance, showing how a Blue-coat boy marries a rich lady of rank. The sub-title is "Memoirs of the Life and Happy Adventures of Mr. Benjamin Templeman; formerly a Scholar in Christ's Hospital. By an Orphanotropian," 1770.

Page 22, footnote. I have not discovered a copy of Matthew Feilde's play.

Page 23, line 17 from foot. _Squinting W----_. Not identifiable.

Page 23, line 7 from foot. _Coleridge, in his literary life_. Coleridge speaks in the _Biographia Literaria_ of having had the "inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time a very severe master, the Reverend James Bowyer [Boyer]," and goes on to attribute to that master's discrimination and thoroughness much of his own classical knowledge and early interest in poetry and criticism. Coleridge gives this example of Boyer's impatient humour:--

In our own English compositions (at least for the last three years
of our school education), he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor,
or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense
might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer
words. _Lute, harp_ and _lyre, Muse, Muses_ and _inspirations,
Pegasus, Parnassus_ and _Hippocrene_, were all an abomination to
him. In fancy I can almost hear him now exclaiming, "Harp? Harp?
Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, muse? Your nurse's
daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh, aye! the cloister pump, I
suppose!"

Touching Boyer's cruelty, Coleridge adds that his "severities, even now, not seldom furnish the dreams by which the blind fancy would fain interpret to the mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep."