PR4861 .A2 B5 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DD0D3n4SDH tfiiMummsBn}] J.°v \,^^ -'ife*- \>/ *^i^'" ^^ « •o^ '^^^ s°-*. ♦'^^'- %„..^'' .':«^"o '^^..^^\*- '.* A' Oi The Lake English Classics General Editor: LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A. B., Professor of English Literature and Rhetoric in Brown University ADDISON— r/ie Sir Roger De Coverley Papers— Abbott 30c BROWNING— Seific^ed Poems— Reynolds 40c BUNYAN— r/ie Pilgrim's Progress— IjATUAM. 30c BURKE— iSpeec/i on Conciliation with ^»ie7-ica— Dennet 35c CARL.YLE— ^ssay on Bttrns— AlTON SSc CHAUCER -SeZec^ions—GBEENLAW 40c COOPER— iasf of the il/o;«caJis— Lewis 40c COLERIDGE— r;ie Ancient 3Iariner, ? , , Tvinn-nv 2«5*. LO WELL- F*siono/ Sir Launfal, ^1 vol. -MOODY 45c DE QUINCE Y-Joa7i of Arc and Selections— MoODY 85c DE QUINCEY— T/ie Flight of a Tartar Trifee- French 25c DICKENS— 4 Christinas Carol, etc- Beoadus 30c DICKENS— 4 Tale of Two Ct^tes— Baldwin 40c DICKENS— DaiJjd C'opper/ieid- Baldwin 50c DRYDEN— PaZa»won and Arcite—COOK S5c EMERSON— Essa?/s and Addresses— Keyd-rick 35c FRANKLIN— ^Mto6/of7rap/M/—GKTFFiN 30c GASKELL (Mrs. )-Cra7?/ord— Hancock 35c GEORGE ELIOT— St7as JIarne?'— HANCOCK 30c GOLDSMITH-T/ie Vicar of Wakefield— MOBTON 30c H A WTHORNE— T/ie House of the Seven Gables— B.^ RRICK 35c HAWTHORNE— Twice- roid Toies- Hebeick AND Beueee 40c IRVING— Z,^/e of Goldsmith— Kbafp 40c IRVING— rAe Sketch Book— Kbafp 40c IRVINGr— Taies of a Traveller— sind parts of The Sketch Book— Krapp 40c LAMB— £'ssa?/s of ^ha— Benedict 35c LONGFELLOW— iVarratzve Poems— Powell 40c LOWELL— Fision of Sir Launfal—See Coleridge. MACAULAY— i'ssat/s on Addison and Jo/oisoh— NEWCOMER 30c MACAULAY— E'ssays on Clive and Hastings— "Newcom^B 35c MACAUL AY— jEssat/s on Milton and ^rfdison- NEWCOMER 30o MILTON— i'^ZZeg't-o, /iPe7iseroso, Comtis, and Lyctdas— Neilson. .. 85c MILTON— Paradise Lost, Books I and II— Farley 85c PALGRAVE— GoZden Treaswry- Newcomer 40c POE— Poems and Tales, SeZecfed- NEWCOMER 30c POPE — Homers Iliad, .Books I, VL XXII, XXIV — Cressy and Moody 85c RUSKIN— Sesame ond izZ/es- LiNN 85c SCOTT— luawAoe—SlMONDS 45c SCOTT— ^wenffn Diu-ward— Simonds 45c SCOTT— Lady of the Lake— MoOT>Y 30c SCOTT— iay of the Last 3Iinst7'el—MoODY AND Willaed 85c SCOTT— Mar^nioji— Moody ane Willard. 30c SHAKSPERE—2';ieiVe?7soM£'d»Y?o)i- Edited by W. A. NeilsoN, ^s You Like It, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Henry V, Midsummer-Night's Dream, each 85c SHAKSPERE— Mercftanf of Fenice- LovetT 85c STEVENSON— JnZand Voyage and Travels with a Donfcei/- Leonard 35c STEVENSON— Treasure /sZajid— Beoadub 85c TH ACKER AY— i/ejir?/ Esmond— Phelps 50c Three American Poems— T/ie Raven, Snow-Bound, Miles Standish— Greevee. g5c TENNYSON— SeZec^ed Poe?ws— Reynolds .' " " 35c TENNYSON- The Prtwcess- COPELAND 85c Waslilnsrton, W^ebster, Lincoln— Denney 85c SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY ^,^„ EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS NEW YORK CHICAGO EDITED BY LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A.B. Professor of English Literature and Rhetoric in Brown University tTbe Xafte lenslisb Claasice ELIA CHARLES LAMB EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE GEORGE W. BENEDICT, Ph.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH BROWN UNIVERSITY CHICAGO NEW YORK SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY ©C1.-A283230 PREFACE. The text of this edition follows that of Mr. E. V. Lucas's admirable edition of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, which reproduces the text of the original collected edition of 1823; but I have arranged the essays in the order in which they were published in The London Magazine. This is not strictly the order of their first appearance, as will be seen from the dates given in the Table of Contents, p. 7. For much of the information in Parts I. and II. of the Introduction I am under obligation not only to Mr. Lucas's edition, but also to his Life of Charles Lamb. I have drawn largely from Mr. Lucas's notes, which are too valuable not to be used; but I haA'^e added a good deal that seems to me likely to be of ser^dce in a school edition. In order that a glance may show the frequency and the character of the literary echoes in Lamb's style, references to the sources of many of his quo- tations are printed at the foot of the page ; also his own few notes, marked (L). The other notes, of all sorts — on proper names, unusual words and phrases, Latin quotations, and so forth — are put at the back of the book. My hearty thanks are due to my colleague, Mr. W. T. Hastings, for help in sifting and arranging them, and for general criticism. Much of the matter in the notes could have been spared if pupils could only be trusted to clear up difficulties and obscurities for themselves by the use of good dictionaries and other books of reference. Yet these are not always so easily accessible as they should be. Furthermore, I would rather give too much than too little, for one misses a great 5 6 PREFACE part of the flavor unless one realizes Lamb's inveterate allu- siveness and understands pretty clearly what the allusions signify. It is not necessary, however, that students should look up all the quotations whose sources I have noted, nor that they should burden their memories with unimportant facts about the many places and persons and things that Lamb mentions. The notes on such allusions will, I hope, satisfy reasonable curiosity and show the picturesqueness of Lamb's mental background ; but the notes are not to be learned by heart : they are intended as helps to the understanding of the text, not as examination-material. I beg to suggest, further, that though the bulk of these essays is small, it might be well if they were read with school classes not in a lump but intermittently, if practicable. Lamb's essays are so different from what most pupils have read and are reading, that too much of them at one time may easily prove cloying. And, although Lamb did collect his essays, we should remember that they were written to be read periodically, and that the intervals in their publication served to whet the appetite of the readers of The London Magazine and send them to a new paper by Elia with in- creased zest. Nor is it necessary, of course, to read the whole series, in order to understand Lamb and appreciate him. Teachers will doubtless find some of the essays less interesting to their pupils than others, and less suitable for classroom use. The paper on The Artificial Comedy, for instance, though important in itself and also because of Macaulay's demurrer to Lamb's views, raises a delicate point of criticism on a subject always difficult to manage with mixed classes. In short, I should hope that sensible teachers might choose the essays and the methods that they think will make the reading; of Elia most enjoyable. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Preface ~ . 5 Introduction , ' Lamb's Life and Works , . . . « „ • 9 Table of Chief Dates '. 39 Bibliographical Note . . . . . . 41 Elia The South-Sea House ' . 45 London Magazine, August, 1820. Oxford in the Vacation ..... 55 London Magazine, October, 1820. Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years x\go . . 64 London Magazine, November, 1820. The Two Races of Men . ... 80 London Magazine, December, 1823. New Year's Eve 87 London Magazine, January, 1821. Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist ... 96 London Magazine, February, 1821. Valentine's Day 104 Examiner, Feb. 14, 1819; Indicator, Feb 14, 1821. A Chapter on Ears 108 London Magazine, March, 1821. All Fools' Day 116 London Magazine, Apr^l, 1821. A Quakers' Meeting* 121 London Magazine, April, 1821. The Old and the New Schoolmaster . . . 127 - London Magazine, May, 1821. My Relations ... .... 138 London Magazine, June, 1821. Mackery End, in Hertfordshire . . , ' . 146 ~^^ London Magazine, July, 1821. Imperfect Sympathies ..... 152 London Magazine, August, 1821. CONTENTS— Continued PAGE The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple . . . 163 London Magazine, September, 1821. Witches and Other Night-Fears ... 177 London Magazine, October, 1821. Grace Before Meat 185 London Magazine, November, 1821. My First Play 194 London Magazine, December, 1821. Dream-Children: A Reverie . . . . . 199 ^i jondon Magazine, January, 1822. On^Some of the Old Actors . . . 204 London Magazine, February, 1822 Distant Correspondents . . ... 219 London Magazine, March, 1822 On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century 226 London Magazine, April, 1822, The Praise of Chimney-S weepers . . . . 241 London Magazine, May, 1822. A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis 250 London Magazine, June, 1822, ^ A Dissertation upon Roast Pig . . . . 261 London Magazine, September, 1822. \ A Bachelor's Complaint ..... 270 ^'"^- .Reflector, 1812; London Magazine, September, 1822. On the Acting of Munden 279 Examiner, 1819; London Magazine, October, 1822. Modern Gallantry 281* London Magazine, November, 1822. Notes 287 LAMB'S LIFE AND WORKS. I. Charles Lamb was born February 10, 1775, in London, in the Inner Temple, a famous old nest of lawyers' lodg- ings and offices. His father, John Lamb, was clerk, body-servant, and factotum to Samuel Salt, one of the **old benchers"; and his mother was Salt's housekeeper. Charles was the youngest of seven children. Of these only a brother, John, and a sister, Mary Anne, respectively about twelve and ten years older than Charles, lived to adult age : they are the James and Bridget Elia of the essay My Relations. Lamb described his father in the essay on The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple^ under the name of Lovel, in such vivid terms that it is easy to see that his own lovable nature was a patri- mony. It was nearly all that he inherited : his father's station in life was a humble one. Charles had his first lessons from the daughter of a former resident in the Tern. pie; and in her declining years he gave her in return a generous pension. At about the age of six he went for a year to a day-school in Fetter Lane, near by He was a delicate boy, and had had smallpox at five years old; and he stuttered. Fortunately, through the interest of Salt, Lamb was ad- mitted to Christ's Hospital — the famous Blue Coat School, — and with some unusual privileges, if we may trust the essay on Christ's Hospital in Elia. An earlier essay. Recollections of Christ's Hospital, gives an affectionate and enthusiastic account of the character of the school and of the Blue Coat 9 10 INTRODUCTION boys. Here he remained from his entrance in 1782 until 1789, during which time Coleridge, the poet, and Middleton, the first bishop of Calcutta were among his schoolfellows and intimates. A bronze statuette group of the three is now a trophy of the school, "held in rotation by the ward in which most prizes have been gained in the year." ^^^ There is also a school medal bearing a likeness of Lamb, given as an English Essay Prize. ^^^ A schoolmate ^^^ writes of him thus: "His step was planti- grade, which made his walk slow and peculiar, adding to the staid appearance of his figure. I never heard his name mentioned without the addition of Charles, although, as there was no other boy of the name of Lamb, the addition was un- necessary; but there was an implied kindness in it. . . . His delicate frame and his difficulty of utterance, which was increased by agitation, unfitted him for joining in any boister- ous sport." He was not one of the Grecians, or high-scholar- ship boys being prepared for the University; but his school years gave a scholarly turn to a love of reading that was born in him and had doubtless been fed upon the books in Samuel Salt's library — that "spacious closet of good old English reading" which he speaks of in Mackery End. Wordsworth tells us^*^ that "Lamb was a good Latin scholar, and prob- ably would have gone to college upon one of the school foundations but for the impediment in his speech." He was, however, a "Deputy Grecian," i. e., a member of the next to the highest class. Soon after leaving the school, at the age of fourteen, he seems to have been taken into the office of Joseph Paice (de- ^1) See the cut in Lucas's edition, Vol. II., p. 320. (2) lb. p. 324. (3) Valentine Le Grice, quoted in Lucas's Life, Vol. I., p. 84. (4) Note to the poem Written After the Death of Charles Lamb. THE ESSAYS OF ELIA U scribed in Modern Gallaniry), where he probably learned bookkeeping. Through this friend's influence he soon got work in the Examiner's office of the South Sea Company, in whose employ his brother John was, at half a guinea per week. In the spring of 1792, again by the influence of Paice, he was given a post in the East India House as a bookkeeper in the Accountant-General's department; and here he stayed for thirty-three years, until he was pen- sioned by the Company knd retired. DeQuincey ^^^ has given us a vivid picture of Lamb at his work, w^hich has so much of character in it that it deserves to be quoted at length: *'It was either late in 1804 or early in 1805 that I had ob- tained from a literary friend a letter of introduction to Mr. Lamb. . . . Let me describe my brief introductory call upon him at the India House. ... I was shown into a small room, or else a small section of a large one . . . in which was a very lofty writing-desk, separated by a still higher railing from that part of the floor in which the pro- fane — the laity, like myself — were allowed to approach the clerus, or clerkly rulers of the room. Within the railing sat, to the best of my remembrance, six quill-driving gentlemen (2) , . . [who] were all too profoundly immersed in their oriental studies to have any sense of my presence. . . . I walked, therefore, into one of the two open doorways of the railing, and stood close by the high stool of him who occupied the first place within the little aisle. I touched his arm, by way of recalling him from his lofty Leaden- hall speculations to this sublunary world ; and, presenting my letter, asked if that gentleman (pointing to the address) (1) Works, Masson's edition, Vol. III., p. 38flf: Recollections of Charles Lamb. (2) Lamb's Mend, Henry Crabb Robinson, has recorded in iiis Diary one of Lamb's puns at the expense of his fellow-sufferers: "The large room at the accountant's office at the East India House is divided into boxes or compartments, in each of which sit six clerks, Charles Lamb himself in one. They are called Compounds. The meaning of the word was asked one day, and Lamb said it was 'a collection of simples.' " 12 INTRODUCTION were really a citizen of the present room; for I had been repeatedly misled, by the directions given me, into wrong rooms. The gentleman smiled; it was a smile not to be forgotten. This was Lamb. . . . The seat upon which he sat was a very high one; so absurdly high, by the way, that I can imagine no possible use or sense in such an altitude unless it were to restrain the occupant from playing truant at the fire by opposing Alpine difficulties to his descent. . . . "He began to dismount instantly; and, as it happened that the very first round of his descent obliged him to turn his back upon me as if for a sudden purpose of flight, he had an excuse for laughing; which he did heartily — saying at the same time something to this effect: that I must not judge from first ap- pearances; that he should revolve upon me; that he was not going to fly; and other facetiae, which challenged a general laugh from the clerical brotherhood. . . . "The letter of introduction, containing (I imagine) no matters of business, was speedily run through; and I instantly received an invitation to spend the evening with him. . . . He was, with his limited income — and I say it deliberately — positively the most hospitable man I have known in this world." Lamb received no salary at the India House until after three years of probation. In 1795 his pay began at £40 a year, increasing gradually, but somewhat irregularly, to £730 in 1825. In addition to his salary there were certain regular gratuities and some payments for work over time. The hours were not what we should call severe — from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon ; and (if not at first, cer- tainly later) he had a vacation of a month in each year, besides certain regular hoHdays. But the drudgery of auditing accounts, calculating interest, making out warrants, and recording entries of sales and the like, galled him extremely as time went on. His disHke of the work finds its way often into his letters. In 1815 he writes THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 13 to Wordsworth: "My business and office business in general has increased so. I don't mean I am there every night, but I must expect a great deal of it. . . . Do not keep a hoU- day now once in ten times, where I used to keep all red-letter days, and some fine days besides, which I used to dub nature's holidays. I have had my day ... of the little that is left of my life I may reckon two-thirds as dead, for Time that a man may call his own is his Life." Later in the same year, to Wordsworth again : "I have a glimmering aspect, a chink- light of liberty before me. . . . If I can but begin my own day at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I shall think myself to have Eden days of peace and liberty to what I have had." His letter to Wordsworth upon his release in 1825 is well known: "I came home forever on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelm'd 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 time that is my own, in it! . . . Freedom and life co- existent." The cloud that business threw over him must have been the darker because of a streak of morbid melancholy, a tendency to insanity, inherent in the blood. In his twenty-first year he had a brief attack of melancholia, of which he writes with a brave show of humor to Coleridge: "I know not what suffer- ing scenes you have gone through at Bristol — my life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and began this year your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse at Hoxton — I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite anyone. But mad I was. . . . It may convince you of my regard for you when I tell you my head ran on you in my madness, as much almost as on another person, who I am inclined to think was the more im- 14 INTRODUCTION mediate cause of my temporary frenzy." This last allusion must be to Ann Simmons, of whom later. Yet it was not his own but his sister's insanity that threw the deepest shadow upon his life. Mary had given signs of the malady before September, 1796. In that month, after symp- toms that alarmed her brother and sent him — most unfor- tunately in vain — after their physician, she fell into a violent paroxysm such as sometimes accompanies the depression of melancholia. Snatching a knife from the table in their rooms in the Temple, she tried to kill her little dressmaker apprentice, actually wounded her aged father, and stabbed her mother to death. Charles was permitted to take her to a private asylum instead of having to put her in a public hospital for the insane. The next year ''her removal was then allowed by the authorities on [Lamb's] giving *his solemn engagement that he would take her under his care for life.' Charles Lamb when he made this promise was just twenty-two." ^^^ Thenceforth she was the object of his constant care and solicitude; and though for considerable intervals she was herself, hardly a year passed without a m.ore or less severe recurrence of her malady. Until her father's death in 1799, it was deemed unwise for her to live at home, and during her attacks after that she was usually in a private asylum. Never were brother and sister closer in all their sympathies, desires, and interests. Mary understood her brother, stimu- lated his endeavors, shared his disappointments and suc- cesses perfectly. Only their drudgeries were separate — Charles bending over his ledgers at the India House, Mary plying her needle as a professional "mantua-maker" at home. Their hours of freedom they lived together. Lamb's letters are full of his sister. During one of her attacks he wrote (1) Lubas, Life, Vol. I., p. 131. THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 15 to Dorothy Wordsworth (the poet's sister) thus: "Meantime she is dead to me and I miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her cooperation. I dare not think, lest I should think wrong; so used am I to look up to her in the least and the biggest perplexity." Indeed, it is pleasant to think that the intimacy between the Words- worths and the Lambs was the readier and closer because of the perfect sympathy between brother and sister on either side. Except for the tragedy of 1796 and Charles's retirement from the India House in 1825 there is little to mark stages in his life. His literary labors, at first somewhat varied, were after 1810 pretty much of one sort. For the rest, Lamb's life was diversified only by his vacation excursions (with Mary, when she was able) and his frequent shifts of domicile. He visited Somersetshire and the Lake Country, the Isle of Wight, Oxford and Cambridge, Mackery End and Blakesware in Hertfordshire, "sweet Calne in Wiltshire,"^ Birmingham, and Paris, and has left us charming reminis- cences of some of them in his essays. But he was of the city by his nature as well as by the com- pulsion of his employment, and it was only in London that he felt himself thoroughly comfortable. His home, until Samuel Salt's death, in 1792, was in the Temple; after eight years in small lodgings in Holborn and Pentonville, he and Mary came back to lodgings in the Temple again, in Mitre Court Buildings. Here began the famous weekly gatherings of his friends,^^^ with whist, puns, punch, talk of plays and pictures and books. The Lambs moved in 1809 to Inner Temple Lane, "where," wrote Charles, "I mean to live and (1) Among the records of these gatherings is Hazlitt's spirited account In his Conversation of Authors. 16 INTRODUCTION die: for I have such a horror of moving" — this was the seventh move already — "that I would not take a benefice from the King if I were not indulged with non-residences." But they moved out of the Temple in 1817 to lodgings in Russell Street, Co vent Garden. Lamb wrote to Dorothy Wordsworth: "I thought we never could have been torn up from the Temple. . . . We can never strike root so deep in any other ground." In 1823 they took a house, the first they had ever had to themselves, by the bank of the New River in the suburb of Islington; in 1827 another at Enfield, further out from the city, where with some interruptions they stayed till 1833. From "dull Enfield," as he calls it, Lamb wrote a long letter to Wordsworth — of all people I — protesting against the borC' dom of life in the country. "Yearnings of life, not quite kill'd, rise, prompting me that there was a London, and that I was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleetmarket, but I wake and try to sleep again. . . . O, let no native Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent occupa- tion, interchange of converse sweet and recreative study, can make the country anything better than altogether odious and detestable. A garden was the primitive prison till man with promethean felicity and boldness luckily sinned himself out of it. Thence followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses, satires, epi- grams, puns — these all came in on the town part, and the thither side of innocence. Man found out inventions. From my den I return you condolence for your decaying sight, not for anything there is to see in the country, but for the miss of the pleasure of reading a London newspaper. ... I would live in London shirtless, bookless." From Enfield they moved to Edmonton, "three or four miles nearer the Great THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 17 City," as Lamb writes, again to Wordsworth: "... I have few friends left there, one or two tho' most beloved. But London streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly." Lamb had absolutely a genius for friendship, and hardly anything in his life is more significant than the number and quality of his friends and acquaintances. Some came to him from his early acquired and long continued interest in the theatre- of these the closest was the charming and accom- plished actress, Miss Fanny Kelly, to whom, by the way, Mary Lamb taught Latin. Others were Liston, Charles Kemble, Macready, Elliston, and Munden, the actors; and Holcrof t, James Kenney, and James Sheridan Knowles, the playwrights. Most of his distinguished friends, however, were men of letters more or less closely connected with the Ro- mantic Movement in literature, in which Lamb himself played a part. The chief of these have already been mentioned — Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Some of the others were Robert Southey, the poet-laureate ; Thomas DeQuincey, the ^'English opium-eater"; William Hazlitt, the critic and essayist; Leigh Hunt, the editor, essayist, and poet; Henry Cary, the translator of Dante; Walter Savage Landor, the poet and essayist; William Godwin, the political philosopher; Thomas Hood, the humorist; and Henry Crabb Robinson, the author of the famous Diary which gives us so much of the literary gossip of the day. Among his acquaintances Were John Keats, Thomas Moore, Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Rogers, Thomas Love Peacock, Mrs. Shelley, Stothard the artist, John Payne Collier the Shakespearean scholar, Thomas Carlyle (who has left us an ill-natured and ill-judged estimate of Lamb), and Christopher North (Professor Wilson). From some of his friends there were temporary estrangements, but there is universal testimony 18 INTRODUCTION to the kindliness, sincerity, warmth, and lovableness of his nature. He had one love affair, in his youth, and once later con- templated marriage. Upon some visit to his grandmother Field in Hertfordshire, he doubtless met Ann Simmons, who is identified with the "Alice W — " of the essays and who is apparently the subject of some early love sonnets. His heart must have been ''seriously engaged," in the old- fashioned phrase, but nothing came of it. His grandmother, it is said, opposed the match because of the insanity in his family. If he had not ceased to think seriously of Ann Sim- mons by the time of his mother's death, he certainly did then. Writing to Coleridge, he says: "Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind." Two months later he writes to Coleridge again: "I have burned all my own verses. ... I burned a little journal of my foolish passion which I had a long time kept"; and about a year later still, "it is a passion of which I retain nothing, 'twas a weakness." The stern seriousness of his responsibility toward his sister would seem to have killed, for the time, all thoughts of authorship as well as of marriage. In 1819, when he was forty-four, he proposed marriage to Miss Kelly, the actress. His letter, written when Miss Kelly was suffering from some grief, begins thus: "Dear Miss Kelly — We had the pleasure, pain I might better call it, of seeing you last night in the new Play. It was a most consummate piece of acting, but what a task for you to under- go 1 at a time when your heart is sore from real sorrow I it has given rise to a train of thinking which I cannot suppress." The whole letter is tender, considerate, manly; but one cannot wonder that Miss Kelly declined the offer. From the fre- quent occurrence in it of *'we", "us", "our", it is clear that THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 19 even at such a moment Miss Kelly's image shared with his sister Mary's the possession of his thoughts : one might almost say he was proposing marriage on Mary's behalf as well as his own. Only a year and a half later Lamb wrote Dream Children, which Mr. Lucas suggests should be read in the light of his recent proposal. Lamb's thoughts of marriage, though prompted more by a generous and tender regard for Miss Kelly's comfort than by real love, perhaps had stirred his memory and rekindled a gleam of his early passion. Having no child of his own, Lamb found one in Emma Isola, the motherless daughter of a shy, unworldly don of Cambridge University. Charles and Mary had seen her in Cambridge in 1820, and she had visited them the following Christmas. Perhaps they already thought of having her live with them, and may have made their journey to France in 1821 to the end of helping her with French. On her father's death in 1823 they adopted her. They taught her Latin, and Robinson tells us that Lamb taught her Italian "without knowing the language himself." She became a governess in a friend's family, and in 1833 married Edward Moxon, the publisher. Though cordially approving the marriage. Lamb missed his niece, as he called her. Mary Lamb's illness had grown much upon her, and bore hard upon her brother. Coleridge, his friend of forty years, died in July, 1834, and Lamb felt his loss greatly. He had no routine of employ- ment to uphold him. His health was enfeebled — it must be confessed, by his intemperance. December 22, 1834, during a morning's walk in Edmonton, he stumbled and fell. The illness which followed was fatal. He died December 27, and was buried in Edmonton. Thirteen years later Mary Lamb died in London, and was buried beside her brother. II. Charles Lamb belongs to the class of miscellaneous writers. The range of kinds in his writing is large, but as his product in these various kinds is by no means of uniform merit, he lives by a rather small part of his whole work, — by the Tales from Shakespear, the Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, and a few essays, chiefly those collected under the titles Elia and Last Essays of Elia. His first serious efforts were in poetry, consisting of a few sonnets, some blank verse fragments, and a handful of other bits, composed between 1794 and 1798. Some are senti- mental, some sad, some religious, showing the graVe view of the world engendered in him by the failure of his first hopes in love and by his sister's insanity. Four of the sonnets were published with Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects (1796) and repubHshed, with additions, in the second edition (1797), which contained also contributions from Coleridge's other literary protege, Charles Lloyd. In 1798 Lloyd and Lamb pubHshed a volume of poems under the unassuming title Blank Verse, in which seven short pieces were Lamb's. Lamb printed a few other poems in periodicals during these years, among them Living Without God in the World, which is on the whole the best thing in his early verse. There can be little doubt that all these early poems were written under the influence of the new ideas about poetry which Coleridge thought he had received from reading Bowles's sonnets, and which he of course preached to his friends, Lloyd and Lamb, 20 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 21 as well as to Wordsworth/^^ Lamb's verses are simple, sweet, and tender, but his poetic style lacks, for the most part, melody and power, and it is safe to say that were it not for the interest in his other work and in Coleridge's ger- minative influence, his poetry would be forgotten now. Much the same may be said of his next work, Rosamund Gray (1798), a curiously condensed story in thirteen chapters averaging a little over two pages in length. By its manner, particularly at the outset, one might think it intended for children, but its pathos is evidently aimed at adult readers. It is not at all a story of what happens — the interest is wholly in the emotions which the events awaken in the actors and in the author; that is, it is of the sentimental class. Some critics, however, find its sentiment so simple and pure that it makes a deep impression upon them. Lamb's next venture was more ambitious. It was a tragedy, John Woodvil (completed 1799), in mixed prose and irregular blank verse, full of echoes of Elizabethan dramatists. It is, in fact, an attempt to write a play in the Elizabethan style, an attempt for which Lamb's intimate knowledge of the old drama and his sensitiveness to effects of style qualified him probably better than any other man of his day. But as a play it can hardly be called successful. The feelings of love, filial piety, loyalty, and ambition are its springs of action, its temper is noble, the conception is in- tense; yet the plot is bare, the characters are not real, and (1) Bowles was doubtless only the spark to the powder. In brief, Cole- ridge's poetical creed involved the superiority of the sonnet and blank verse and free lyric measures over the conventional ten-syllable couplet of the school of Pope; the love of natural beauty; and the reliance on imagination and emotion rather than on reason and polished technique, for the produc- tion of poetical pleasure. The idea that true poetry should be the out- pouring of the heart Coleridge emphasized by calling thirty-six of the pieces in his first volume of poems by the affected and clmnsy title of "Effusions." Lamb remonstrated, and begged him to call them "Sonnets, for heaven's sake, not 'Effusions.' " 22 INTRODUCTION the poetry, except for-a few short passages, is not truly affect- ing. It was submitted, under its original title of Pride's Cure, to Kemble, the great actor, who declined it, and it was never produced on the stage in Lamb's lifetime. Lamb published it in 1802, together with some Curious Fragments capitally imitating Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, of which he was very fond. The book was not well received. In 1800 Lamb wrote the epilogue for Godwin's unsuccessful tragedy, Antonio. In his second paper on the Old Actors (London Magazine, April, 1822), he gives a most amusing account of the one, damning performance of this play.^^^ For the next two years his published work was small and unim- portant, consisting of lampoons on the government in The Albion (a short-hved affair), squibs and jokes in The Morning Chronicle and The Morning Post, some dramatic criticism, and one piece, The Londoner, that shows for the first time in print his love of the city, and gives promise of the later Elia. Another attempt in drama, the farce Mr. H — , was pro- duced at Drury Lane Theatre in 1806. It was a failure, and was withdrawn at Lamb's request. The plot turns upon the grotesqueness of the name Hogsflesh, which its owner attempts to conceal, but inadvertently reveals, to the dis- gust and consternation of his friends, particularly his lady- love. He gets it changed to Bacon, and thus come3 off triumphant. The play was produced with some success in Philadelphia in 1812, and printed there, without Lamb's name, in 1813. Lamb pubHshed it for the first time author- itatively in Vol. II. of his collected Works (1818). The next year (1807) saw the publication of the earliest of Lamb's lasting works. This was the Tales from Shakespear, (1) This passage was omitted when Lamb revised the essay for the col- lected edition of Elia. THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 23 long a deservedly popular book with the young readers for whom it was intended. It was put forth by "The Juvenile Library," i. e., Mrs. William Godwin, whom Lamb cordially detested but whose enterprise every child that has made ac- quaintance with Shakespeare through the Tales has reason to be grateful for. Though it bore the name of Charles Lamb alone as author, it was more Mary Lamb's work than her brother's, for out of the twenty tales in the book, she wrote all but those of Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet, and Othello. The preface explained that the writers had kept as much of Shakespeare's language as was practicable, and that "what these tales shall have been to the young readers, that and much more it is the writers' wish that the true Plays of Shakespear may prove to them in older years — enrichers of fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honorable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity; humanity; for of examples teaching these virtues his pages are full." The connection thus formed with The Juvenile Library lasted for some years and produced several other books for children. In The Adventures of Ulysses (1808) Lamb retold in charming style — better even than that of the Tales — the story of the Odyssey, taking it from Chapman's Homer. Mrs. Leicester's School (1808; the first edition, however, bears the date 1809), is a collection of stories supposed to be told in turn by ten young ladies of a boarding-school concerning their childhood experiences. It came out anonymously, but was chiefly Mary Lamb's work. The stories vary consider- ably in interest, but all are better executed than Rosamund Gray; and they have an added interest from the many auto- biographical hints they contain. In 1809 appeared Poetry 24 INTRODUCTION for Children f hy the Author of ''Mrs. Leicester's School." This also was chiefly by Mary Lamb. The last book issued by The Juvenile Library in which the Lambs were concerned seems to have been Charles's Prince Dorus (1811), a humorous verse-tale of the prince with the long nose.^^^ Lamb now turned his attention to the old drama with a more serious critical purpose. He had been at work for some time upon a collection of extracts, and published it in 1808 under the title Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived about the Time of Shakspeare: With Notes by Charles Lamb. It was published by Longman, apparently as a sort of companion to Ellis's Specimens of the Early English Poets (1790), Ellis's Specimens of English Metrical Romances (1805), and Burnett's Specimens of English Prose Writers (1807). The importance of the undertaking itself and its significant position in the history of the appreciation of the Elizabethan drama justify the following quotation from Lamb's Preface: "The kind of extracts which I have sought after have been, not so much passages of wit and humour, though the old plays are rich in such, as scenes of passion, sometimes of the deepest quality, interesting situations, serious descrip- tions, that which is more nearly allied to poetry than to wit, and to tragic rather than to comic poetry. The plays which I have made choice of have been, with few excep- tions, those which treat of human life and manners, rather than masques, and arcadian pastorals. . . . My leading design has been, to illustrate what may be called the moral sense of our ancestors, to show in what manner they felt, when they placed themselves by the power of imagination in trying situations in the conflicts of duty and passion, or the (1) The verses in The King and Queen of Hearts (undated) are ascribed to Lamb with all but entire certainty. This was an apparently early publication of The Juvenile Library, consisting of amusing copper-plate pictures after the manner of playing-cards, with a running verse com- mentary. THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 25 V . strife of contending duties; what sort of loves and enmities theirs were; how their griefs were tempered, and their full- swoln joys abated; how much of Shakespeare shines in the great men his contemporaries, and how far in his divine mind and manners he surpassed them and all mankind. "Another object which I had in making these selections was, to bring together the most admired scenes in Fletcher and Massinger, in the estimation of the world the only dramatic poets of that age who are entitled to be considered after Shake- speare, and to exhibit them in the same volume with the more impressive scenes of old Marlowe, Heywood, Tourneur, Web- ster, Ford, and others; to show what we have slighted, while beyond all proportions we have cried up one or two favorite names." It will be seen from these words that Lamb's purpose was not scientific or historical, but literary, in a somewhat narrow sense. He was not studying dramatic technique or the development of the drama as a type ; he was culling and arranging and exhibiting those things that a reader of taste should be expected to enjoy. His interest is in emotions and in the imaginative realization and expression of those emo- tions. Ideas there are, of course, in the dramatists: but Lamb is always less concerned to formulate and expound ideas than to capture the feelings that spring from ideas and situations, and to observe how those feelings find expression in a particular man's actions and words. The testimony to the acuteness of his insight and the fineness of his taste is universal. Professor Herford's comment is excellent^^^ : for this task, he says, "no living Englishman had comparable qualifications ... he had to choose out the decisive poetry from several hundred plays of some thirty authors. Even Scott is not more one in spirit with his ballads than (1) The Age of Wordawbrth, pp. 62-63. 26 INTRODUCTION Lamb is with his plays. His brief critical notes are the inmost breath and genius of the poetry itself captured and made palpable in words." The Specimens may well be considered the prelude, as it were, to the second period of Lamb's literary labors. In his first period he seems to be trying his powers, but in his second he finds his feet as an essayist and proceeds master of criticism. The opportunity for this more serious achievement came to him, as it happened, through Leigh Hunt, himself a Christ's Hospital boy. Hunt and his brother, who had started a weekly paper called The Examiner in 1808, undertook also a quarterly. The Reflector, in 1810, which was to be largely the work of old Blue Coat boys. To it Lamb contributed some of his keenest and best sustaineci critical essays, espe- cially the papers on The Genius and Character of Hogarth, and On the Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered with Ref- erence to their Fitness for Stage Representation. Some of his other Reflector contributions, such as On the In- convenience of Being Hanged, Edax on Appetite, and The Good Clerk, show the characteristic vein of humor of the Elia essays. In The Examiner, in 1812, he published some squibs in verse against the Prince Regent, the most amusing and caustic of which is The Prince of Whales. In 1813 he began to write characteristic short scraps of articles for the "Table Talk" in The Examiner; he contributed also dramatic criticisms and some short reviews of books, among them one on a burlesque entitled Falstaff's Letters (in which he himself certainly had had a hand), and an appreciative one on Keats's poems. To this period belongs some good work in other periodicals, especially Recollections of Chrisfs Hospital, in The Englishman's Magazine, 1813, and a review of THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 27 Wordsworth's Excursion in The Quarterly Review,^^^ 1814. His last piece in The Examiner seems to have been in 1820, in which year he wrote also a few things for Hunt's Indicator. But before he ceased to write for Hunt's papers, he had made a collection of such early work as he wished to preserve, and, adding to it from his more recent writing, published the whole in two volumes in 1818 under the title The Works of Charles Lamb. The first volume contained reprinted poems, John Woodvil, the dramatic fragment The Witch, the Curious Fragments, Rosamund Gray, and Recollections of Christ's Hospital. The second was made up of critical and other essays and Mr. H — . To the opportunity offered him by Hunt's columns and to the consequent feeling of freedom and encouragement, he owed much, as has been said. A still more favorable op- portunity opened in 1820, the year which marks the begin- ning of his best and most productive period. This chance was the foundation of The London Magazine — a new venture, with an old name — by John Scott, who had edited The Champion, for which Lamb had written in 1814. Very likely Scott invited him to write for the London; but one of his biographers ^^^ says that "Lamb's association with Hazlitt in the year 1820 introduced him to that of The London Magazine, which supplied the finest stimulus his intellect (1) Lamb'srelations with the Quarterly, edited by the high-handed Glflford, were always uncomfortable. Giflford had called Lamb's comment on Ford, in the Dramatic Specimens, "the blasphemies of a maniac," a judg- ment, which, as Robinson says in his Diary, "in brutality surpasses any- thing, even in the Edinburgh Review." The Quarterly garbled Lamb's review of the Excursion, which he said to Wordsworth was ' the prettiest piece of prose 1 ever writ" ; it printed Southey's article on "The Progress of In- fidelity" that called out Lamb's defence of Hazlitt, Hunt, and himself; and it professed to think Lamb's Confessions of a Drunkard an autobiographical document. (2) T. N. Talfourd, Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, Chap. VII. 28 INTRODUCTION had ever received, and induced the compositions fondly and familiarly known under the fantastic title of Elia." This pseudonym was the real name of an old Italian clerk in the South Sea House in Lamb's day there /i^ "Elia himself added the function of an author to that of a scrivener like myself," writes Lamb. He tells us that the proper pronunciation is "EUia," but it must have been variously pronounced in his own day. Mr. Lucas says that Lamb's friend Hone rhymed it with "desire" — I suppose because of the similarity to "Elias" ; and, oddly, the Maclise portrait of Lamb bears the name in Greek letters in two forms, viz: EAIA and rjjXta, which by the practice of that time would indicate respectively "Ellia" and **Eelia." This last is certainly the common pronunciation now; but it must be given up. Under cover of this pseudonym Lamb published almost all of his contributions to The London Magazine. His first was in August, 1820. Scott, the first editor, died from a wound received in a duel, in February, 1821, and the control passed into the hands of John Taylor, of the publishing firm of Taylor and Hessey, which bought the magazine after Scott's death; Lamb, however, continued to write for it — occasionally, it would seem, anonymously. His last contribution, according to Mr. Lucas, was in August, 1825, with which number Taylor and Hessey also ended their connection with the magazine. After that Lamb used the signature "EHa" for a few pieces in other periodicals (The New Monthly Magazine, The Englishman's Magazine, Hone's Table Book, and The AthencBum). Some of these were reprinted in the Last Essays of Elia. He also used the signature perhaps a dozen times in his private correspondence, the last time, just before (1) Lucas, Works, Vol. II., p. 299. THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. 29 his death, writing **Ch. Lamb, alias Elia." Even in print it was a perfectly transparent disguise to anybody who knew him or his earlier articles. The first collected edition of Elia, comprising the essays contained in the present book, was published in 1823, by Taylor and Hessey, the owners of The London Magazine. Aside from the continued Elia articles mentioned above, and a few short bits signed Lepus in The New Times, Lamb's latest work was once more largely dramatic and in verse. In 1825 he wrote The Pawnbroker's Daughter, a farce turning on the inconvenient situation of a lover who has been hanged and cut down. It was never played, though Lamb had hopes of it, but was printed in Blackwood's Magazine in 1830. In 1827 he wrote the dramatic poem, The Wife's Trial, in which he strove again for a Shakespearean flavor, but which is more modern than John Woodvil. It was offered to Charles Kemble for production at Co vent Garden Theatre. As Mr. Lucas says, Lamb neverseemsto haveconvinced himself that hecould not write successfully for the stage. He himself said that he had trouble with the "damned plot," but thought he could "find wit, passion, sentiment, character, and the like trifles." As a matter of fact, however, though he has abundance of feeling of his own, and a very sensitive and sympathetic appreciation of character, he lacks the dramatist's power to get inside a character and make it act and speak with life- likeness. The Wife's Trial was printed in Blackwood's, 1828. In 1830 appeared, as the first fruits of Moxon's newly established publishing business, Album Verses, containing occasional pieces written for ladies' albums, some sonnets, some translations of the Latin poems of Vincent Bourne (an English scholar of the eighteenth century), and a Pindaric 30 INTRODUCTION Ode to the Treadmill. Lamb did not regard this collection very seriously, but some of the reviewers took it in all seri- ousness and fell foul of it. It contained the sonnet The Gipsy's Malison, previously printed in Blackwood's, 1829, after having been declined by The Gem; apropos of which exhibition of taste, Lamb got off one of his best witticisms: "The editors declined it, on the plea that it would shock all mothers. ... I am born out of time. I have no con- jecture about what the present world calls delicacy. I thought Rosamund Gray a pretty modest thing. Hessey assures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, *Hang the age. I will write for Antiquity !' " In 1831 Moxon published an anonymous burlesque ballad, Satan in Search of a Wife, with grotesque illustrations by the famous Cruickshank. In 1833, after some difficulty and a lawsuit with Taylor, the former editor of The London Magazine, who claimed proprietary rights in the essays, Moxon pubhshed the Last Essays of Elia, containing the greater part of Lamb's prose written since the collected Elia of 1823, It was Lamb's last book. III. The Elia essays show Lamb at his best in his humor and fancy, his tenderness, his intimate personalness. If their serious criticism is not quite so incisive and luminous as that of the essays on Hogarth and Shakespeare, pubHshed in The Reflector J it is still admirably keen and delicate. Out of them we can — and we do — construct the real Charles Lamb himself , toiling in the prison-house of the Eastlndia Company, living his boyhood over again in imagination, cherishing his friends, smiling at us sometimes very wistfully, solacing him- self with his old authors, or bursting into mirth and puns — all this with that dark shadow of insanity and grief hanging over him. It was a brave soul; and he wins our affection the more strongly — "the best loved of English writers," he has been called — because, with all his self-revelation, he never thinks to let us see the heroic in him. It may not be amiss to point out in some detail the mani- festations of his chief traits. We recognize at once the per- vasiveness of his humor no less than the brilliancy of a par- ticular pun or an odd metaphor ingeniously spun out and varied. This humor is, as it were, a saturated solution so rich in intellectual constituents that it is ever on the point of crystallizing into wit; on the other hand, the substance of thought is so compounded with feeling that it is constantly on the point of turning into pathos. Though conspicuous and pervasive, it is quite indescribable in a single word or phrase. It is quick, yet not racy; lively, yet not boisterous 31 32 INTRODUCTION nor ever side-splitting^, at least in his writing (though his jokes in company were sometimes Uttle better than tom- foolery); extravagant, rare, elaborate, and minute, yet without that labored quality which we call far-fetched; delicate, yet saved from thinness by its ingenuity; bookish, delighting in verbal subtleties, yet richly appreciative of human comedy. It is a pity that the Dissertation Upon Roast Pig, easily the best known and probably the best enjoyed of the essays, is so generally accepted as the classical example of Lamb's humor. His fine sense for character, as in The Two Races of Men, is a finer thing than his gusto for pig, perfect as that is ; and the felicities of Distant Correspondents or The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers are superior, because involving a richer range of associations. His sympathetic nature, also, is evident. He is full of regard for the unfortunate and the helpless. Weakness moves his pity, not his scorn. His pity was active, finding its outlet in many an act of kindly help, not in theoretical humanitarianism. He would put his hand into his pocket for a beggar, raise a subscription, write an epilogue for a friend's play, revise a young poet's verses, find work for his servant's relatives. He is charitable in his judgments of men. Unless, perhaps, of a stiif-necked prig^*^: such a one "wolde he snibben sharply for the nones," like Chaucer's Parson. But benevolence and intellectual charity are by no means all of true sympathy. He was singularly sensitive to the appeal of widely different natures, and quick to understand and appreciate their strength or weakness, to catch and relish their peculiar quality, their flavor o^f sweetness, richness, or pungency. Of this power of his, (1) See his indignant protest (.Letter to Southey) against the illiberal cen- sure of his own and Leigh Hunt's and Hazlitt's moral views. THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 33 such essays as The Old Benchers and Imjierfect Sympathies are good examples. He is always intensely personal. This means first that his interests are in the manners and thoughts and feelings of concrete men and women. He loved a "humor" in a man. He cared nothing about science or metaphysics. He wanted his abstract ideas mixed with flesh and blood. In politics he took a very small interest, and was a partisan, if at all, for his friends' sake, or because he could not bear in silence the personal affronts which the conduct of the Prince Regent gave not only to the Princess but to every decent subject as well. He refused, to the exasperation of some of his friends, to manifest any enthusiasm over Waterloo ; but rather strange- ly does not seem to have felt any deep pity for Napoleon's fate. He had few or none of what are called "views," even in literature or art, though he had strong preferences among writers and painters. He esteemed Coleridge and Wordsworth and liked their poetry; but he had no part in their declaration of literary independence. Serious judg- ments couched in general terms are hardly to be found in his essays; his mental idiom, so to speak, is particular and specific. He is personal, in the second place, in that his view of every- body and everything takes its color from his own nature. It is a common enough trait, but Lamb has it in marked de- gree. As has well been said of him, "all that he knows or observes in the world of books or men becomes absorbed in the single life of his own mind, and is reproduced as part and parcel of Charles Lamb." That is, the reader feels that Lamb's sense of a fact is constantly interposed between him and the fact itself. This does not necessarily imply a sacrifice of accuracy or truth any more than when we look at the sun 34 INTRODUCTION through a smoked glass. But I do not mean that Lamb is at all a dark or turbid medium. If Lamb's essays were paintings, we should say that they have a great deal of "atmosphere." This personal habit of mind explains the large amount of reminiscence in his work. His fondness for things as they had been is unmistakable — for the old benchers, the old actors, the old writers, old china, the old landmarks of the city. They were what he was used to. He had made his discoveries once for all in his boyhood of the oddities in the Temple walks, of the theatre, of old books in Samuel Salt's library, of London. It was not the greatness of the city, not its growth, but the unchanging famiHarity of its aspect that delighted him. ''The disappearance of the old clock from St. Dunstan's church drew tears from him; nor could he ever pass without emotion the place where Exeter Change once stood. "^^' If he had been born and bred in the country, as Wordsworth was, he too would have loved its mountains, lakes, and wild flowers; but not in Wordsworth's way. For Wordsworth had a power of abstract thought, of imaginative vision, that saw behind all the separate facts of nature and the diverse operations of natural forces a unifying, universal Presence, "whose dwelling is the light of setting suns," and "in the heart of man," as well. That is a philosophical conception as well as a poetic one. Similarly there is a unifying, abstractly imaginative conception under- lying Wordsworth's Westminster Bridge sonnet on London : he felt the city to be a great organism, could imagine its "mighty heart." Such poetic abstractions, equally with scientific ones, were foreign to Lamb. Possibly he failed to appreciate the country not only because he had not known (1) Moxon, quoted in Lucas, Life, Vol. II., p. 352. THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 35 it well as a boy, but also because he felt it to be impersonal, fortuitous, somehow the result of vague, intangible force, not of sentient design and feeling. He was not interested in the city as a sociological fact: it was not for him the neces- sary result of general social pressure, which is abstract, intangible, impersonal. The city to him was the expression of separate, individual men's activity, the place where this man and this and this lived and talked and worked, the scene of the life of such people as he had early learned to know. Over it and all its doings was the glamor of his boy- hood's recollection. Again, this personal habit is the essence of his literary preferences. His criticism is not ^'scientific." He would have been the last man to write a history of literature, to dis- cuss origins, to trace tendencies, to deal with poetry as the ex- pression of the composite mental and spiritual life of an age. The scientific temper is impersonal: its results are valid precisely in the degree in which it purges itself of in- dividuaUty. But Lamb's temper, if not scientific, is some- thing at least as fruitful. He is finely aesthetic. He does not apply principles or dogmas; he consults his taste. He is a connoisseur. He is like a wine-taster who knows little of vine-growing or the chemistry of wine-making but recognizes the rare bouquet of the precious vintage when he tastes it. There is no denying that Lamb was of those whom Hazlitt^^^ rather contemptuously calls the Occult School of critics: ''They discern no beauties but what are concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar part of mankind. . . . This is not envy or affectation, but a natural proneness to singularity, a love of what is odd and out of the way." But we may (1) On Criticism. Hazlitt had Lamb in mind. 36 INTRODUCTION apply to Lamb what he himself said of Hazlitt: his "decisions (most profound and subtle where they are for the most part just) are more safely to be relied upon on subjects and authors he has a partiality for, than on such as he has conceived an accidental prejudice against." He differs from Hazlitt, however, in seldom obtruding his dislikes and hostilities upon our notice. The writers whom he loved best^^^ were naturally, there- fore, those of marked individuaUty, such as Sir Thomas Browne, Robert Burton, Izaak Walton, and Jeremy Taylor. He said that there were many whom he would have wished to see before Sir Isaac Newton and Locke, the author of the Essay on the Human Understanding, though he inad- vertently acknowledged that they bore the greatest names in English letters. " 'Yes, the greatest names,' he stammered out hastily, 'but they were not persons — not persons. . . . Not characters, you know. . . . Beyond their contents there is nothing personally interesting in the men.' "^^^ He loved style and manner in writing, almost for its own sake; Hazhtt tells us in another place that he waded through great tomes of school divinity, not for the substance of theology that they contained, but for the pleasure he got out of their intricacy of style. And this feeling for the garb of thought seems to be a considerable element in his adoration of the Elizabethan dramatists: it was not only that the joy of (1) Lamb's disregard of the physical well-being of his books was positively shocking. His Enfleld neighbor, Westwood, tells how they had been patched and botched by the cobbler Lamb got to repair them. He would throw presentation copies of his friends' books through the branches of an apple tree, or roll them down the stairs. He was even vandal enough, when he wanted to furnish some forgotten garret in his Temple lodgings, to cut out the plates from his own books to cover the walls with; and he and Mary nearly wept when they found that a particularly fine set of plates to Ariosto could not be cut out because parts of the text were printed on the other side! (2) Hazlitt, On Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen. The essay is a most interesting account of one of Lamb's evenings. THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 37 his first play was an imperishable thing; not only that in the drama he found that concrete human embodiment of thought already spoken of; not only that as a whole the earlier drama was conceived in grandeur and grandly executed; not only that the dramatists had each his own distinguishing character; but also that the very language in which the old plays were written, now consciously ornate and elaborate, now swift and simple beyond the reach of modern poetical phrase, now tortuous, ingenious, and compact to the point of undeniable obscurity, and always in idiom and vocabulary far enough remote from modern speech to pre- serve a tang of strangeness and wonder, seemed to bear a charmed life of its own, an existence, as it were, independent of its content. It may seem strange to speak of Lamb's nature, brimming over with ready sympathy and glowing with humor, as in any way rigid. His very style — the cast of his sentences, the variety of his diction — is mobility itself. Yet there is a lack of breadth and of solidity in him which, with his delicacy, produces an impression of fragility. Sustained effort is impossible for him — perhaps the India House absorbed all he had of that. He does everything by flashes. His one story, Rosamund Gray, is slender. His criticism is keen and penetrating, but never thorough or systematic. His work on the old dramatists was by excerpts and brief notes. His essay on The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century, pretty nearly his only bit of critical generalizing in Elia, soon turns away to consider particular actors. He seldom reasons anything through. He has often no plan or outline in his composition. "The Essays," he writes to his publisher, "want no Preface ; they are all Preface. A Preface is nothing but a talk with the reader; and they do nothing else." The 38 INTRODUCTION subjects are varied, but the manner is the same, or nearly so. The Dissertation Upon Roast Pig is exceptional in that it contains a story; but it soon breaks off into personal apprecia- tion of pig as pork- It has unmistakably the essential quality of the intimate essay as a type, in that it springs from personal experience, feeling, and taste. Everywhere Lamb is the same tender-hearted, humorous, fanciful, odd fellow talking to us in brief monologue. And it is not so much what he talks of as his way of conceiving it and setting it off, that claims our attention and affection. He gives us little new or positive information — except about himself. He writes not for our profit, but for our pleasure, because for his own pleasure. He explains little or nothing; he has no bones to pick with us over theories; he does not preach to us or lecture to us. I will not say that he does not make us wiser, for a man is sometimes the wiser for a laugh over an odd character or a tear over a pathetic reminiscence. We feel with him the humor or the sadness or the beauty of the things that stirred him. His feeling is sometimes so whimsical as to be unconvincing; sometimes so fine drawn as to strike ordinary, normal sensibilities as perverse; usually so fresh, uncopied, unstudied that it altogether captivates and possesses us. CHIEF DATES IN LAMB'S LIFE. 1775. Born February 10, in Crown Office Row Inner Temple. 1782. Entered Christ's Hospital. 1789. Left school. 1791. Entered the service of the South Sea Company. 1792. Entered the service of the East India Company. 1796. Mary Lamb killed her mother. 1796. Four sonnets published in Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects; further contributions to the second edition (1797). 1798. Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb. Rosamund Grar 1802. John Woodvil. 1806. Mr. H — produced at Drury Lane Theatre. 1807. Tales from Shakes fear. 1808. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets. The Adventures of Ulysses. Mrs. Leicester's School (dated 1809). 1809. Poetry for Children. 1810. Began to write for Leigh Hunt's Reflector. 1811. Prince Dorus. 1818. The Works of Charles Lamb (collected edition, 2 vols.). 1820. Began to write for The London Magazine. 1823. Elia published in collected form. ^ Charles and Mary adopted Emma Isola. 39 ^ 40 INTRODUCTION 1825. Retired from the East India House with a pension. 1830. Album Verses. 1831 . Satan in Search of a Wife. 1833. The Last Essays ofElia in collected form. 1834. Died, at Edmonton, December 27, aged 59 years, 10 months. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTF [ Reprints of single works by Lamb (chiefly, of course, the ITales from Shakespear and the two series of Elia essays) are jlegion; and collected editions of the works and letters are imany. Three good modern collected editions, each contain- ing some matter necessarily omitted from the other two, are easily accessible, viz: The Eversley Edition, edited with Notes and Introduction by the Reverend Canon Alfred Ainger, London, 1878-88. (Works, 4 vols.; Letters, 2 vols.; Life, 1 vol.). The Works of Charles Lamb, edited by WilUam Macdonald, London and New York, 1903. (Works, 10 vols.; Letters, 2 vols. Vol. 1 has a Preface on "Editions Past and Present" ; vol. 2 a short Memoir. Portraits, and spirited pen-and-ink illustrations by C. E. Brock.) The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, edited by E. V. Lucas, London and New York, 1903-5. (Works, 5 vols.; Letters, 2 vols. Many portraits, fac- similes, maps, pictures, etc. Very fully annotated.) For Lamb's life see the articles in the Encyclopedia Britan- nica, 9th edition, and the Dictionary of National Biog- raphy, both by Canon Ainger; also his volume on Lamb in "The English Men of Letters" series, of which latter the Life included in the Eversley Edition is an enlargement. But the most complete account is The Life of Charles Lamb, by E. V. Lucas (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1905), in two volumes. 41 42 INTRODUCTION Of his contemporaries who have left us their legacies of record and reminiscence the most important are William Hazlitt (in Table Talk and the Spirit of the Age), Leigh Hunt (in Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries and Autobiography), Henry Crabb Robinson (in his Diary), Thomas DeQuincey {Recollections of Charles Lamb, Masson's collected ed., vol. 3. and Charles Lamb, same ed., vol. 5.), Thomas Noon Talfourd (Works of Charles Lamb, 1838, and Final Memorials of Charles Lamb), Bryan W.Procter (Charles Lamb, a Memoir, by Barry Cornwall), and P. G. Patmore {My Friends and Acquaintances). In the Footprints of Charles Lamb, by Benjamin E. Martin, New York, 1890, contains a number of pictures of places associated with Lamb's memory, and an elaborate bibliog- raphy (not perfectly accurate) down to 1888, by E. D. North. Of the mass of critical essays on Lamb see A. Birrell {Obiter Dicta, 2nd Series), Walter Pater {Appreciations), A. C. Swinburne {Miscellanies), Paul E. More {Shelburne Essays), ELIA CHARLES LAMB THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 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 Dais ton, or Shackle w^ell, or some other thy 1 6 suburban retreat northerly, — didst thou never observe a melancholy-looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the left — where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishops- gate? I daresay thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave 10 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 — the quick 15 pulse of gain — and here some forms of business are still kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately porticoes; imposing staircases; offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled with a -few straggling clerks ; the still more 20 sacred interiors of court and committee-rooms, with vener- able 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 tar- 1 "I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." — OSSIAN. (L.) 46 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA nished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver ink- stands long since dry; — the oaken wainscots hung with pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of Queen Anne, and the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty; — huge charts, which subsequent discoveries have anti_ quated; — dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams, — and soundings of the Bay of Panama ! — The long passages hung with buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, whose sub- stance might defy any, short of the last conflagration: — 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 dis- sipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the breaking of that famous Bubble. Such is the South-Sea House. At least, such it was forty years ago, when I knew it, — a magnificent relic! What alterations may have been made in it since, I have had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take for granted, has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the face of the sleeping 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 cetation of dirt !) upon the old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, save by some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign; or, with less hallowed curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the mysteries of that tremendous hoax, whose extent the petty peculators of our day look back upon with the same 1 CoMus, 1. 398. THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 47 expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless am- bition of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modem conspiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's super- human plot. 5 Peace to the manes of the Bubble! Silence and destitu- tion 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 speculation — with the Bank, and the 'Change, and the India House above thee, in the hey-day of present prosperity, with their important faces, as it were, insulting thee, their poor neighbor out of business — to the idle and merely contem- plative, — to such as me, old house! there is a charm in thy quiet: — a cessation — a coolness from business — an 5 indolence almost cloistral — which is delightful ! 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 of 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 interlacings — their sums in triple column iations, set down with formal 5 superfluity of ciphers — ^with pious sentences at the begin- ning, without which our religious ancestors never ventured 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 spectacles. I can look upon these defunct dragons with complacency. Thy heavy odd-shaped ivory-handled penknives (our ancestors had everything on a larger scale 48 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 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. Generally (for they had lo not much to do) persons of a curious and speculative turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for a reason mentioned before. Humorists, 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 15 each other), but, for the most part, placed in this house in ripe or middle age, they necessarily 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 re- 20 tainers 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 Cambro- Briton. He had something of the choleric complexion of 25 his countrymen stamped on his visage, 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, Maccaronies. He was the last of that race of so beaux. Melancholy as a gib-cat^ over his counter all the 1 I. Henky IV., I. 2.83. THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 49 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 5 the possibility of his becoming one : his tristful visage clear- ing 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 10 attaining the meridian of its animation till evening brought on the hour of tea and visiting. The simultaneous 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 this dear old bachelor gladdened with his 15 presence. Then was his forte, his glorified hour! How would he chirp, and expand over a muffin ! How would he dilate into secret history! His countryman Pennant himself, in particular, could not be more eloquent than he in relation to old and new London — the site of old theatres, 20 churches, streets gone to decay — where Rosamond's pond 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 immortalised in his picture of Noon,— the worthy descend- 25 ants 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 obscurities of Hog Lane, and the vicinity of the Seven Dials! 30 Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken him for one, had yoirmet him'in one of the passages leading to 50 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA Westminster Hall. By stoop I mean that gentle bending of the body forwards, which, in great men, must be sup- posed 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 insignificance 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 might have lo posed him. What was it then? Was he rich? Alas, no! Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife looked outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at all times within. She had a neat meagre person, which it was evident she had not sinned in over-pampering; but in is 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 unfor- tunate house of Derwentwater. This was the secret of 20 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: 25 and it was worth them all together. You insulted none with it; but, while you wore it as a piece of defensive armor only, no insult likewise could reach you through it. Decus et solamen} Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, John so Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor in good 1 Virgil, Aeneid, X., 858. THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 51 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 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 10 them — (I know not who is the occupier of them now) — resounded fortnightly 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 violoncellos — double basses — and clarionets — who 15 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. 20 Politics were excluded. A newspaper was thought too re- fined and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in writing off dividend warrants. The striking of the annual balance in the company's books (which, perhaps, differed from the balance of last year in the sum of £25, Is. 6d.) 25 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 wielding of any the 30 most intricate accounts of the most flourishing company in 1 Fielding, Joseph Andrews, Bk. III., Ch. 5 (adapted), 2 Paradise Lost, III., 17. 52 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA these or those days) : — but to a genuine accountant the dif- ference of proceeds is as nothing. The fractional farthing is as dear to his heart as the thousands 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 5 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 executorships accordingly, which ex- cited his spleen and soothed his vanity in equal ratios. 10 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 pro- tection. With all this there was about him a sort of timidity — (his few enemies used to give it a worse name) — a some- 15 thing which, in reverence to the dead, we will place, if you 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 20 base or treacherous 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 in a straw,"^ when some- supposed honor is at stake. Tipp never mounted the box 25 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 3©) intimidation, he ever forsook friend or principle. 1 Hamlet, IV., iv., 55. THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 53 Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, in whom common qualities become uncommon? Can I forget thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man of letters, the author, of the South-Sea House? who never 5 enteredst thy office in a morning or quittedst 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 volumes, which I had the good fortune to rescue from a stall in Barbican, not three 10 days ago, and found thee 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 Ledgers, and in Chronicles, upon Chatham and Shelburne, and Rocking- 15 ham, and Howe, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war which ended in the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious colonies — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge, and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond, — and such small Dolitics. 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, favored a little of the sinister bend) — from the Plumers of Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out; and ?5 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 30 many successive parliaments, and has a fine old mansion near Ware. Walter flourished in George the Second's days, 1 Troilus and Cressida, III.,iii., 176. 54 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA and was the same who was summoned before the House of Commons about a business of franks, with the old Duchess of Marlborough. 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 discountenance the rumor. 5 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 10 whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when in tones w^orthy 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- 15 warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering winter: — only unfortunate in thy ending, which should have been, mild, conciliatory, swan-like. Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, 20 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 Woollett, who existed in trying the ques- tion, and bought litigations f—smd still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might 25 have deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib a pen — with what deliberation would he wet a wafer!— — But it is time to close— night's wheels are rattling fast over me — it is proper to have done with this solemn mockery. 1 As You Like It, II., vii. 2 Hamlet. III., ii., 401. OXFORD IN THE VACATION 55 Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this while — peradventure the very names ^ which I have sum- moned up before thee, are fantastic, insubstantial — like Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece } 5 Be satisfied that something answering to them has had a being. -Their importance is from the past. OXFORD 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 10 consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a WooUett methinks I hear you exclaim, reader. Who is Eliaf Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half- forgotten humors of some old clerks defunct, in an old 15 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 confess that it is my humor, my fancy — in the forepart of the day, when the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation — (and none better than such as at first sight seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies) — to while away some 25 good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigoes, 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 1 The Taming of the Shrew, Induction, II., 96. 56 . THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 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 set- tings 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 dissertation. It feels its pro- motion. ... So that you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of Elia is very little, if at all, compromised in the condescension. Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities incidental to the life of a public office, 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 fullness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing- away with altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons, — the 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 Baskett Prayer-book. There hung Peter in his uneasy posture — holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. — I honored them all, and could almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred: — only me thought I a little grudged at the coalition of the better Jude with Simon— 1 Pakadise Regained, II. OXFORD IN THE VACATION 57 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 5 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. Perad- venture the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little 10 better than one of the profane.^ Let me not be thought to 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, 15 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 — I 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 20 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 25 of the Universities. Their vacation, too, at this time of the year, falls in so pat with ours. Here I 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. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and dream that ^^ it rings for me. In moods of humility I can be a Sizar, or a 1 Paradise Lost, VI., 768. 2 I. Henry IV.. I., ii., 105. 58 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 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 unKke that respectable character. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed- makers in spectacles, drop a bow or curtsey, as I pass, s wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go about in black, which favors the notion. Only in Christ Church reverend quadrangle, I can be content to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor. The walks at these times are so much one's own, — the lo tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen 1 The halls deserted, and with open doors, inviting one to slip in unper- ceived, and pay a devoir to some Founder, or noble or royal Benefactress (that should have been ours) whose portrait seems to smile upon their over-looked beadsman, and to is 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 20 Chaucer! Not the meanest minister among the dishes but is hallowed to me through his imagination, and the Cook goes forth a Manciple. Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that, being nothing, art everything! When thou wert, thou wert 25 not antiquity — then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses^ are we, that cannot look forward with the so same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty 1 Januses of one face. — Sia Thomas Browne. (L.) OXFORD IN THE VACATION 59 future is as nothing, being everything! the past is every- thing, being nothing! What were thy dark ages? Surely the sun rose as brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in the morning. 6 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 10 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 labors to these Bodleians, were reposing here, as in 15 some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential 20 apples which grew amid the happy orchard. Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose of MSS. Those varice lectioneSy so tempting to the more erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my faith. I am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the three witnesses 25 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, rummaged out of some seldom-explored press, in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is grown almost into a book. He 30 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 have mustered for a tall Scapula. 60 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. No inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I appre- hend, is consumed in journeys between them and Clifford's Inn — ^where, like a dove on the asp's nest, he has long taken up his unconscious abode, amid an incongruous 5 assembly of 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 10 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 15 connected with the two Universities; 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 ardor with which he engages in these liberal 20 pursuits, I am afraid, has not met with all the encourage- ment 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 Alma Maters, without inquiring into the venerable 25 gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such curiosities to be impertinent — unreverend. They have their good glebe lands in 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. 30 D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I interrupted 1 Paradise Regained, IV., 425. OXFORD IN THE VACATION 61 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 sudden in his own walks in Clifford's Inn, or in the Temple. In addition to a provoking short- sightedness (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 M.'s in Bedford Square ; and finding nobody at home, was ushered into the hall, where asking for pen and ink, with great exactitude of 10 purpose he enters me his name in the book — which ordi- narily 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 returned him 15 into the same neighborhood again, and again the quiet image of the fireside circle at M.'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 20 before that day week") and disappointed 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 another Sosia, or as b 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 the body, is some- io times (not to speak it profanely) to be present with the Lord.^ At the very time when, personally encountering 1 II. Corinthians, v., 8. 62 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA thee, he passes on with no recognition — or, being stopped, starts like a thing surprised — 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 amelioration to thy country, or thy 5 species — peradventure meditating some individual kindness of courtesy, to be done to thee thyself, the returning con- sciousness of which made him start so guiltily at thy obtruded personal presence. [D. commenced life after a course of hard study in the lo "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, is 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 20 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 therewithal be content. Give me Agar's wish" — and the like — which, to the little auditory, 25 sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and simplicity, but to poor D. was a receipt in full for that quarter's demand at least. And D. has been under-working for himself ever since; — drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers, — 30 wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections of the classics, and in those unostentatious but solid services to learning OXFORD IN THE VACATION 63 which commonly fall to the lot of laborious scholars, who have not the heart to sell themselves to the best advantage. He has published poems, which do not sell, because their character is unobtrusive, 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-loving 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 con- versation.]* D. is delightful anywhere, 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 Scarborough, or Harrogate. The- Cam and the Isis are to him "better than all the waters of Damascus."^ On the Muses' hill he is happy, and good, as one of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains f' and when he goes about with you to show you the halls and colleges, you think you have with you the Interpreter of the House Beautiful.^ ♦These bracketed paragraphs were omitted from the collected edition. 1 II. Kings, v., 12. 2 The Pilgkim's Progress, 64 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY 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 1/82 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 school-fellows 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-treasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in the morning, while we were battening upon our quarter of a penny loaf — our crug — moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured 20 from. Our Monday's milk porritch, blue and tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were en- riched for him with a slice of "extraordinary bread and but- j ter," from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant — (we had three 25 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 cinna- ___^ — — — . -I 1 "Recollections of Christ's Hospital." (L.) I CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 65 mon. In lieu of our half-pickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays (strong as cam equina), with de- testable marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth — our scanty mutton crags on Friday — and rather more savory s but grudging, portions of the same flesh, rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish which excited our ap- petites, and disappointed our stomachs, in almost equal pro- portion) — he had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked 10 in the paternal kitchen (a great thing), and brought him daily by his maid or aunt! I remember the good old relative (in whom love forbade pride) squatting down upon some odd stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of higher regale than those cates which the ravens minis- is tered 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, 20 breaking down the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness 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 acquaint- ances of theirs, which they could reckon upon being kind to 25 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 holiday 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 80 among six hundred playmates. O the cruelty of separating a poor lad from his early homestead! The yearnings which I used to have towards 66 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA it in those unfledged years ! How, in my dreams, would mj^ native ,town (far in the west j come back, with its Church, and trees, and faces ! How I would wake weeping, and in the anguish of my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in Wiltshire ! • 5 To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions left by the recollection of those friendless holidays. 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 10 out, for the livelong day, upon our own hands, whether we had friends to go to, or none. I remember those bathing- 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 : 15 — 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 penniless (our scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying — 20 while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed about us, and we had nothing 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 25 night-fall, to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluc- tant, that the hours of our uneasy liberty had expired ! It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling about the streets objectless — shivering at cold windows of print- shops, to extract a little amusement; or haply, as a last so resort, in the hope of a little novelty, to pay a fifty-times repeated visit (where our individual faces should be as well CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 07 known to the warden as those of his own charges) to the Lions in the Tower — to whose levee, by courtesy imme- morial, we had a prescriptive title to admission. L.'s governor (so we called the patron who presented 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 recollec- tion. 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 discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it pleased my callow overseer, when there has been any talking heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six last beds in the dormitory, where the youngest children of us slept, an- swerable for an offence they 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 crudest penalties, forbade 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 suffered at Nevis, I think, or St. Kits, . some few years since? My friend Tobin was the benevolent 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. 68 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA with exacting contributions, to the one half of our bread, to pamper a young ass, which, incredible as it may seem, with the connivance 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 dormitories. 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 — waxing fat, and kicking,^ in the fulness of bread, one unlucky minute would needs proclaim his good fo^rtune 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 Smithfield; is 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 for- gotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used to 2( 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 apart- ment, which L. (grown connoisseur since, we presume) 29^ praises so highly for the grand paintings "by Verrio, 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 carried 1 Deuteronomy, xxxii., 15. 2 Joshua, vi., 5. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 69 away before our faces by harpies; and ourselves 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 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 (children are universally fat-haters), and in strong, coarse, boiled meats, unsalted, are detestable. A gag-eater in our time was equivalent to a ghoul, and held in equal detestation. suffered under 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 frag- ments, you may credit me) — and, in an especial manner, these disreputable morsels, which he would convey away, and secretly stow in the settle that stood at his bedside. None saw when he ate them. It was rumored that he privately 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. He was ex- communicated ; put out of the pale of the school. He was 1 Dryden's Aeneid, I. 2 Antony and Cleopatra, I., IV., 67. 3 Joshua, vi., 18. 70 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA too powerful a boy to be beaten, but he underwent every mode of that negative punishment, which is more grievous than many stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was observed by two of his school-fellows, who were determined to get at the secret, and had traced him 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 staircase. 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 is steward, for this happened a little after my time, with that patient sagacity which tempered all his conduct, deter- mined to investigate the matter, before he proceeded to sen- tence. The result was, that the supposed mendicants, the receivers or purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be the parents of , an honest couple come to decay, — whom this seasonable supply had, in all probability, saved from mendicancy; and that this young stork, at the expense of his own good name, had all this while been only feeding the old birds ! The governors on this occasion, much to their 25 honor, 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 conciliate hostile CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 71 prejudices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's basket. I think I heard he did not do quite so well by himself, as he had done by the old folks. I was a hypochrondriac lad ; and a sight of a boy in fetters, upon the day of my first putting on the blue clothes, was not exactly fitted to assuage 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 away. This was the punishment for the first offence. As a novice I was soon after taken to see .A the dungeons. These were little, square, Bedlani 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 askance, from a prison -orifice at 15 top, barely enough to read by. Here the 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 speak 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 25 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 offender, and whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversible, was 1 One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordingly, 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 statue. ( L . ) 72 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA brought forth, as at some solemn auto da fe, 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 lamplighters for- merly delighted in, with a cap of the same. The effect of t this divestiture was such as the ingenious devisers of it could have anticipated. With his pale and frighted fea- tures, it was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante had seized upon him. In this disguisement he was brought into the hall {L.'s favorite state-room) where awaited him k the whole number of his school-fellows, whose joint lessons and sports he was thenceforth to share no more; the awful 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 is in these extremities visible. These were governors; two of whom, by choice, or charter, were always accustomed to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia; not to mitigate (so at least we understood it), but to enforce the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert, I 21 remember, were colleagues on one occasion, when the beadle turning rather pale, a glass of brandy was ordered to prepare 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 25 generally too faint with attending to the previous disgusting 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 scourging, he was made over, in his San Benito, to his friends, if he. had 30 any (but commonly such poor runagates were friendless), 1 CoUins's Ode on the Manners: Drayton, Polyolbion, Song v., 13. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 73 or to his parish officer, 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 community. 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 a5 that of the inhabitants on the two sides of the Pyrenees. 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 getting 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; and in truth he wielded the cane with no great good-will — holding it "like a dancer."^ It looked in his hands rather like an emblem, than an instrument 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 dif- 1 Antony and Cleopatra, III., xi., 36. 74 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA ference to us — ^he had his private room to retire to, the short time he stayed, to be out of the sound of our noise. Our mirth and uproar went on. We had classics of our own, without being beholden to "insolent Greece or haughty Rome/'^ that passed current among us — Peter Wilkins — 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 operations; making little sun-dials of paper; or weaving those ingenious parentheses, called caUcradles; 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 — ^mix- ing the useful with the agreeable — as would have made the souls of Rousseau and John Locke chuckle to have seen us. Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest divines who affect 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 composition. 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 education; 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 affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering in a province not strictly his own. I have not been without my suspicions, 1 Ben Jonson, Lines to the Memory of William Shakespeare's Works. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 75 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 deference, send to borrow a rod of the Under Master, 5 and then, with sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys, "how neat and fresh the twigs looked." While his pale students were battering their brains over Xenophon and Plato, wdth a silence as deep as that enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of his discipline, and the prospect did but the more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous for us; his storms came near, but never touched us ; contrary to Gideon's miracle,^ while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry.^ His 15 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 50 play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemptions, and life itself, a "playing holiday."^ Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to understand a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of the Ululantes, and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His English style was cramped to barbarism. His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to those periodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes. ^ He 1 Judges, vi., 36-40. 2 Cowley. (L.) 3 I. Henry IV., I. ii., 227. 4 In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor. While the former was digging his brains for crude anthems, worth a 76 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA would laugh, ay, 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 broaching could hardly have had vis enough to move a Roman muscle. He had two wigs, both 5 pedantic, but of different omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old discolored, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to the school, when he made his morning appearance in his passy, or passionate wig. No 10 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 common than to see him make a headlong entry 15 into the school-room, from his inner recess, or library, and, with turbulent eyes, singling out a lad, roar out, "Od's my life, sirrah" (his favorite adjuration), "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 20 minutes (during which all but the culprit had totally for- gotten the context) drive headlong out again, piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell — ''and I will, too." In his gentler moods, when the rahidus furor was assuaged, he had resort 25 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 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 Vertmnnus 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 representation. (L.) CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 77 those times, when parhamentary oratory was most at a height and flourishing in these realms, was not calculated to impress the patient with a veneration for the diffuser graces of rhetoric. 5 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 himself, with great simplicity averred, that he JO did not know that the thing had been forewarned. This exquisite irrecognition of any law antecedent to the oral or ft . declaratory, struck so irresistibly upon the fancy of all who ■ heard it (the pedagogue himself not excepted) that remis- / sion was unavoidable. 15 L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an instructor. Coleridge, in his literary life, has pronounced 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 20 him better than with the pious ejaculation of C when he 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 bliss by little cherub boys, all head and wings, with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." 25 Under him were many good and sound scholars bred. 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 edify- ing spectacle did this brace of friends present to those who 30 remembered 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 almost immediate sub- 78 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA appearance of the other. Generally arm in arm, these kmdly 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 discovering that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. 5 Oh, it is pleasant, as.it is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at forty, which at thirteen 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 10 ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts. Th — was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech, with raven locks. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentle- man in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent 15 critic; and is author (besides the Country 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 20 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 25 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.^ so 1 I. Corinthians, iii., 6-8. 2 Prior's Carmen Seculare, 1700, adapted. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 79 Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day- spring of thy fancies, with hope Uke a fiery column before thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard! — How have I 5 seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration (while he weighed the dispro- portion between the speech and the garh of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for 10 even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philo- sophic 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-boy! — Many were the "wit- combats" (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller) 15 between him and C. V. Le G , "which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, 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 20 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 forgotten, Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, 25 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 the 30 Nireus formosus of the school), in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town- 1 Fuller's Worthies, adapted. 80 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigress- like round, suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exchanged the half-formed terrible "bl ," for a gentler greeting — "bless 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 temper, 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; perishing one lo by climate, and one on the plains of Salamanca: — Le G , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured; F , dogged, faithful, anticipative of insult, warm-hearted, with' some- thing of the old Roman height about him. Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of Hert- 15 ford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Missionaries — and both my good friends still — close the catalogue of Grecians in my time. THE TWO RACES OF MEN. The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who 21 borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifi- cations of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites,"^ flock hither, and do naturally fall 21 in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to desig- nate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are bom 1 I. Acts, ii., 9. THE TWO RACES OF MEN 81 degraded. "He shall serve his brethren."^ There is some- thing in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of the other. 5 Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages — ^Alcibiades — Falstaff — Sir Richard Steele — our late incomparable Brinsley — what a family likeness in all four ! What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what rosy gills I what a beautiful reliance on Providence 10 doth he manifest, — taking no more thought than lilies P What contempt for money, — accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross ! What a liberal confound- ing of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum! or rather, what a noble simplification of language (beyond 15 Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective ! — ^What near approaches doth he make to the primitive community, — to the extent of one- half of the principle at least! — He is the true taxer "who calleth all the world up to be 20 taxed ;"^ and the distance is as vast between him and one of us J as subsisted betwixt the Augustan Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusa- lem! — His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air! So far removed from your sour parochial or state- gatherers, — those ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of welcome in their faces ! He cometh to you with a smile and trouble th you with no receipt; confining himself to no set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth the lene tormentum of a pleasant look to your purse, — ^which to that gentle warmth expands 1 Genesis, ix., 25. 2 Matthew, vi., 28. 3 Luke, ii., 1. 82 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun and wind contended! He is the true Pro- pontic which never ebbeth!^ The sea which taketh hand- somely at each man's hand. In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honor,^ struggles with destiny; he is in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained to lend — that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the reversion promised.^ Combine not preposterously in thire own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives !"* — but, when thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smil- ingly, as it were half-way. Come, a handsome sacrifice! See how light he makes of it! Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy. Reflections like the foregoing, were forced upon my mind by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., w^ho is departed this life on Wednesday evening; dying, as he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a de- scendant from mighty ancestors of that name, who hereto- fore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions ard sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended. Early in life he found himself invested with ample revenues ; which with that noble disinterestedness which I have noticed as inherent in men of the great race, he took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing: for there is something revolting in the idea of a ^^ king holding a private purse; and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus furnished by the very act of dis- fumishment; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings) 1 Othello, III., iii., 453 (misquoted). 2 Esther, vi., 6. * 3 Proverbs, xix., 17. 4 Luke, xvi., 19fl. THE TWO RACES OF MEN 83 To slacken yirtue, and abate her edge, Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise/ he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise, "borrowing and to borrow. "^ In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this island, it has been calculated that he laid a tythe part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject this estimate as greatly exaggerated; but having had the honor of accom- panying my friend, divers times, in his perambulations about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort of respectful acquaintance with us. He was one day so obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It seems, these were his tributaries; feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen, 5 his good friends (as he was pleased to express himself), to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather took a Dride in numbering them; and, with Comus, seemed pleased to be "stocked with so fair a herd."^ With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that "money kept longer than three days stinks." So he made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he drank away (for he was an excellent toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing and hurling it violently from him — as boys do burrs, or as if it had been infectious, — into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, — inscrutable cavities of the earth: — or he would bury it (where he would never seek it again) by a river's side under some bank, which (he 1 Paradise Regained, II., 455. 2 Revelation, vi., 2, adapted. 3 Comus, 1. 151. 84 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA would facetiously observe) paid no interest — but out away from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring into the wilderness/ while it was sweet. He never missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. When new supplies became necessary, the first person that had the felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable way with him. He had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with grey (eana fides). He anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waving for a while my theory as to the great race^ I would put it to the most untheorizing reader, who may at times have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such a one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mumping vis- nomy, tells you, that he expects nothing better; and there- fore, whose preconceived notions and expectations you do in reality so much less shock in the refusal. When I think of this man; his fiery glow of heart; his 2(| swell of feeling; how magnificent, how ideal he was; how great at the midnight hour; and when I compare with him the ct>mpanions with whom I have associated since, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am fallen into the society of lenders, and little men. To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon; I mean your borrowers of books — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and 3(| 1 Genesis, xid. THE TWO RACES OF MEN 85 creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless in his depredations! ' That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me in my little 5 back study in Bloomsbury, reader!) ^with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventurce, choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity 10 also, but of a lesser calibre, — Bellarmine,and Holy Thomas) showed but as dwarfs, itself an Ascapart! — that Comber- batch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that "the title to property in a book" (my Bona- 15 venture, for instance) "is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the same." Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe? The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves 20 from the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser ^was whilom the commodious resting-place of Browne on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and was indeed the first (of the modems) to discover 25 its beauties — but so have I knoTAn a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than himself. — Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, 30 where the fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. — There loitered the Com- plete Angler; quiet as in life, by some stream side. — In 86 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA ^ yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower- volume, with "eyes closed," mourns his ravished mate. ' One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea- like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I 5 have a small under-collection of this nature (my friend's gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has forgotten at what odd places, and deposited with as little memory as mine. I take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews, lo There they stand in conjunction; natives, and naturalised. The latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am. — I jcharge no warehouse-room for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses. 15 To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be j-o im- portunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and ad- 20 jurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle? — knowing at the time, and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio : — what but the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love 25 of getting the better of thy friend? — ^Then, worst cut of all! to transport it with thee to the Gallican land-^ Unworthy land to harbor such a sweetness, A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's 30 wonder! — ■ — hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and NEW YEAR'S EVE 87 fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keep- est all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales? — Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better part Englishwoman!^ — 5 that she could fix upon no other treatise to bear away, in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook — of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a tittle! Was there not Zimmerman on 10 Solitude? Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collec- tion, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as S. T. C. — he will return them (generally anticipating the 15 time appointed) with usury; enriched with annotations, tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his — (in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the originals) — in no very clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel; in old 20 Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now alas! wandering in Pagan lands. 1 counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. C. NEW YEAR'S EVE. Every man hath two birthdays : two days, at least, in every 25 year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is that which in an especial manner he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnising our proper birthday hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, 88 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam. Of all sound of all bells— (bells, the music nighest border- ing upon heaven) — most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth; all I have done or suffered, performed or neglected — in that regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal color; nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed I saw the skirts of the departing Year.^ It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of us seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave-taking. I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, last night; though some 20 of my companions affected rather to manifest an exhilara- tion at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender regrets for the decease of its predecessor. But I am lione of those who Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. ^ I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties ; new books, new faces, new years, — from some mental twist which makes it difficult in me to face the prospective. I have almost ceased to hope; and am sanguine only in the prospects of 1 Coleridge's Depakting Year. 2 Pope's Odyssey, XV., 89. / NEW YEAR'S EVE 89 other (former) years. I plunge into foregone visions and conclusions. I encounter pell-mell with past disappoint- ments. I am armor-proof against old discouragements. I forgive, or overcome in fancy, old adversaries. I play over 5 again for love, as the gamesters phrase it, games, for which I once paid so dear. I would scarce now have any of those untoward accidents and events of my life reversed. I would no more alter them than the incidents of some well-con- trived novel. Me thinks, it is better that I should have pined 10 away seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer eyes, of Alice W — n, than that so passionate a love-adventure should be lost. It was better that our family should have missed that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have at this 15 moment two thousand pounds in banco, and be without the idea of that specious old rogue. In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon those early days. Do I advance a paradox, when I say that, skipping over the intervention of forty years, a 20 man may have leave to love himself, without the imputation of self-love? If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is intro- spective — and mine is painfully so — can have a less respect for his present identity, than I have for the man Elia. I 25 know him to be light, and vain, and humorsome ; a notori- ous . . .; addicted to . . .; averse from counsel, neither taking it, nor offering it; — . . besides ; a stam- mering buffoon; what you will; lay it on, and spare not; I subscribe to it all, and much more, than thou canst be 30 willing to lay at his door but for the child Elia — that "other me," there, in the background — I must take leave to cherish the remembrance of that young master — with as 90 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA little reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of five- and-forty, as if it had been a child of some other house, and not of my parents. I can cry over its patient small-pox at five, and rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor fevered head upon the sick pillow at Christ's, and wake with it in surprise at the gentle posture of maternal tenderness hang- ing over it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I know how it shrank from any the least color of falsehood. — God help thee, Elia, how thou art changed! Thou art sophis- ticated.^ — I know how honest, how courageous (for a weak- ling) it was — how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful I From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was indeed myself, — and not some dissembling guardian, pre- senting a false identity, to give the rule to my unpractised steps, and regulate the tone of my moral being! That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause ; simply, that being without wife or family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of 20 my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favorite? If these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader — (a busy man, perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to 25 ridicule, under the phantom cloud of Elia. The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of any old institution; and the ringing out of the Old Year was kept by them with circumstances of peculiar ceremony. — In so those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it 1 Midsummer Night's Dream, III., i., 121. NEW YEAR'S EVE 9l seemed to raise hilarity in all around me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone, but 5 the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life ; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of Decem- 10 ber. But now, shall I confess a truth? — I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like miser's farthings. In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count 15 upon their periods and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away "like a weaver's shuttle."^ Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that 20 smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age 25 to which I am arrived ; I, and my friends : to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. — ^Any alteration, on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household 30 gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up with- 1 Job, vii., G. 92 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA out blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers me. Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful 5 glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself — do these things go out with life? Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him? 10 And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must I part with the intense delight of having you (huge armfuls) in my embraces? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar process of reading? 15 Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling indi- cations which point me to them here, — the recognisable face — the "sweet assurance of a look?"^ — In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — to give . it its mildest name — does more especially haunt and beset 20 me. In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is almost problematic. At those times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand and burgeon. Then are we as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that 25 nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that master feeling; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity; moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances,— that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that in- 30 1 Roydon's Elegy on Sir Philip Sidney. NEW YEARNS EVE 93 nutritious one denounced in the Canticles: — I am none of her minions — I hold with the Persian. Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death into my mind. All partial evils, like humors, run 6 into that capital plague-sore. — I have heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge : and speak of the grave as of some soft arms, in which they may slumber as on a pillow. Some have wooed death but out upon thee, I say, thou foul, 10 ugly phantom! I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar John) give thee to six-score thousand devils, as in no instance to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as a universal viper; to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of! In no way can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin, 15 melancholy Privation, or more frightful and confounding Positive! Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, are altogethier frigid and insulting, like thyself. For what satis- faction hath a man, that he shall "lie down with kings and 20 emperors in death," who in his lifetime never greatly coveted the society of such bedfellows? — or, forsooth, that "so shall the fairest face appear?"^ — why, to comfort me, must Alice W — n be a goblin? More than all, I conceive dis- gust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, 25 inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be.'* Not so shortly, friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty 30 of thee. Know thy betters! Thy New Years' Days are past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup 1 William AND Margaret, by David Mailet (Lucas). 94 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA of wine — and while that turn -coat bell, that just now mourn- fully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune to its peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton. 5 THE NEW YEAR. Hark! the cock crows, and yon bright star Tells us the day himself s not far; And see where, breaking from the night, He gilds the western hills with light. Vv^ith him old Janus doth appear, , lo Peeping into the future year, With such a look as seems to say. The prospect is not good that way. Thus do we rise ill sights to see, And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy; is ' When the prophetic fear of things A more tormenting mischief brings, More full of soul-tormenting gall. Than direct mischiefs can befall. But stay! but stay! methinks my sight, 20 : Better informed by clearer sight, Discerns sereneness in that brow. That all contracted seem'd but now. His revers'd face may show distaste. And frown upon the ills are past; 25 But that which this way looks is clear, And smiles upon the New-born Year. He looks too from a place so high, The Year lies open to his eye; And all the moments open are 30 To the exact discoverer. Yet more and more he smiles upon The happy revolution. Why should we then suspect or fear The influences of a year, 35 NEW YEAR'S EVE 95 So smiles upon us the first morn, And speaks us good so soon as born? Plague on't! the last was ill enough, This cannot but make better proof; " Or, at the worst, as we brush 'd through The last, why so we may this too: And then the next in reason should Be superexcellently good: For the worst ills (we daily see) 10 Have no more perpetuity, Than the best fortunes that do fall; Whic'h also bring us wherewithal Longer their being to support, Than those do of the other sort: 16 And who has one good year in three, And yet repines at destiny. Appears ungrateful in the case. And merits not the good he has. Then let us welcorne the New Guest 20 With lusty brimmers of the best; Mirth always should Good Fortune meet, And render e'en Disaster sweet: And though the Princess turn her back, Let us but line ourselves with sack, 26 We better shall by far hold out, Till the next Year she face about. How say you, reader — do not these verses smack of the rough magnanimity of the old English vein? Do they not fortify like a cordial; enlarging the heart, and productive 30 of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction? Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed or affected? — Passed like a cloud — absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry — clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries — o5 And now another cup of the generous ! and a merry New Year, and many of them, to you all, my masters ! 96 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. "A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth/ and the rigor of the game.' This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle (now with God), who, next to her devotions, loved a good game at whist. She was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half and half players, who have no objection to +ake a hand, § if you want one to make up a rubber; who affirm that they have no pleasure in winning; that they like to win one game and lose another;^ that they can while away an hour very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent whether they play or no; and will desire an adversary, who has lo slipped a wrong card, to take it up and play another. These insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be said, that they do not play at cards, but only play at playing with them. Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested them, 15 as I do, from her heart and soul; and would not, save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself at the same table with them. She loved a thorough-paced partner, a determined enemy. She took, and gave no concessions. She hated favors. She never made a revoke, nor ever 20 passed it over in her adversary without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight; cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her cards) "like a dancer."^ She sat bolt upright; and neither showed you her cards, nor desired to see yours. Air people have their blind side — 25 their superstitions; and I have heard her declare, under the rose, that Hearts was her favorite suit. 1 [This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You must remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your foot and the marble.] (L.) 2 [As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day, and lose him the next.] (L.) 3 See p. 73. MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 97 I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle many of the best years of it — saw her take out her snuff-box when it was her turn to play; or snuif a candle in the middle of a game; or ring for a servant, till it was fairly over. She never intro- 5 duced, or connived at, miscellaneous conversation during its process. As she emphatically observed, cards were cards; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last- century countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentle- man of a literary turn, who had been with difficulty per- 10 suaded to take a hand; and who, in his excess of candor, declared, that he thought there was no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies, in recreations of that kind ! She could not bear to have her noble occupa- tion, to which she wound up her faculties, considered in that 15 light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she came into the world to do, — and she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards — over a book. Pope was her favorite author; his Rape of the Lock her favorite work. She once did me the favor to play over 20 with me (with the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in that poem; and to explain to me how far it agreed with, and in what points it would be found to differ from, tradrille. Her illustrations were apposite and poignant; and I had the pleasure of sending the substance of them 25 to Mr. Bowles; but I suppose they came too late to be inserted among his ingenious notes upon that author. Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love; but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she said, was showy and specious, and likely to allure young 30 persons. The uncertainty and quick shifting of partners — a thing which the constancy of whist abhors ; — the dazzling supremacy and regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she 98 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his crown and garter give him no proper power above his brother-nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing alone; — above all, the over- powering attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole, — to the 5 triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel or approaching, in the contingencies of whist; — all chese, she would say, made quadrille a game of captivation to the young and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider game : that was her word. It was a long meal; not, like quadrille, lo a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might co-extend in duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the chance-started, capricious, and ever fluctuating alliances of the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, 15 reminded her of' the petty ephemeral embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel; perpetually changing postures and connections; bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow; kissing and scratching in a breath; — but the wars of whist were comparable to the 20 long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great French and English nations. A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her favorite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. No flushes — that most 25 irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up : — that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and color, without reference to the playing of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of the cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism; as 30 pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the MRS. BATTLE'S OPmiONS ON WHIST 99 colors of things. — Suits were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uniforraity of array to distinguish them: but what should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets that never were to be marshaled — never to take the field? — She even wished that whist were more simple than it is ; and in my mind, would have stripped it of some appendages, which in the state of human frailty, may be venially, and even commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one suit always trumps? — Why two colors, when the mark of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished them without it? — "But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably refreshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason — he must have his senses delightfully appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, where the music and the paintings draw in many to worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsensualising would have kept out. — You, your- self, have a pretty collection of paintings — but confess to me, whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham, among those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the ante-room, you ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable to that you have it in your power to experience most evenings over a well-arranged assortment of the court cards? — the pretty antic habits, like heralds in a procession — the gay triumph-assuring scarlets — the con- trasting deadly-killing sables — the 'hoary majesty of spades'^ — Pam in all his glory! — "All these might be dispensed with; and, with their naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might go 1 Pope's Rape of the Lock, iii., 56. 100 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA on very well, pictureless. But the beauty of cards would be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere gambling. — Imagine a dull deal-b >rd, or drum head, to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to nature's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts and turneys in! — Exchange those delicately-turned ivory markers — (work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, — or as profanely slighting their true application as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out those little shrines for the goddess)^ — exchange them for little bits of leather (our ancestors' money) or chalk and a slate!" — The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of my logic; and to her approbation of my arguments on her favorite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated) brought with him from Florence : — this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds, came to me at her death. The former bequest (which I do not least value) I have kept with religious care; though she herself, to confess a truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say, — disputing with her uncle, who was very partial to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to pronounce "go" — or "thafs a go." She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five dollar stake), because she would not take advantage of the tumed-up knave, which would have given it her, but which n lie she must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declarr 1 Acts, xix., 24. MRS. BATTLERS OPINIONS ON WHIST 101 ing 'Hwo for his heels.'' There is something extremely genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman bom. Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the terms — such as pique — repique — the capot — they savored (she thought) of affectation. But games for two, or even three, she never greatly cared for. She loved the quadrate, or square. She would argue thus : — Cards are warfare : the ends are gain, with 'glory. But cards are war in disguise of a sport: when single adversaries encounter, the ends pro- posed are too palpable. By themselves, it is too close a fight; with spectators, it is not much bettered. No looker- on can be interested, except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money; he cares not for your luck sympathetically, or for your play. — Three are still worse; a mere naked war of every man against every man, as in cribbage, without league or alliance ; or a rotation of petty and contradictory interests, a succession of heartless leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of them, as in tradrille. — But in square games {she meant whist) all that is possible to be attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are the incentives of profit with honor, common to every species — though the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in those other games, where the spectator is only feebly a participator. But the parties in whist are spectators and principals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold — or even an interested — bystander witnesses it, but because your 'partner sympathises 102 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA in the contingency. You win for two. You triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two again are mortified; which divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidiousness) your glory. Two losing to two are better reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels. War becomes a civil game. — By such reasonings as these the old lady was accustomed to defend her favorite pastime. No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at any game, where chance entered into the composition, for nothing. Chance, she would argue — and here again, ad- mire the subtlety of her conclusion ! — chance is nothing, but where something else depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot be glory. What rational cause of exultation could it give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times to- gether by himself? or before spectators, where no stake was depending; — Make a lottery of a hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate number — and what possible principle of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain that number as many times successively, without a prize? — Therefore she disliked the mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was not played for money. She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. Games of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system of over-reaching. Played for glory, they were a mere setting of one man's wit — his memory, or combination-faculty rather — against another's; like a mock-engagement at a review, bloodless and profit- less. — She could not conceive a game wanting the sprightly infusion of chance, — the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two people playing at chess in a comer of a room, whilst MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST lOo whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes of Castles and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would argue (and 1 think in this case justly), were entirely mis- 5 placed and senseless. Those hard head-contests can in no instance ally with the fancy. They reject form and colour. A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper arena for such combatants. To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the 10 bad passions, she would retort that man is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to g^_„jaer, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet no less is implied in the fact, that having access and oppor- 10 tunity of putting the question to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it. The young woman understands this as clearly as if it were put into words; but no reasonable young woman would think of making this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little right have a married couple to tell 15 me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than speeches, that I am not the happy man, — the lady's choice. It is enough that I know I am not; I do not want this perpetual reminding. The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made 20 sufficiently mortifying; but these admit of a palliative. The knowledge which is brought out to insult me, may accidentally improve me; and in the rich man's houses and pictures, — his parks and gardens, I have a temporary usufruct at least. But the display of married happiness has 25 none of these palliatives; it is throughout pure, unrecom- pensed, unqualified insult. Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the least invidious sort. It is the cunning of most possessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much out 30 of sight as possible, that their less favored neighbors, seeing little of the benefit, may the less be disposed to question the right. But these married monopolists 272 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our faces. Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire com- placency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new-married couple, — in that of the lady particularly : 5 it tells you, that her lot is disposed of in this world ; that you can have no hopes of her. It is true, I have none; nor Welshes either, perhaps : but this is one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to be taken for granted, not ex- pressed. 10 The excessive airs which those people give themselves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried people, would be more offensive if they were less irrational. We will allow them to understand the mysteries belonging to their own craft better than we who have not had the happiness to be 15 made free of the company : but their arrogance is not con- tent within these limits. If a single person presume to offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the most in- different subject, he is immediately silenced as an incom- petent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaint- 20 ance, who, the best of the jest was, had not changed her condition above a fortnight before, in a question on which I had the misfortune to differ from her, respecting the prop- erest mode of breeding oysters for the London market, had the assurance to ask, with a sneer, how such an old 25 Bachelor as I could pretend to know anything about such matters. But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs which these creatures give themselves when they come, as they generally do, to have children. When I consider how 30 little of a rarity children are, — that every street and blind alley swarms w^ith them, — that the poorest people com- A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 273 monly have them in most abundance, — that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bar- gains, — how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in pov- 5 erty, disgrace, the gallows, etc. — I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. If they were young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so common — 10 I do not advert to the insolent merit which they assume with their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to that. But why we, who are not their natural-born sub- jects, should be expected to bring our spices, myrrh, and incense,^ — our tribute and homage of admiration, — I do 15 not see. "Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the young children:" so says the excellent office in our Prayer-book appointed for the churching of women. "Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:" so 20 say I; but then don't let him discharge his quiver upon us that are weaponless; — let them be arrows, but not to gall and stick us. I have generally observed that these arrows are double-headed : they have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the other. As for instance, where you come 25 into a house which is full of children, if you happen to take no notice of them (you are thinking of something else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses), you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of children. On the other hand, if you find them more than usually en- 30 gaging, — if you are taken with their pretty manners, and set about in earnest to romp and play with them, some pre- 1 Matthew, ii., 11. 274 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA text or other is sure to be found for sending them out of the room: they are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not Hke children. With one or other of these forks the arrow is sure to hit you. I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toying with their brats, if it gives them pain; but I think it un- reasonable to be called upon to love them, where I see no occasion, — to love a whole family, perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately,^ — to love all the pretty dears, because children are so engaging. I know there is a proverb, "Love me, love my dog;" that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser thing, — any inanimate substance, as a keepsake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where we last parted when my friend went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, and any- thing that reminds me of him; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But children have a real character and essential being of themselves : they are amiable or unamiable fer se; I must love or hate them as I see cause for either in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being, and to be loved or hated accordingly : they stand with me upon their 25 1 own stock, as much as men and women do. O I but you will say, sure it is an attractive age, — there is something in the tender years of infancy that of itself charms us. That is the very reason why I am more nice about them. I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, 30 not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them; but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT . 275 is that it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from another in glory '} but a violet should look and smell the daintiest. — I was always rather squeamish in my women and children. 5 But this is not the worst: one must be admitted into their familiarity, at least, before they can complain of inattention. It implies visits, and some kind of inter- course. But if the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage, — if you did not 10 come in on the wife's side, — if you did not sneak into the house in her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on, — look about you — ^your tenure is precarious — before a twelvemonth shall roll over your head, you shall find your 15 old friend gradually grow cool and altered towards you, and at last seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have scarce a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can rely, whose friendship did not commence after the period of his marriage. With some limitations 20 they can endure that: but that the good man should have dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship in which they were not consulted, though it happened before they knew him, — before they that are now man and wife ever met, — this is intolerable to them. Every long friendship, 25 every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will 30 let it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck 1 I. Corinthians, xv., 41, adapted. 276 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these new minting s. Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and worm you out of their husband's confidence. Laughing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer kind of fellow that said good things, hut an oddity, is one of the ways; — they have a particular kind of stare for the purpose; — till at last the husband, who used to defer to your judgment, and would pass over some excrescences of understanding and manner for the sake of a general vein of observation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in you, begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a huniorist, — a fellow well enough to have consorted with in his bache- lor days, but not quite so proper to be introduced to ladies. This may be called the staring way; and is that which has 15 oftenest been put in practice against me. Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony; that is, where they find you an object of especial regard with their husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from the lasting attachment founded on esteem which he has 20 conceived towards you ; by never-qualified exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, till the good man, who under- stands well enough that it is all done in compliment to him, grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is due to so much candor, and by relaxing a little on his part, and 25 taking down a peg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to that kindly level of moderate esteem, — that "decent affection and complacent kindness"^ towards you where she herself can join in sympathy with him without much stretch and violence to her sincerity. 30 Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so 1 Home, Douglas, I., i. A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT 277 desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first made their husband fond of you. If an esteem for some- thing excellent in your moral character was that which ; riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she will cry, *'I thought, my dear, you described your friend, Mr. , as a great wit." If, on the other hand, it was for some supposed charm in your conversation that he first 10 grew to like you, and was content for this to overlook some trifling irregularities in your moral deportment, upon the first notice of any of these she as readily exclaims, "This, my dear, is your good Mr. ." One good lady whom I took the liberty of expostulating with for not showing me L5 quite so much respect as I thought due to her husband's old friend, had the candor to confess to me that she had often heard Mr. — — speak of me before marriage, and that she had conceived a great desire to be acquainted with me, but that the sight of me had very much disappointed her expec- jo tations; for from her husband's representations of me, she had formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer- like looking man (I use her very words) ; the very reverse of which proved to be the truth. This was candid ; and I had the civility not to ask her in return, how she came to pitch 15 upon a standard of personal accomplishments for her husband's friends which differed so much from his own; for my friend's dimensions as near as possibly approximate to mine; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he JO no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial character in his air or countenance. These are some of the mortifications which I have en- 278 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA countered in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain endeavor: I shall therefore just glance at the very common impropriety of vs^hich married ladies are guilty, — of treating us as if v^e were their husbands, and vice versd, I mean, when they 5 use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me the other* night two or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. did not come home till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of ic the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It la endeavors to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters back for me, and withstood her husband's importunities to go to supper, she would have acted according to the strict rules 2c of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the point of a modest behavior and decorum: therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great 35 good-will, to her husband at the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to my un wedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of . But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaint- 30^ ance by Roman denominations. Let them amend and change their manners, or I promise to record the full- ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 279 length English of their names to the terror of all such desperate offenders in future. ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. Not many nights ago I had come home from seeing this extraordinary performer in Cockletop; and when I retired 5 to my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest myself of it, by conjuring up the most opposite associations. I resolved to be serious. I raised up the gravest topics of life; private misery, public calamity. All would not do. 10 There the antic sate Mocking our state — ^ his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume — all the strange things which he had raked together — his serpentine rodjswagging about in his pocket — Cleopatra's tear, and the 15 rest of his relics — O'Keefe's wild farce, and his wilder com- mentary — 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 I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I fall 20 into slumbers, than the same image, only more perplexing, assailed me in the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, but five hundred, were dancing before me, like the faces which, whether you will or no, come when you have been taking opium — all the strange combinations, which this strangest 25 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 I awoke! A season or two since there was exhibited a 1 Richard II., III., ii., 162. 280 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA Hogarth gallery. I 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 (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. I should not be surprised to see him some day put out the head of a river-horse; or come forth a pewitt, or lapwing, some feathered metamorphosis. I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry — 20 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 the people. I have seen some faint ap- proaches to this sort of excellence in other players. But in the grand grotesque 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 gliosis, like him? or jight with his own shadow^ — "sessa"— as 1 King Lear, III., iv,, 58. MODERN GALLANTRY 281 he does in that strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of Preston — ^where his alterations from the Cobbler to the Magnifico, and from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some 5 Arabian Night were being acted before him. Who like him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a preternatural interest over the commonest daily-life objects? A table, or a joint stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equiva- lent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with constellatory 10 importance. You could not speak of it with more defer- ence, 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 en- nobles what it touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand 15 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 primeval man with the 20 sun and stars about him. MODERN GALLANTRY. In comparing modem with ancient manners, we are pleased to compliment ourselves upon the point of gallantry; a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are supposed to pay to females, as females. 25 I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct, when I can forget, that in the nineteenth century of the era from which we date our civility, we are but just beginning 1 Jeremiah, i., 13. 2 EZBKIEL, XI., 43. 282 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA to leave off the very frequent practice of whipping females in public, in common with the coarsest male offenders. I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my eyes to the fact, that in England women are still occasion- ally — hanged. 5 I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer subject to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen. I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fish-wife across the kennel; or assists the apple-woman to pick up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just 10 dissipated. I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humbler life, who would be thought in their way notable adepts in this refinement, shall act upon it in places where they are not known, or think themselves not observed — ^when I shall see 15 the traveller for some rich tradesman part with his admired box-coat, to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of the poor woman, who is passing to her parish on the roof of the same stage-coach with him, drenched in the rain — when I shall no longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a 20 London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the exertion, with men about her, seated at their ease, and jeering at her distress; till one, that seems to have more manners or conscience than the rest, significantly declares "she should be welcome to his seat, if she were a little younger and hand- 25 somer." Place this dapper warehouseman, or that rider, in a circle of their own female acquaintance, and you «hall confess you have not seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury. Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such principle influencing our conduct, when more than one-half 30 of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the world shall cease to be performed by women. MODERN GALLANTRY 283 Until that day comes, I shall never believe this boasted point to be anything more than a conventional fiction; a pageant got up between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at a certain time of life, in which both find their account o equally. I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely features as to handsome, to coarse complexions as to clear — to the 10 woman, as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune, or a title. I shall believe it to be something more than a name, when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company can advert to the topic of female old age without exciting, 15 and intending to excite, a sneer: — ^when the phrases "anti- quated virginity," and such a one has "overstood her market," pronounced in good company, shall raise imme- diate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them spoken. 20 Joseph Paice, of Bread Street Hill, merchant, and one of the Directors of the South-Sea Company — the same to whom Edwards, the Shakspeare commentator, has ad- dressed a fine sonnet — ^was the only pattern of consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter 25 at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his precepts and example, whatever there is of the man of business (and that is not much) in my composition. It was not his fault that I did not profit more. Though bred a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was the 30 finest gentleman of his time. He had not one system of attention to females in the drawing-room, and another in the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that he made no dis- 284 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA tinction. But he never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in the 'casualties of a disadvantageous situation. I have seen him stand bare-headed — smile if you please — to a poor servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the v^ay to some street — in such a posture of enforced civility, as 5 neither to embarrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word, after women: but he reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came before him, womanhood. I have seen him — nay, smile not — tenderly lo escorting a market-woman, whom he had encountered in a shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness as if she had been a countess. To the reverend form of Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it were to an 15 ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony than we could afford to show our grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier of Age; the Sir Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that had long faded thence, still bloomed for him in those 20 withered and yellow cheeks. He was never married, but in his youth he paid his addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley — old Win- stanley's daughter of Clapton — ^who, dying in the early days of their courtship, confirmed him in the resolution of 25 perpetual bachelorship. It was during their short court- ship, he told me, that he had been one day treating his mis- tress with a profusion of civil speeches — the common gal- lantries — to which kind of thing she had hitherto mani- fested no repugnance — but in this instance with no effect. 30 He could not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in return. She rather seemed to resent his compliments. He r MODERN GALLANTRY 285 could not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always shown herself above that littleness. When he ventured on the following day, finding her a little better humored, to expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterday, she con- 5 fessed, with her usual frankness, that she had no sort of dislike to his attentions; that she could even endure some high-flown compliments ; that a young woman placed in her situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things said to her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, 10 short of insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most young women : but that — a little before he had com- menced his compliments — she had overheard him by accident, in rather rough language, rating a young woman, who had not brought home his cravats quite to the op- 15 pointed time, and she thought to herself, "As I am Miss Susan Winstanley, and a young lady — a reputed beauty, and known to be a fortune, — I can have' my choice of the finest speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman who is courting me — but if I had been poor Mary Such-a- "io one (naming the milliner), — and had failed of bringing home the cravats to the appointed hour — though perhaps I had sat up half the night to forward them — what sort of com- pliments should I have received then? — And my woman^'s pride came to my assistance; and I thought, that if it were 25 only to do me honor, a female, like myself, might have received handsomer usage; and I was determined not to accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that sex, the belonging to which was after all my strongest claim and title to them." 30 I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a just way of thinking, in this rebuke, which she gave her lover; and I have sometimes imagined, that the uncommon strain 286 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA of courtesy, which through life regulated the actions and behavior of my friend towards all of womankind indis- criminately, owed its happy origin to this seasonable lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress. I wish the whole female world would entertain the same s notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. Then we should see something of the spirit of consistent gallantry; and no longer witness the anomaly of the same man — a pattern of true politeness to a wife — of cold contempt, or rudeness, to a sister — the idolater of his female mistress — lo the disparager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or unfortunate — still female — maiden cousin. Just so much respect as a woman derogates from her own sex, in what- ever condition placed — her handmaid, or dependent — she deserves to have diminished from herself on that score; is and probably will' feel the diminution, when youth, and beauty, and advaritages^not inseparable from sex, shall lose of their attraction, p^hat a woman should demand of a man in courtship, or after it, is first — respect for her as she is a woman; — and next to that — to be respected by him 20 above all other women. But let her stand upon her female character as upon a foundation; and let the attentions, incident to individual preference, be so many pretty addita- ments and ornaments — as many and as fanciful, as you please — to that main structureTJ Let her first lesson be — 25 with sweet Susan Winstanley — to reverence her sex. NOTES THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE Page 45 line 1. Bank: The Bank of England, occupying the block bounded by Threadneedle St., Prince's St., Lothbiu-y, and Bartholomew Lane. It is an irregular and isolated building, covering about four acres, one story in height, without exterior windows. The Bank was long known popularly as "The Old Lady in Threadneedle Street"; but Hare ( Walks in London) says that the name is now almost forgotten. 3. Annuitant: Lamb was not yet an "annuitant" when he wrote tMs, being still in the East India House. The Flower Pot: An inn in Bishops- gate Street, the starting-point and booking-oflBce for coaches rimning to the northern suburbs of London. Dalston and Shacklewell were formerly suburbs of London, but are now outlying districts of the city itself. The Lambs took a lodging in Dalston in 1802. 7. Bishopsgate: A street in London, divided into "Bishopsgate within" and "Bishopsgate without" at the point where stood the old Bishopsgate, the principal entrance through the northern wall of old London. The gate was destroyed in the reign of George II. The comer (Threadneedle St. and Bishopsgate) where the South-Sea House stood is but two blocks from the site of the East India House in Leadenhall St. 12 and footnote. Baldutha: i. e., the city of the Clyde. The quota- tion is from Carthon, one of the prose poems published in 1760-63 by James Macpherson under the title Ossian, falsely purporting to be trans- lations from the ancient Gaelic bard Oisin. The true reading is, "I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate." 46:3. Queen Anne: Reigned 1702-1714. Two first monarchs: George I. (1714-1727) and George II. (1727-1760). 10. Dollars, etc.: Dollar was the English name of various continental coins, among them the Spanish dollar, "also called pillar dollar (from its figure of the Pillar of Hercules) and piece of eight (as containing 8 reals)." {Cent. Diet.) 11. Mammon: The deity of avarice. See Faerie Queene, II. vii, 3-20^ and Paradise Lost, Bk. I, 1.678flf. 14. Bubble: The South Sea Bubble, a tremendous financial scheme organized by the South Sea Company to borrow money and issue stock on the strength of a hoped-for monopoly of trade with South America. "The refusal of Spain to enter into commercial relations with England made the privileges of the company worthless; but by means of a series of 288 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA speculating operations and the infatuation of the people, its shares were inflated from £100 to £1050." {Cent. Diet.) Its collapse (in 1720) spread great distress throughout England. Its London office was the South-Sea House. 126. Super foetation: A figurative use of the word, which was apparently a favorite of Lamb's, meaning 'an excrescent growth.' 47:3. Fa«a; (Fawkes), Guy (1570-1606): One of the conspirators in the "Gunpowder Plot." He was arrested as he was entering the cellar under the Parliament House (which had been filled with barrels of powder) on the night of Nov. 4-5, 1605, and after trial executed. November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, is celebrated with fireworks and crackers, and Fawkes is often hanged and burned in efflgy. Lamb printed an essay on Guy Vaux {London Mag. 1823). 5. Manes: The shades of the dead, considered by the Romans to be tutelary divinities. 9. 'Change: The Royal Exchange, opposite the Bank. The present Exchange was built in 1842-44, taking the place of the first building, erected 1564-70. 9. India House: The office of the English East India Company (In- corporated 1600 under the title "The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading with the East Indies"), at the corner of Leadenhall and Lime Streets; destroyed shortly after the dissolution of the Company about 1860. 19. Living accounts: Mr. Lucas points out that "here Elia begins his 'matter-of-lie' career." In the Accountant's office of the India House, he was living among figures all day. 23. Rubric interlacings: The flourish after a signature (in old docu- ments often imitating grill-work) is called a rubric, from being done in red ink. 32. Penknives: The qualifying word in this compound had a real significance when Lamb wrote. 48:2. Herculaneum: Destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius, A. D. 79, by streams of mud and lava. Systematic explorations were carried on there tmder French authority, 1806-1815. Pounce-boxes: The predeces- sors of blotting-paper were receptacles with perforated tops for shaking pounce (a sort of powder) or black sand on wet writing to dry the ink. 13. Humorists: i. e., eccentric persons. 24. Cambro- Briton: A Welshman. 25. Choleric complexion: i. e., irritable nature. 30. Maccaronies: The use of the word in "Yankee Doodle" is on its sense of 'dandy,' as here. 31. Gib-cat: A tom-cat. 49:6. Anderton's: A real coffee-house in London. NOTES 289 17. Pennant, Thomas: A Welsh antiquary, author of an account of London (1790). 20. Rosamond's Pond: "A sheet of water formerly lying in the n(n1>h- west corner of St. James's Park in London ... It was filled up in 1770." {Cent. Diet.) 21. Mulberry Gardens: "A place of refreshment in London, muchfre- Quented by persons of quality in the 17th century." (Cent. Diet.) 49:21. Cheap: Cheapside, the central east and west thoroughfare of the City of London; one of the busiest streets in the world; formerly a large open common where markets (whence the name) and assembUes were held. There were formerly two conduits, the Great at the east end and the Little at the north, water being brought thither from Paddington. 23. Hogarth, William (1697-1764): A celebrated English painter, best known by his satirical pictures, such as "The Rake's Progress," "Mar- riage h la Mode," etc. 25. Heroic confessors: Huguenot refugees. Some of them settled in the parish of St. Giles's, London, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. in 1685. A church, still standing in that part of Charing Cross Road which was formerly known as Hog Lane, was used by French Protestant refugees till 1822. Seven Dials is a locality east of Charing Cross Road long known as a center of poverty and crime. 50:1. Westminster Hall: Part of the ancient Palace of Westminster, now a vestibule to the Houses of Parliament. It has been the scene of many important events in English history. 20. Derwentwater, James Radclifle, Earl of (1689-1716): An English Catholic nobleman, beheaded for his part in the rebellion of 1715. 29. Decus et solamen: "His aid in arms, his ornament in peace." Dry den's translation. 61:5. Orphean lyre: In Greek legend, Orpheus, Apollo's son, had power to charm all animate and inanimate things with his lyre. 11. "Sweet breasts": i. e., musical voices; an Elizabethan phrase. 16. Midas: In Greek legend, a King of Phrygia to whom was granted the wish that everything he touched might be turned to gold. Apollo gave him a pair of ass's ears for saying that Pan played better than Apollo ; Lamb of com*se takes him as the type of bad taste in music. 52:28. Water-party: i. e., a picnic. 53:3. Henry Man (1747-1799): Author of essays and letters, and from 1776 deputy secretary of the South Sea Company. 9. Barbican: A locality in Cripplegate, London, so-called from a former watch-tower. Milton Hved here (1646-47) and his name has been given to a street near by (formerly Grub Street, of unsavory note as the abode of small authors). 13. Public Ledgers and Chronicles: "Man contributed a series of letters on education to Woodfall's Morning Chronicle. He also wrote for the London Gazette." (Lucas.) 290 , THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 14. Chatham, etc.: Chatham (William Pitt) was premier, and Shelburne was secretary of state under him, 1766-68. Rockingham preceded Chat- ham as premier, Chatham and Richmond opposed England's policy toward the colonies. 15. Howe, Burgoyne, Clinton, Keppel: EngUsh generals and admirals in the war with the colonies. 17. Wilkes, Sawbridge, Bull: Lord Mayors of London. Dunning de- fended Wilkes, who had been expelled from Parliament, in his trial before Pratt, the Lord Chancellor. 54:3. Marlborough, Cave, etc.: Cave (1691-1754) was a noted pub- lisher, the founder of the Gentleman's Magazine, and a friend of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who for a time had a place in the postoflQce as clerk of the franks. He "often stopped franks which were given by members of parliament to their friends because he thought such extension of a peculiar right illegal . . . Having stopped, among others, a frank given to the old Duchess of Marlborough by Mr. Walter Plummer, he was cited before the House as for a breach of privilege . . . and was at last dismissed." (Johnson's Life of Cave.) A frank is the privilege of sending letters free of postage. The Duchess, a favorite of Queen Anne's, was the wife of the first Duke of Marlborough, the great EngUsh general. 10. Pastoral M — .• Lamb wrote out for a fellow-clerk in the India House a Key to the blanks and concealed names in Elia. His entry for this blank was, "Maynard, hang'd himself." 19. Swan-like: The swan was fabled togingmost sweetly at the approach of death. 24. Trying the question: Probably he was constantly involved in law- suits and bought property with clouded titles; but perhaps Lamb means that he found his chief pleasure in studying and discussing law-cases and actually spent good money for such trash as reports of legal proceedings. OXFORD IN THE VACATION 66: tHle. Oxford: Mr. Lucas believes that Lamb wrote this paper in Cambridge, "where he spent a few weeks in the summer of 1820, and trans- ferred the scene to Oxford by way of mystification." "10. Quis sculpsit: i. e., the engraver's name (Uterally,"who engraved it"). 11. Vivares, Woollett: English engravers. WooUett is said to have "carried landscape engraving to a perfection unknown before his time." {Cent. Diet.) 17. College: i. e., company. Notched: i. e., closely-cut, shaven, an epithet applied by the Cavaliers to the Puritans, or Roimd-heads. 18. A scrivener was a public writer, notary, copyist. 20. Agnize: A pet word of Lamb's, meaning acknowledge, confess. 56:6. Cart-rucks: Ruts, parallel . lines. 12. Commodities: Conveniences, agreeable things. NOTES 291 16. Joseph's vest: i. e., a piece Of (literary) patchwork. See Genesis, XXX vii, 3, marginal reading. 18. Red-letter days: i. e., holidays (see Cent. Did.). 'In 1820 the accountants' oflBce of the India House observed only five holidays in the year. (Lucas.) 23. Christ's: i. e., Christ's Hospital, the Blue Coat School. 24. Baskett Prayer-book: John Baskett (died 1742), King's printer, published his first prayer-book 1741; other editions 1746-1757. The royal patent bestowed the privilege of printing and selling bibles. One of Baskett's bibles, the "Vinegar Bible" of 1716-17 (so-called from a mis- print for Vineyard in the heading of Luke, xx), was so carelessly printed that it was at once named "a Baskett-full of printers' errors." 26. Bartlemy: St. Bartholomew, who according to the tradition was flayed aUve. 26. Marsyas: In Greek mythology a satyr who challenged ApoUo to a musical contest. Apollo defeated him and then flayed him alive for his^ presumptioipi. 27. Spagnoletti: Jusepe Ribera, called Spagnoletto, a Spanish painter, noted for his harsh and realistic manner. 30. Better Jude: Judas the brother of Simon, also called Thaddeus. See Matthew, x, 3; Luke, vi, 16. St. Simon and St. Jude's Day is the 28th of October. 67:2. Oaudy-day: i. e., a holiday, especially an English university festival. 8. Epiphany: The Christian festival, also called Twelfth-day, cele- brated on the 6th of January. It closes the Christmas observances, and especially commemorates the visit of the Magi, or Wise Men, to Christ. 17. Selden, John (1584-1654): A learned English jurist, antiquary, and orientalist. 18. Usher, James (1580-1656): A British prelate, theologian, and scholar; proposed a scheme of bibhcal chronology — that commonly printed in the standard versions of the English Bible — which was imiversally accepted imtil recently. 20. Bodley, Sir Thomas (1545-1613): An English diplomatist and scholar, founder of the great Bodleian Library of Oxford University. 23. Institution: i. e., instruction, a rare and obsolete use. 28. Ad eundem: i. e., to the same (degree), a phrase used when a mem- ber of one xmiversity is admitted without examination to the corresponding degree or standing in another university. 30. Sizar: A sizar was an undergraduate at Cambridge who received an allowance of food, or size, as it is called (see the interesting quotation in Cent. Diet, imder size, def. 2). 58:1. Servitor: Servitors were formerly students at Oxford of much the same grade as the Cambridge sizars. Their name comes from their duty 292 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA of waiting on the table of the fellows and gentlemen commoners. Gentle- man Commoner: The gentlemen commoners are the highest sort of com- moners at Oxford — students who do not receive allowances from the fimds of the college, but pay their own way and eat at the common table. The Oxford commoner corresponds to the Cambridge pensioner. 2. Proceed: In English university parlance, to take the degree of. 4. Vergers: Pew-openers. 7. Christ Church: One of the largest colleges of Oxford, with a great quadrangle ("Tom Quad") and tower. Properly speaking. Lamb should not have referred to it as Christ's, as he does in 1. 11. Christ's College is one of the colleges of Cambridge. See note to p. 55, title. 9. Seraphic Doctor: It was not uncommon in the Middle Ages to nick- name the great doctors of theology: thus Aquinas was called "Doctor Angelicus," Bonaventura, "Doctor Seraphicus." Lamb's use of the title does not imply that he must be thinking of some particular celebrity. "And Doctors: teachers grave, and with great names. Seraphic, Subtile, or Irrefragable, By their admiring scholars dignified." — Southey, Joan of Arc, Book III. 11. Magdalen: A college of Oxford, famous for its beautiful tower. (Usually pronounced Maudlin.) 13. Pay a devoir: i. e., pay one's respects. 15. Beadsman: In England inmates of almshouses are called beads- men and beadswomen. 21. Chaucer, Cook, Manciple: An excellent instance of Lamb's neatness in allusion, though there is no evidence that Chaucer was ever at either university. Manciple means a purveyor, especially of an English college or inn of court. Chaucer describes a cook and a manciple in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. 24. Antiquity: In the rhetoric of this passage, as tvell as in the allusion to half-Januses, Lamb seems to owe a debt to Sir Thomas Browne. There is a superb paragraph of DeQuincey's ( Works, Masson's ed., vol. I, p. 48) on Solitude that reads like a magnified reverberation of this of Lamb's. 30. Half-Januses: Janus was a primitive deity of the Romans, regarded as the doorkeeper of Heaven and the patron of beginnings and endings; hence the first month of the year was named for him. His temple in Rome was closed only in times of universal peace. He was the protector of doors and gateways and the god of the sun's rising and setting; and hence was represented with two faces, one to the east and one to the west. 59:9. Oxenford: An older form of Oxford. See Chaucer, Prol. 285. Arride: To please (obsolete and rare) . 19. Sciential apples: The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, in the Garden of Eden. 22. VaricB lectiones: Variant readings. NOTES 293 24. Three witnesses: See I. John, v. 7, Authorized Version. This verse is omitted from the Revised Version, having been shown by Porson to be spurious. 26. Porson, Richard (1759-1808): A famous EngUsh classical scholar, professor of Greek at Cambridge. G. D.: "George Dyer, poet," in Lamb's Key. He was a scholar and antiquarian. His chief works are History of the University and College of Cambridge and Privileges of the Urv^versity of Cambridge. 28. Oriel: A college of Oxford. 32. Tall Scapula: A tall (t. e., untrimmed) copy of Scapula's Greek Lexicon. 60:3. Clifford's Inn: One of the Inns of Chancery, in Chancery Lane, London. Originally a sort of law school preparatory for the Inns of Court (see note on The Temple, p. 163, 1. 2), the Inns of Chancery now serve chiefly as quarters for attorneys, solicitors, and other persons connected with the legal profession. Clifford's Inn was subsidiary to the Inner Temple. 6. Apparitors: Court servants, process-servers, etc. Promoters: In- formers. 17. C : Cambridge University. 22. Caputs: An abbreviation of the phrase caput senatus (literally, head of the senate), a council or ruUng body in the University of Cambridge. 27. Glehe lands: Lands belonging to parish churches or ecclesiastical benefices. In manu: i. e., in actual occupancy. 61:4. Temple: See note on p. 163,1.2. 7. Our friend M.: Basil Montague (1770-1851), a lawyer and miscel- laneous writer. 17. Queen Lar: The Lares were tutelary household divinities of the Romans. 24. Another Sosia: In Plautus's comedy Amphitryon there are two Sosias, a true and a false. 62:3. Mount Tabor: A wooded moimtain in Palestine, according to tradition the scene of the Transfiguration. Parnassus: A mountain ridge in Greece, celebrated as the Mount of Apollo and the Muses; hence a symbol of poetry. Plato: The famous Greek ideal philosopher. 4. Harrington, James (1611-1677): An English political writer. His chief work was a treatise on civil government. The Commonwealth of Oceana. These names Lamb uses as symbols of an exalted idealism. 11. "House of pure Emanuel": Emmanuel College, Cambridge. 19. Even-song: Evening service. 25. Agar's wish: By mistake for Agur, a Hebrew prophet whose wish was "Give me neither poverty nor riches." Proverbs, xxx. 8. 294 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 29. Under-working: The Cent. Did. gives the noun underwork, "subor- dinate work, petty affairs," from Addison* 63:13. Strong lines in fashion: This is probably an aUusion to Byron, whose romances and Manfred had been published and whose Don Juan was coming out when this was written. 19. Bath, Buxton, Scarborough, Harrogate (Harrowgate) : English watering places. 21. Cam: A river which gives its name to the city of Cambridge, situate on its banks; also called the Granta. Isis: A name sometimes given to the Thames in its upper course, especially near Oxford. CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO 64: title. Christ's Hospital: The Blue Coat School, in Newgate Street. — "A school for 1200 boys and 100 girls, founded by Edward VI. ... It occupies the site of an ancient monastery of the Grey Friars (see note, p. 79, 1.12). . . . The general government of the school is in the hands of a large 'Court of Governors,' but the internal and real management is con- ducted by the President, Treasurer, and 'Committee of Almoners.' The original costume of the boys is still retained, consisting of long blue gowns, yellow stockings, and knee-breeches. No head-covering is worn even in winter. The pupils — admitted between the ages of 8 and 10 — must be the children of parents whose income is insuflQcient for their proper education and maintenance. They are first sent to the preparatory school at Hert- ford, whence they are transferred according to their progress to the city establishment. Their education — partly of a commercial nature — is com- pleted at the age of 16. A few of the more talented pupils are, however, prepared for a university career and form the two highest classes of the school, known as Grecians and Deputy-Grecians. There are also 40 King's Boys, forming the paathematical school founded by Charles II. in 1672, The school possessed many ancient privileges, some of which it still retains. On New Year's Day the King's Boys used to appear at Court; and on Easter Tuesday the entire school is presented to the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House, when each boy receives the gift of a coin fresh from the mint. A line in the swimming bath marks the junction of three parishes. . . . Among the pictures are 'Founding of the Hospital by Edward VI.' ascribed to Holbein; 'Presentation of the King's Boys at the Court of James II.,' a very large work by Verrio." (Baedeker's London.) "The London history of the school is now ended. The boys have gone to Sussex, where, near Horsham, the new buildings have been erected, and the old Newgate Street haven is being demolished as I write (February, 1903) to make room for ofiBces, warehouses, and an extension of St. Bar- :tholomew's Hospital." (Lucas.) 1. In Mr. Lamb's "Works": This essay is transparent enough in its pretense of not being Lamb's work. 16. Sub-treasurer: Randal Norris, for many years sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple; an old friend of Lamb's father. Mary Lamb was a brides- NOTES 295 maid at his wedding. Lamb's essay A Deathbed, published in the first edition of the Last Essays of Elia, but afterwards withdrawn, described his death. 19. Crug: Mr. Lucas says that crug is still current slang. 26. Banyan: "Banian days, originally two days in the week . . . on which sailors in the British navy had no flesh meat served up to them." {Cent. Diet.) Banian means a Hindu trader, belonging to a caste of strict vegetarian practice. 27. Double-refined: Sugar of good quality. 65:2. Caro equina: Horseflesh. 4. Crags: Necks. See scrag in Cent. Diet. 9. Griskin: Certain small bones of pork — a previncial word. 14. Regale: Evidently used in the sense of delight, savor, relish. Cates: Delicacies; an archaic word, now only in poetic or consciously Uterary use. 15. The Tishbite: Elijah. See I. Kings, xvii. 6. 22. I was a poor friendless boy: Here Lamb speaks, it is sometimes said, "in the person of Coleridge." Coleridge was a poor, friendless, homesick boy, who had come up to London from a town "far in the west" — Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire; but Lamb doubtless knew other homesick, friend- less boys than Coleridge. 66:13. Excursions . . . relish: "Our delightful excursions hi the summer holidays to the New River, near Newington, where, like others, we would live the long day in the water, never caring for dressing ourselves when we had once stripped; 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 ancient privilege we had free access to all the curiosities." (Lamb, Recollections of Christ's Hospital.) The New River is an artiflcial stream that brings water for the supply of the City of London. See Chambers' Book of Days. 67:2. Tower: The Tower of London, once a palace, later famous as a state prison, and now a historical museum. It is perhaps the most in- teresting historical monument in England. "Blue-coat boys still have this right of free entrance to the Tower; but the Uons are no more. They were transferred to the Zoological Gardens in 1831." (Lucas.) 4. L.'s governor: Samuel Salt (see note p. 168,1.5), in whose rooms in the Temple the Lamb family lived. 28. Nevis, St. Kitts: Islands in the British "West Indies. 68:5. Leads: The roof, from the use of sheets or plates of lead for roofing purposes. 7. Cry roast meat: A proverbial phrase meaning to publish one's good fortune. Cf. Fielding's Tom Jones, Bk. IV. Ch. v, and see Cent. Diet, imder roast. 8. Caligula's minion: The horse that the Roman Emperor Caligula made a Roman consul. Minion here means favorite. See p. 121, 1. 6. 296 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 15. Client was dismissed, etc.: The ass was driven to Smithfield, long famous for its cattle-market. 18. L.'s admired Perry: In the Recollections of Christ's Hospital Lamb had written of Perry in an enthusiastic strain. Perry was appointed steward of the school in 1761 and died in harness 1785 (Lucas). Lamb speaks of the deep effect his death had on the boys. 19. Facile: Compliant, easy-going, now a rather rare use, echoing exactly a transferred sense of the Latin facilis. 26. "By Verrio," etc.: Lamb had mentioned the "stately dining-hall hung round with pictures by Verrio, Lely, and others, one of them sur- passing in size and grandeur almost any other in the Eangdom." Verrio was an Italian painter, employed in the decorations of Windsor Palace and Hampton Court. Sir Peter Lely was famous for his portraits of the beauties of the court of Charles II. 69:2. The Trojan, etc.: When Aeneas came to Carthage he saw pictures of the Trojan war in the Temple of Juno which Dido, the Carthaginian queen, was building. Lamb has Dryden's line in mind, but misquotes; it really is, "And with an empty picture fed his mind." 70:7. Chancery Lane: Leads off Fleet Street, on the other side from the Temple. Here were Clifford's Inn, and other abodes of those connected with the courts. Lamb and his sister lived in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, in 1800 and again in 1809. 15. Hathaway, Matthias: Steward of Christ's Hospital 1790-1813. (Lucas.) 23. Young stork: The fidelity and amiability of storks are traditional. 71:11. Bedlam: The hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem (whence "Bedlam") in London, afterwards a lunatic asylum; as a common noun, any madhouse. 72:1. Auto da fe: Literally, act of faith (Portuguese); the execution of judgment upon persons condemned by the Inquisition. 3. "Watchet weeds'': i. e., his blue coat. Watchet was a favorite word of Lamb's. 8. Disfigurements in Dante: In the Inferno Dante tells how sowers of discord, heretics, and the like were punished by mutilation and disease. 18. Ultima Supplicia: Last, or extreme, punishment. 30. San Benito: The yellow garment worn by the victims of the Inquisition at their execution. 31. Runagates: Deserters (a corruption of renegade). 73:12. James Boyer: "Bom in 1736, was admitted to the school in 1744, and passed to Balliol [Oxford]. He resigned his Upper Grammar Mastership in 1799." (Lucas.) He was still living when Lamb wrote Recollections of Christ's Hospital (1813). See p. 77, 1. 16, where he is spoken of with respect. 13. Matthew Field: "The Rev. Matthew Feilde, also vicar of Ugley and curate of Berden." (Lucas.) NOTES 297 17. Accidence: A book containing the rudiments of grammar; strictly that part of grammar that deals with the inflections of words. 74:5. Peter Wilkins, The Life and Adventures of: A story by Robert Pollock, published 1751, relating the adventures of a sailor shipwrecked near the South Pole. He found a winged race of Glums and Gawress, and married one of the latter. The two other books mentioned are said to be trashy romances. 10. Parentheses: Lamb seems to have in mind the literal meaning of the Greek word, "a putting in beside." 12. "French and English": A little boys' slate game, less complicated even than tit-tat-to. See Cassell's Book of Indoor Amusements. 15. BoMsseaM, Jean Jacques: A Swiss-French social philosopher (171 2- 1778). His ideas helped to prepare the way for the French Revolution. Lamb alludes to Rousseau's Emile, ou de V Education (1762), a work that caused its author's exile from France "and laid the foundation of modern pedagogy." John Locke, (1632-1704): A celebrated English philosopher, author of the Essay on the Human Understanding (1690), Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), and other works. 26. Pha»drus: Wrote fables in verse, formerly used as a stock text-book for classes in elementary Latin. 75:3. Helots: Serfs among the ancient Spartans. 7. Xenophon: A Greek historian, whose Anabasis is still a standard text-book for beginners in Greek. Plato's Dialogues are used as text-books for more advanced students. 9. The Samite: "Pythagoras of Samos, who forbade his pupils to speak imtil they had listened through five years of his lectures." (Lucas.) 10. Goshen: That part of Egypt where Jacob and his sons settled when they fled from the famine in Canaan. It was not visited by the plagues that smote Pharaoh and his land (see Genesis, Iv-lvii; Exodus, viii). Hence, Lamb uses Goshen to mean a sort of earthly paradise, an unreal world, apart from the concerns and business of real Ufe. See pp. 175, 230. 20. Elysian, Tartarus: In classical mythology the under world was divided into two regions: Elysium, or the Elysian Fields, the abode of the blessed dead; and Tartarus, the place of punishment of the wicked. 25. Ululantes: Howling sufferers. 28. Scrannel: Harsh, squeaking, grating. See Milton, Lycidas, 1. 124. 76: footnote. Garrick, David (1717-1779): Celebrated English actor and dramatist. 76:2. Flaccus's quibble: "In [Horace's] Satires, Bk. I, viii, 34, where Rex has the double meaning of King, a private surname, and King, a monarch. The thin jests in Terence are in Andrea — tristis sever itas in vultu — 'puritanic rigour in his countenance,' says one of the comic characters of a palpable liar; and in the Adelphi, where, after a father has counselled his son to look into the lives of men as in a mirror, the slave coimsels the scullions to look into the stewpans" [inspicere in patinas]. (Lucas.) 298 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 4. Vis: Force, vitality. 8. Caxon: An old cant term for a wig. 10. Passy: Perhaps slang of the school. 11. Comet: Comets were anciently regarded as omens of approaching disaster. 23. DeviVs Litany: "Litany" is evidently suggested by the division of the angry master's sentence into two distinct utterances; cf. devil's mass, devil's matins, devil's paternoster, etc. 26. Rabidus furor: Furious rage. 27. The Debates: The published record of the speeches in Parliament. 77:16. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834): English philosopher, poet, and literary critic. In his Biographia Literaria he praises Boyer (he calls him Bowyer, incorrectly) for his sound taste in classic literature^ his good sense in making the boys study Shakespeare and Milton, his insight into the nature of poetry, and his severe and sane criticisms of the boys' English compositions; — "a man whose 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; but neither lessen nor dim the deep sense of my moral and intellectual obligations. 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 we derived from his zealous and conscientious tutorage." See also Coler- idge's Table Talk, Aug. 16, 1832. 18. The Country Spectator: See note, p. 78, 1,13. 28. Dr. T e: Arthur William TroUope, who succeeded Beyer as Upper Grammar Master. (Lucas.) 78:6. Fasces: The bundle of rods which the Roman lictors carried before the magistrates as the symbol of authority. Here, of course, it is used figuratively of the schoolmaster's birch. 8. Cicero de Amicitia: Cicero's essay on Friendship is one of his best known works. 10. Th ; Sir Edward Thornton, an eminent diplomat. (Lucas.) 13. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton (1769-1822): Conducted The Country Spectator, 1792-3; published a treatise on The Doctrine of the Greek Article, 1808; was appointed the first Bishop of Calcutta, 1814. See Introd., p.lO. 17. Sharpe, Granville (1735-1813) : English philanthropist, pamphleteer, and scholar. He made an important contribution to New Testament scholarship in his canon of the use of the definite article. 18. Regni novitas: i. e., the recent establishment of British rule. 20. Jewel, John (1522-1571): Bishop of Salisbury, 1560; author of Apologia pro Ecclesia Anglicana. Hooker, Richard (1553-^600): Cele- brated English divine and theologian, author of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. His biographer, Izaak Walton, calls him a "most learned, most humble, most holy man." NOTES 299 26. Richards, George: Became a governor of Christ's Hospital and founded a gold medal for 'Latin hexameters. (Lucas.) 28. Poor S , ill-fated M /; "Scott, died in Bedlam; Maunde, dismissed school." Lamb's Key (see note, p. 54, 1.10). 79:3. Dark pillar: In the Old Testament account of the pillar Of fire and of cloud that led the children of Israel there is nothing to suggest Lamb's use of the cloudy column as the symbol of melancholy or hopeless- ness. See Exodus, xiii, 21; Numbers, ix, 15-23. Coleridge was known also in his later years as a wonderful talker. See Carlyle's account of his conversation, in The Life of Sterling. 8. Mirandula, Giovanni Pico, Count of: "An Italian humanist and philosopher, one of the leading scholars of the ItaUan Renaissance." 9. Jamhlicus, Plotinus: Greek neo-platonic philosophers of the third century, A. D. 11. Pindar: "The greatest of Greek lyric poets." 12. Grey Friars: The buildings set apart for the purposes of Christ's Hospital had belonged to the Grey Friars (also called Minorites and Fran- ciscans), whose monastery, founded in 1225, was one of the most important religious houses in London. At the Dissolution, Henry VIII. gave the property to the City of London. The Chm-ch was not destroyed at the Great Fire of 1666, but "nothing remains of the monastery except some low brick arches of the western cloister." Some of the school buildings are modem; the courts handsome and spacious; 685 boys are lodged and boarded in the surroimding buildings. (Hare, Walks in London.) 15. C. V. Le G : Charles Valentine Le Grice, one of the Grecians of Lamb's day. 26. Cognition: A characteristically Elian use of the word. 30. Nireusf0rmosusr~l^^i3swa,s the handsomest man among the Greeks at Tiw; formosus means cdm^ly. 80:3^ "Bl — — ": Perhaps "blast — r\or "blackguard!" fn. Junior Le G ; "Samuel Le Grice became a soldier and died in the West Indies." F ; Joseph Favell, killed in the Peninsular War at Salamanca in 1812. Fr ; F. W. Franklin, "master of the Hertford branch of the school from 1801 to 1827." Marmaduke T ; . "Marma- duke Thompson, to whom Lamb dedicated Rosamund Gray in 1798." (Lucas.) THE TWO RACES OF MEN 81:6. Alcibiades: A brilliant but dissolute Athenian politician and general. Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) was the friend of Addison, the founder of The Tatler and contributor to The Spectator, moralist, loose liver, warm-hearted and generous spendthrift. 7. Brinsley: Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), noted dramatist, theatrical manager, orator, and politician. His best-known works are The Rivals and The School for Scandal. He, too, was a great spendthrift. 300 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 13. Pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum.': Fielding has a very similar passage: "An absolute contempt of those ridiculous distinctions of meum and tuum which would cause endless disputes did not the law happily de- cide them by converting both into suum." {Jonathan Wild, Bk. III.,ch.l4.) Meum, mine; tuum, thine; suum, his. Lamb wrote a Latin epigram (1830) Suum Cuique, on the same idea, for a schoolboy friend. See Lucas's edition, vol. V., p. 339. 14. Nohle simplification of language: Lowell has made effective use of the same idea in his caustic review of The Library of Old Authors: "We find Actus Secundus, Scena Primus and exit ambo, and we are interested to know that in a London printing-house, two centuries and a half ago, there was a philanthropist who wished to simplify the study of the Latin lan- guage by reducing all the nouns to one gender and all the verbs to one number." 16. Tooke, Home (173G-1812): An English philologist; his chief work, Epea Pteroenta, or The Diversions of Purley, though unscientific, had much influence on Englishmen's ideas of etymology a century ago. 22. Oholary: "Reduced to the possession of only the smallest coins, hence, impecunious, poor" {Cent. Diet.). See p. 251, 1. 21. ^"28. Candlemas, Holy Michael: Candlemas was one of the Scotch quarter-days. Michaelmas is an English quarter-day. In Great Britaii^ quarter-days (i. e., days that begin quarters of the year) are the usual terms, or landlords' and tenants' days for entering or ending leases and for paying rent. 29. Lena tormentum: Literally, gentle torture. (Horace, Odes III. xxi, 13.) 82:1. Cloak of the traveller: In iEsop's fable the North Wind and the Sun try their strength to see which can first strip a wayfaring man of his clothes. The Sun succeeds — Moral: Persuasion is better than force. 15. Ralph Bigod: The name under which Lamb speaks of John Fen- wick, with whom he was associated on The Albion, which came to an end in 1801 by reason, it is thought, of a lampoon of Lamb's upon the Prince of Wales. 83:3. Alexander: Called "the Great"; who when he had subdued all the world,, sighed because there were no more worlds to conquer. 6. Tythe: Tithe as an adjective is obsolete. "Every tithe soul," Troilus and Cressida II., ii, 19. 84:4. Fisc: Treasury, usually used of a state or a prince. 7. Undeniable: A play on words, of course. 9. Cana fides: Literally, hoary honesty. 16. Mum,ping visnomy: Whining face. 86:1. Comberbatch: Silas Tomkyn Comberbach [Sic] was the name Samuel Taylor Coleridge assumed when he enUsted in the dragoons, after running away from college. The name is sometimes written Comberback, €. g., Lucas, Elia, p. 825; but Lamb's spelling indicates the pronunciation NOTES 301 sufficiently; and, anyway, punning was not muchi in Coleridge's line. We may be sure that Lamb would have made the pirn, if he had had half a chance. 6. Bloomahury: When Lamb wrote this he was living in Great Russell Street over a shop which had once been Will's Coffee House, famous in Dryden's day. 6. Switzer-like: Like Swiss Guards — a company of Swiss mercenaries in the French service, noted for their stature and their courage. The Guildhall giants: Two wooden figures, known as Gog and Magog, used formerly in city pageants, and now set up, high against the wall, in the Guildhall in London. There is a picture of them in Chambers' Book of Days, vol. II., p. 562. 9. School divinity: Mediaeval scholastic theology, which was versed in nice disputations. St. Bonaventura and St. Thomas Aquinas were famous scholastic philosophers and theologians of the thirteenth century; ^ee note on p. 58, 1. 9. Bellarmino was an Italian cardinal and Jesuit theo- logian (1542-1621). 11. Ascapart: A famous giant in the old romance of Bevis of Hampton. 22. Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682): English physician and author. He wrote Religio Medici (1643), Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Inquiry into Vulgar Errors (1646), Hydrotaphia, or Urn Burial (1658), The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincuncial Lozenge (1658), and Christian Morals (published posthumously 1716). Lamb was fond of his odd ideas and elaborately curious style, as was DeQuincey also. 27. Dodsley, Robert: English bookseller and author; best known for his "Select Collection of Old Plays" (12 vols., 1744). 28. Vittoria Corombona, or the White Devil: A play by John Webster, 29. Priam's refuse sons: After the death of Hector, nine of Priam's fifty sons were still living. Iliad, Bk. XXIV. 30. Anatomy of Melancholy: By Robert Burton (1621); a curious book abounding in quotations from authors of all ages and countries, which treats of the causes, nature, and cure of melancholy. Lamb was fond of it and published some imitations of it (see Introd., p. 22). 31. Complete Angler: By Izaak Walton (1653), author also of lives of some English worthies. 86:1. John Bunde, The Life of: By Thomas Amory (1691?-1788). Its hero marries seven wives — "is a prodigious hand at matrimony, divinityj^ a song, and a peck." Lamb says " 'Tis very interesting, and an extra^ ordinary compound of all manner of subjects, from the depth of the ludicrous to the heights of sublime religious truth." (Letter to Coleridge, June 24, 1797.) On this whole passage see the excellent appendix on Lamb's Library in Lucas's Life, vol. II. 10. Proselytes of the gate: i. e., those converts to Judaism who were not compelled to submit to the regulations of the Mosaic law. 302 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 14. Deodands: Lamb uses the word here in the sense of forfeit, pledge, or, as it were, hostage; but properly the word means property forfeit to the crown for having been by chance the cause of death. 19. K .- James Kenney, the dramatist. Lamb got his book back. See Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Charles Lamb, privately printed for the Dibdin Club, New York. 22. Margaret Newcastle: Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (16247-1674), author of poems, plays, letters and discourses on natural philosophy, an autobiography, and the biography of her royalist husband. Pepys says, "The whole story of this lady is a romance, and all she does is romantic." Lamb speaks thus: "The Life of the Duke of Newcastle by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, no casing suflQciently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel." {Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading, in the Last Essays.) 87:6. Fulke Greville, Lord Brook[e]: English poet and statesman, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, and intimate friend and biographer of Sir Philip Sidney. Lamb esteemed his tragedies highly. See Hazlitt's essay On Persons One Would Wish to Have Known. 9. Zimmerman[n], J. G. von: A Swiss physician and philosophical writer. He wrote On Solitude (1755), On National Pride (1758). 19. Daniel, Samuel (1562-1619): An English poet and historian. NEW YEAR'S EVE 87: title. New Yearns Eve: This essay was the probable cause of a brief falling-out with Southey, who objected (in a review) to Lamb's want of a soimder religious feeling. (See Introd., p. 32.) 27. Desuetude: Disuse. 88:3. Pretermitted: Omitted, disregarded. 89:11. Alice W — n: Lamb's Key says merely "feigned (Winterton)"; but we must imderstand Ann Simmons (see Introd., p. 18). 13. Old Dorrell: In his poem Going or Gone (1827) Lamb writes: "And wicked old Dorrell, 'Gainst whom I've a quarrel" and goes on to mention "a poor Fortune, that should have been ours." Mr. Lucas thinks there is no doubt that he is the Dorrell who witnessed Lamb's father's will. , 25. A notorious . . . : The blanks are in the original text. 90:22. Idea: In the Platonic sense of archetype or essence. 25. Singularly conceited: Perhaps unusually self -complacent, but more likely Lamb would use the phrase to mean oddly whimsical, peculiar. 91:10. Audits: Periodical reckonings. 20. Reluct: To struggle against; a rare word. 92:1. Lavinian shores: A reference to Aeneas's migration to Italy after the sack of Troy. NOTES 303 12. Huge armfuls: Leigh Hunt recalls seeing Lamb kiss an old folio of Chapman's Homer. 22. Problematic: Not puzzling, but questionable, doubtful. Poor snakes: "Poor worms," "worms of the dust," etc., are more familiar expressions of extravagant humility or contempt; but snake, serpent, is an obsolete sense of the word worm. 24. Burgeon: To bud; Lamb was fond of this old word. 93:1. Innutritious one: See the Song of Solomon, viii, 8. 2. The Persian: The Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, was a form of sxm-worship. 4. Humours: The thin bodily fluids; a term of antique medicine. 10. Friar John: "In Rabelais. Friar John when fighting would give his fallen foe 'to all the devils in hell!' " (Lucas.) 15. Privation, positive: Terms of logic. Privation means negation or negative. 19. "Lie down with Kings," etc.: Mr. Lucas, following Hallward and Hill, suggests that this is perhaps a compound quotation from Job, iii, 13, and Sir Thomas Browne's Urn- Burial; but the echo, if such it is, is not close. 27. "aSwc^ as Ae, etc.: "A common sentiment on tombstones." (Lucas.) 94:5. Mr. Cotton: Charles Cotton, poet, translator of Montaigne's Essays, and author of a Second Part (on fly-fishing) to Walton's Complete Angler. 10. Janus: See note on p. 58, 1.30. 95:23. The Princess: i. e.. Fortune. 34. Helicon: Really a mountain in Greece, celebrated in Greek mythol- ogy as the abode of the Muses; but here used of the foimtain of Hippocrene, sacred to the muses, on the moimtain. The confusion is an old one: Chaucer speaks of "Elicon, the clere welle." Spa: A watering-place with medicinal springs, in Belgium. MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST 96: title. Mrs. Battle: Probably more or less a portrait of Mrs. Sarah Burney, wife of Lamb's friend Rear- Admiral James Burney and so sister-in-law of Fanny Burney, the novelist. Lamb himself was devoted to whist. The footnotes (p. 96) from the original version in the London Magazine were not reprinted in the version of 1818. 26. Under the rose: i. e., in confidence, sub rosa. 97:18. Pope, Alexander (1688-1744): The chief English poet of the early 18th century. The third canto of The Rape of the Lock describes a game of Ombre played by the heroine, Belinda, against two gentlemen. 20. Ombre: A game borrowed from Spain, usually played by three persons, as is tradrille (more commonly tredille). 304 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 26. Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850): Poet, antiquary, and clergy- man. His sonnets first fired Coleridge's poetical enthusiasm (see Bio- graphia Liter aria)', his edition of Pope appeared 1806. 27. Quadrille: "A modem game, bears great analogy to Ombre, with the addition of a fourth player." (Strutt's Book of Sports and Pastimes.) 32. Spadille: The ace of spades. "Spadillio first, unconquerable lord!" Rape of the Lock, iii, 49. 98:5. Sans Prendre Vole: Taking every card when playing single- handed. 17. Machiavel, or Machiavelli, Niccolo (1469-1527): An Italian states- man and author. He wrote The Prince, a history of Florence, and The Art of War. 24. Nob: i. e., head. "One for his nob" is a point counted in cribbage for holding the knave of trumps. 30. Solecism: A blunder, incongruity, inconsistency. 31. Alliteration: Lamb knew perfectly well that his style was full of alliterations, as here, for example. 99:22. Vandyke, Sir Anthony (1599-1641): A famous Flemish painter, best known for his portraits; knighted by Charles I. of England (1632), and made court painter. Potter, Paul (1625-1654): Noted Dutch painter of animals and portraits. 26. Antic: i. e., fantastic. 29. Pam: The knave of clubs in the game of loo. In Lamb's children's book, The King and Queen of Hearts, the knave is named Pambo. 100:4. Deal-board: A thick plank, usually of fir or pine 6. Verdant carpet: The green baize top of the card-table. 28. Five dollar stake: i. e., a five-crown stake. 31. Tenure: An English law term meaning the conditions upon which property is held. 101:4. Piquet: In this game points are scored for carte blanche, or a hand of only plain cards; for point, or a hand with the strongest suit; for pique, or winning thirty points before one's opponent scores at all; for repique, or winning thirty points by the combination of cards in one's hand, before play begins; for capot, or taking all the tricks; and for combinations such as sequence, quatorze, trio. 102:15. Size ace: Six and one. See a happy use of the language of dicing quoted from Lowell imder Amhes-ace in Cent. Diet. 103:28. Bridget: See the essay My Relations. 104:4. Manes: See note, p. 47, 1. 5. 7. Tierce, quatorze: A tierce is a sequence of three cards; a quatorze is four aces, kings, queens, knaves, or tens, so called because it counts 14. 16. Lenitive: A soothing application; here doubtless a poultice for his gout. 18. Appliances: i. e., applications. NOTES 305 \ VALENTINE'S DAY 21. Bishop Valentine: Properly speaking, St. Valentine was not a bishop; but Elia had good literary precedent for speaking of him thus: Drayton and Donne in their poems call him bishop. On the origin of the observances of Valentine's Day see Chambers' Book of Days. 22. Arch'flamen of Hymen: High priest of the God of Marriage. 105:1. Jerome, Ambrose, Cyril, Austin, Origen: Early church fathers. 4. Bull, Parker, Whitgift: English prelates of the 16th and 17th cen- turies. 9. Choristers: Choir-boys. Precentors: Choir-leaders in cathedrals and monastic churches. 10. Crozier: The staff borne before a bishop on solemn occasions, symbolical of his oflSce. 13. Ydeped: i. e., called. 106:22. Irreversible: A somewhat rare word — one of Jeremy Taylor's — meaning not to be set aside or annulled. 26. Type: i. e., emblem or symbol. 107:3. Arcadia: A region of Greece, proverbial for its rural simplicity: in modem literature an ideal land of piping shepherds and coy shepherd- esses; a symbol for peacefulness, content, and simplicity. 6. E. B.: Edward Francis Bumey, half brother of the Admiral. See note on p. 96, title. 26. Ovid: One of the chief Latin poets of the Augustan age; author of The Art of Love. 27. Pyramus and Thisbe, Dido, Hero and Leander: Stock classical examples of constant love. The more hackneyed the allusion, the more suitable for the banter of this passage, of course. 29. Cayster: A river in Lydia mentioned in the Iliad (II., 461) as abound- ing in cranes, geese, and swans. 31. Iris: The goddess of the rainbow. A CHAPTER ON EARS 109:6. Defoe, Daniel: The author of Robinson Crusoe, who was pilloried for his tract The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, but did not lose his ears. 16. "Water parted from the sea," "In Infancy": Songs by Ame in Artaxerxes, Lamb's "First Play." (Lucas.) See note, p. 197, 1. 2. 19. Mrs. S ; "Mrs. Spinkes" in the Key (see note, p. 54, 1. 10). 21. In his long coats: i. e., in baby-clothes, or perhaps Lamb means the Blue Coat of the school dress. 25. Alice W n: See note, p. 89, 1. 11. 30. Quavers: i. e., eighth-notes. 306 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 110:3. My friend A.: "Probably William Ayrton, the musical critic.''' (Lucas.) 20. Thorough bass, sostenuto, adagio: Lamb exaggerates his ignorance of music and musical terms. 27. Baralipton: The scholastic philosophers devised a whole set of artificial words or names to denote the various forms of the syllogism in logic, of which Baralipton was one. In themselves they are perfectly meaningless. 31. Gamut: The musical scale. • 111:1. Magic influences: Cf. the opening lines of Congreve's Mourning Bride, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," etc. 22. Enraged Musician: "A reference to Hogarth's picture with that title, where street noises are driving the performer mad." (Lucas.) 112:1. "Party in a parlour," etc.: From Wordsworth's Peter Bell (first edition) afterwards expunged. "The lines . ... seem to have clung to Lamb's memory, for there is the story of his shouting the words at a solemn evening gathering seen through a window in passing . . . shaking the railings the while." (Lucas, Life, II., 14.) 8. To pile honey: An adaptation of the classical proverb, "to pile Pelion on Ossa." 12. All stops: i. e., all punctuation marks. 22. Burton: See note on p. 85, 1. 30. The quotation is from Part I, Section 2, of the Anatomy of Melancholy, "not quite correctly copied." (Lucas.) 27. Amabilis insania, mentis gratissimus error: Sweet rapture; most delightful wandering of the mind. 113:2. Toys: In the older sense of trivial pleasures, mental playthings 16. Subrusticus pudor: i. e., a sort of countrified embarrassment. 26. Nov ; Vincent Novello, the organist, composer, and musical publisher. 27. Abbey: Westminster Abbey. . ' 114:14. Arions: Arion was fabled to have charmed the creatures of the sea by his playing. Haydn, Joseph (1732-1809); Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-1791); Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750); Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827): Famous German composers. Modem critical taste ranks the latter two the more highly. 20. Triple tiara: The insignium of the Pope. 24. Malleus hereticorum: Hammer of the heretics, a title given to St. Bernard, the preacher of the second crusade, and also to Johann Faber, the opponent of Luther. 25. Heresiarch: Chief heretic. 26. Marcion, Ebion, Cerinthus: Early unorthodox Christians. 115:6. P. S.: This postscript was omitted from the collected edition. ^ Leigh Hunt: See Introd., p. 2 6. The Indicator article referred to NOTES 307 was a reiiew of Lamb's Works (collected ed., 1818) in which Hxint said: "We believe we are taking no greater liberty with him than our motives will warrant, when we add that he sometimes writes in the London Magazine under the signature of Elia." 116:8. Steelyard: The place in London where, imtil expelled in 1595, the merchants of the Hanseatic League had their headquarters. They had an organization like a gild and controlled most of the foreign trade of England. ALL FOOLS' DAY 23. A speck of the motley: A streak of folly. Motley {i. e., parti-colored garb) was the conventional dress of court-fools. 26. Free of the corporation: Invested with the full rights and immunities of the company (of fools). 117:1. Stultus sum: I am a fool. 5. Sparkling gooseberry: Short for gooseberry wine, the apposite- ness of which is obvious in the connection. Mr. Lucas piles Pelion on Ossa by thinking that Lamb meant to call the notion of gooseberry fool (a kind of conserve) to his readers' minds. 7, Troll the catch of Amiens: Sing Amiens's song. It is snng not by Amiens but by Jacques. The burden, or chorus, of it is properly ducdame, which the hearers in the play do not understand — or the editors either, for some editions (one of which Lamb follows) make it over into due ad me, i. e., lead to me. 16. Bauble, etc.: The court-fool often carried a bauble, or mock-sceptre, which generally bore a fool's head, with parti-colored hood, asses' ears, and little bells. Hobby: A hobby-horse. 22. A salamander-gathering: The salamander was supposed to live in the fire. 118:1. Disinterested sect of the Calenturists: A calenture is a feverish delirium supposed to be caused by hot weather, especially on shipboard. Elia calls the victims a disinterested sect because they obligingly throw themselves overboard, out of the way of their shipmates. 3. Gebir: An 8th century Arab, the father of mediaeval chemistry, or alchemy. Lamb seems to have evolved the connection of Gebir with Babel from Landor's poem Gebir, in which the hero "tries to build a city, but finds his labours destroyed 'not by mortal hand' " (Hall- ward and Hill, quoted by Lucas). Among the many traditions of the origin of Masonry (which is probably an outgrowth of the mediaeval gilds) is one that the fraternity originated at the building of the Tower of Babel. 6. Right hand . . . stammerers: A double allusion to Lamb's own impediment and the confusion of tongues at Babel. 7. Herodotus: "Lamb invented this reference" (Lucas). Toises: The toise was an old French measure of about C feet. 10. Nuncheon: Midday limcheon. 308 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 17. Moppet: A rag-doll, a humorous or afiCectionate term of address to a child. 18. Mister Adams, etc.: In Fielding's novel Joseph Andrews, Adams is a simple, absent-minded clergyman and Mrs. Slipslop a vulgar waiting- woman. Odso: A modified form of an old oath. 24. Raymund Lully (1235-1315): A Spanish philosopher, poet, and missionary to the Mohammedans. The appositeness of Lamb's mention may lie in the fact that "to the end of his life, and after his death, his ignorance of Latinity was used as a reproach against him;" or it may rest on Lully 's idea that he had invented "a universal and infalUble intellectual method," in which he "essentially kept all the fundamental notions of the schoolmen, but made confusion worse confoimded by his juggling methods." (A. R. Marsh, in Johnson's Cyclopedia.) 26. Duns Scotus, surnamed Doctor SubtiUs: A famous scholastic philosopher and logician of the 13th century. "His name ... came to be used as a common appellative, 'a very learned man,' and being ap- plied satirically ... gave rise to dunce in its present sense." {Cent. Diet.) 119:1. Stephen, etc.: FooUsh characters in Ben Jonson and Shakespeare. 8. R : "Ramsay, London Library, Ludgate Street; now extinct." Lamb's Key. 14. Granville S .• See note, p. 78, 1. 17. 19. Armado: A fantastic braggart in Lovers Labour's Lost. Quisada: The fantastic, chivalric knight, Don Quixote, in Cervantes' famous novel of that name. 120:19. Tendre: An affectionate regard. The English noim tender has the same meaning in Shakespeare. 21. That answered: May mean "that was satisfactory," or "that was reciprocal." 121:1. Dotterels: The dotterel is a foolish bird; "to dorr the dotterel" is an old phrase meaning "to fool a simpleton." S. Darlings, minions, white hoys: All of equivalent meaning. A QUAKERS' MEETING 121: title. A Quakers' Meeting: "Lamb's connection with Quakers was somewhat intimate throughout his life." (Lucas.) His friends, the Lloyds and Bernard Barton (the poet), were Quakers. See also the essay on Imperfect Sympathies. 122:4. Ulysses stuffed his comrades' ears with wax, and had himself tied to the mast, so that the Sirens' enchanting song should be of no effect. 27. Carthusian: One of the rules of the Carthusian monks is to keep perpetual silence. 123:5. Zimmerman: See note, p. 87, 1. 9. • NOTES 309 26. Nought-caballing: To cabal is to plot. 29. Council, consistory: Solemn meetings of ecclesiastical authorities in the Roman Catholic and other churches. 124:6. Fox, George (1624-1691) : The founder of the Society of Friends; frequently imprisoned for breaking the laws against conventicles {i. e., unauthorized religious gatherings). Dewesbury was "one of Fox's first colleagues, and a famous preacher." (Lucas.) 11. Church and presbytery: The established church and the dissenters. Receptacle: Gathering-place, a rare use of the word. 16. Penn: In a letter to Coleridge (Dec, 1797), Lamb says: "I am just beginning to read a most capital book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn's 'No Cross, No Crown.' ... I love it [Quakerism] in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit. ..." 17. The bail dock: A small room in the comer of the Court in the Old Bailey. Lamb later, in a letter, says that he finds no such words in Fox's journal and "must have put some other Quaker's words into his mouth." 21. Sewel, "William: His chief work is The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers, originally published in Dutch, 1717; English translation, 1722. 25. Wesley, John (1703-1791): The founder of Methodism, 30. James Naylor (1618-1660): A fanatical English Puritan; rode into Bristol naked, in imitation of Christ's entry into Jerusalem; was convicted of blasphemy and recanted. 125:11. John Woolman (1720-1772): American Quaker preacher. He wrote on slavery, but is best known by his Journal, published 1774. 17. The dove: The symbol of the Holy Spirit. 126:4. Orgasm: i. e., ecstasy. 7. Malleable: i. e., capable of being changed or worked; a good instance of Lamb's aptness in phrase. 23. Jocos Risus-que: Jests and laughter, i. e., the Levities. Loves: Proserpine was gathering flowers with Cupid at Enna when she was carried oflf to Hades by Dis (Pluto). 30. Trophonius: A legendary Greek hero, who was consulted at his oracle in a cave in Boeotia. 127:15. Whitsun-conferences: Yearly meetings. THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER 27. Ortelius: Abraham Ortelius, a Flemish geographer who published an atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in 1570. Arrowsmith, Aaron: English geographer and mapmaker (1750-1823). 128:5. Dear friend: Barron Field (1786-1846), son of the apothecary to Christ's Hospital; judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales 1816-1824. He published several volumes, among them First Fruits of 310 THE ESSAYS OF'ELIA Australian Poetry (reviewed by Lamb in Leigh Hunt's Examiner, Jan. 16, 1820), containing two poems, "Botany Bay Flowers" and "The Kan- garoo." See the essay on Distant Correspondents. 6. TerrcB Incognitcs: Unknown lands. 7. Bear, Charles's Wain: The principal stars of the Great Bear com- pose the figure of Charles's Wain, or the Dipper. 18. Four great monarchies: Chaldaea, Assyria, Egypt, Persia. 21. Shepherd Kings: A name given to the Hyksos dynasty of foreign kingsof Egypt about 2000 B. C. My friend M.: Thomas Manning (1772- 1840), an English mathematician and traveler. He was the first English- man to enter the sacred city of Lhassa in Thibet. 129:11. Shuffling: Dodging the issue. 16. Bishopsgate, Shacklewell: See notes, p. 45, II. 3,7. 130:1. Smithfield: See note, p. 68, 1. 15. 8. Norton Folgate: A district in London, about IJ miles northeast of St. Paul's. 11. Morning avocations: i. e., his occupation in the India House. 19. Sirens: See note on p. 122, I. 4. What name Achilles assumed: According to one story, Achilles was taken as a youth by his mother, Thetis, to the court of King Lycomedes, where he lived disguised as a maiden among the King's daughters, in order that he might escape being summoned to join the expedition against Troy. Ulysses, who had gone to seek him, discovered him by a trick. Disguised as a pedlar, he spread out his wares and some weapons before t^he women, and then caused the signal for battle to be blown on the trumpets. Achilles seized the weapons and so betrayed his sex. 22. Shoreditch: A northerly continuation of Bishopsgate Street With- out; also the name of a borough of London. 131:2. Kingsland: Formerly a suburb, now an outlying district of London, about four miles north of the Thames. 5. North Pole Expedition: Probably Sir John Franklin's disastrous one of 1819. 13. Dalston: See note, p. 45, I. 3. 30. The Lilys and the Linacres: William Lily (ca. 1468-1522), an Eng- lish grammarian, the friend of Colet, Erasmus, and More; one of the first teachers of Greek in England; hieadmaster of Colet 's school in St. Paul's Churchyard and author of a La^tin grammar which in a revised form was long a national text-book. Thomas Linacre (ca. 1460-1524), a noted English classicist and physician; projector and a founder of the College of Physicians in London; taught Greek to Erasmus and Sir Thomas More; published grammatical works. 132:9. Flori: Florilegia, anthologies; literally, cullings of flowers. 10. Spicilegia: Gleanings of grain. Arcadia: See note, p. 107, 1. 3. NOTES 311 12. Basileus, etc.: Pamela and Philoclea are the daughters of King Basileus in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia; Mopsa and Damoetas are comic characters in the same. 17. Paul's Accidence: A Latin grammar so called because John Colet (1467-1519), the famous humanist, who wrote it, was the founder of St. Paul's School. 28. Solon (about 640-560 B. C): An Athenian reformer and lawgiver. Lycurgus (probably 9th century, B. C): The traditional author of the laws and institutions of Sparta. 133:7. He: i. e., the pupil. 19. Cum multis aliis: With many other things. 20. Tractate on Education: Milton's Tractate on Education, 1644. 21. Hartlib, Samuel: A friend of Milton, and pamphleteer on education and husbandry. 28. Mollia tempora fandi: Favorable occasions for speaking of the matter. 134:14. Orrery: A mechanical representation of the solar system; see cut in Cent. Diet. Panopticon: A museum or exhibition room for novelties. \ MY RELATIONS t 138:11. Browne's Christian Morals: See note, p. 85, 1. 22. 19. Aunt: Sarah Lamb, sister of Elia's father; she was known to the children as "Aunt Hetty." See p. 65. One of Lamb's poems in Blank Verse (see Introd., p. 20) was written in memory of her. She died in 1797. 26. Thomas h Kempis: properly, Thomas Hammerken (1379?-1471), a German mystic and ascetic, generally thought to be the author of De Imitatione Christi. 28. Matins, complines: The offices, or services, for the first and the last, respectively, of the seven "canonical hours" into which the day is divided by Roman Catholic ecclesiastical practice. 139:6. ''Adventures," etc.: The book is a real one. "The history tells how the imfortunate Mons. du F . . . married against his father's will, and suffered in consequence many privations, including imprisonment in a convent, from which he escaped by a jmnp of fifty feet." (Lucas.) 7. Chapel on Essex Street: A Unitarian chapel (perhaps the one still standing in Milford Lane) close by the Temple, where the Lambs lived. Of course Elia does not mean that Unitarianism actually began in Essex Street and in Aunt Hetty's lifetime. It is a very ancient "heresy," and in England Unitarian opinions took root at an early period of the Reformation. The philosophical writings of the 18th century tended to the strengthening of the doctrine. Very likely the chapel in Essex Street had not long been opened. 11. Never missed them: i. e., never cared if she did not get them, as is 312 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA shown plainly enough in the sharing of her attentions between the Roman Catholic prayer-book and the Essex Street chapel. 25. Brother or sister I never had any: Lamb's parents had seven children, of whom John and Mary ("James" and "Bridget") were the only ones Charles knew. The others all died young. A daughter, Elizabeth, was bom in 1768, six years and more before Charles. 29. Cousins in Hertfordshire: By the name of Bruton, his maternal grandmother's family. See p. 149. 140:6. Grand climacteric: Climacteric years, or critical periods of change in the bodily organism, were held by some ancient philosophers to recur every seven years, by others every nine years. The "grand climacteric" was the 63rd year, the multiple of 7 and 9. 10. Yorick: A clergyman in Sterne's Tristram Shandy, in whose guise Sterne gives us his own picture; hence the name is often applied to Sterne himself. 17. Phlegm . . . sanguine: Old-fashioned medicine distinguished various complexions, temperaments, etc , named (according as one or another of the humors had predominance in the body), phlegmatic, melancholic, choleric, sanguine. 141:4. Dominichino, Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641): An Italian painter. His most famous picture is "The Communion of St. Jerome," in the Vatican. The proper form is Domenichino. 10. Charles of Sweden: Charles XII. (1682-1718), a celebrated military leader. 17. Cham: An old form of Khan, i. e., sovereign. The Grand Khan of Tartary, described by the celebrated Venetian traveler, Marco Polo (1254-1324), in his Travels, was Kublai Khan (the "Kubla Khan" of Coleridge's poem), the foimder of the Mongol dynasty of China. 28. John Murray's Street: John Murray, the great publisher and friend of literary men (especially Byron, who has immortalized him), had his oflace in Albemarle Street. 143:5. Claude, Lorrain (1600-1682): Celebrated French landscape painter. Hobbima, Meyndert (1638-1709): Dutch landscape painter. Properly Hobbema. 6. Christie's: A well-known auction-room in Pall Mall, London, estab- Ushed by James Christie (1730-1808), the friend of Garrick, Gainsborough, and Reynolds; continued by his son, James Christie (1773-1831), known also as an antiquary and art critic; now Christie, Manson & Woods. "In Christie's sale catalogues may be traced the history of fine-art taste in England for over a century." 7. Gauds: Playthings, toys, trifles. 13. Pall Mall: Formerly a fashionable suburban promenade, now a handsome street in the West End, the center of London club life. 29. TEapAaeZ, Sanzio (1483-1520): A celebrated Italian painter. Among NOTES 313 his works are the well-known "Sistine Madonna" and "The Madonna of the Chair," 144:1. Carracci, Annibale (15G0-1609): An Italian painter, pupil of his cousin, Ludovico. 4. Giordano, Lucca (1632-1705): An Italian painter, celebrated for his swiftness of execution. Maratti, Carlo (1625-1713) : An Italian painter, chiefly of rehgious subjects. 146:3. Apostle to the brute hind, etc.: John Lamb pubUshed a pamphlet (1810) on the prevention of cruelty to animals, containing a huge sentence on the manner of cooking eels, A propos. Lamb wrote in a letter, "Don't show it [the pamphlet] to Mrs. Collier, for I remember she makes excellent eel soup." 9. Clarkson, Thomas (1760-1846): English aboUtionist and pam- phleteer. He wrote a History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1808). MACKEEY END IN HERTFOKDSHIRE 146: title. Mackery End: "Lamb's first visit there must have been when he was only a Uttle boy, somewhere about 1780." (Lucas.) The house is still standing. 15. Rash king's offspring: Jephthah's daughter; see Judges, xi, 37, 38- 147:12. Religio Medici: See note, p. 85, 1. 22. 18. Margaret Newcastle: See note, p. 86, 1. 22. 21. Freethinkers, etc.: Among them Coleridge, HazUtt, Leigh Hunt, WiUiam Godwin. 149:7. Less known relations: Lamb's maternal grandmother, Mary Field (bom Bruton), was in charge of Blakesware House, the Plumers' Hertfordshire place, from 1778 till her death in 1792. 8. Corn country: i. e., grain-growing coimtry. 20. My grandmother: See Dream Children, p. 201. 31. St. Albans: A city in Hertfordshire, twenty miles northwest of London. 151:6. Females: See note, p. 281, 1. 24. 152:8. B. F.: See note, p. 128, 1. 5. 11. Words written in lemon: Salts of lemon are used in preparing cer- tain of the so-called 'sympathetic' inks. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 152: title. Imperfect sympathies: In the London Magazine the title was Jews, Quakers, Scotchmen, and Other Imperfect Sympathies. 24. Notional and conjectural essences: Abstract qualities of things conceived as having ideal existence. Concretions: The embodiments of these ideal essences in material form. 314 THE ESSAYS OF ELIA 153:10. Apathies: "In the London Magazine Lamb had written 'dispathies.' " (Lucas.) 155:1. His Minerva is born in panoply: i. e., his thoughts are brought forth fully developed and equipped. Minerva, the goddess of learning, was said to have sprung in full armor from the head of Jove. 11. True touch: i. e., genuine gold; the touch is the stamp applied by the Goldsmith's Company to a piece of plate testifying to its fineness. {Cent. Diet.) 156:1. John Buncle: See note, p. 86, 1. 1. 8. Leonardo da Vinci: Famous Italian painter, architect, sculptor, scientist, mechanician, and musician (1452-1519). Among his best known pictures are "The Last Supper," "The Virgin of the Rocks," "St. .John the Baptist," "Mona Lisa." 25. Burns: In a letter Lamb calls Burns "a favorite Bardie." 31. 5m/«, Jonathan (1667-1745): Celebrated satirist and pamphleteer, author of Gulliver's Travels. 157:12. Thomson, James (1700-1748): English poet (of Scotch birth) , author of The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence. Smollett, Tobias George (1721-1771): Of Scotch birth, a satirist, historian, and humorous novelist. Among his novels are Roderick Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle (1751), Humphrey Clinker ( 1771) . He translated Don Quixote and continued David Hume's History of England. In Roderick Random he exhibits Rory (i. e., Roderick) and Strap, his companion, as the greenest of Scotch greenhorns, when they first arrive in London. 21. Stonehenge: The wonderful ruins of what is supposed to have been a Druid temple, on Salisbury Plain. Sir Norman Lockyer, the English astronomer, has recently made a computation, based on the orientation of the altar, and declares that the ruins must have been erected more than six thousand years before Christ. Nonage: Time of life before a person comes of age. 25. The story of Hugh of Lincoln: A mediaeval legend of the murder of a Httle boy by the Jews in Lincoln. There is an old ballad on the sub- ject, and Chaucer has told a similar story in The Prioress's Tale. "The Jew's House" is still shown at Lincoln. 158:7. On 'Change: i. * <^^M4F."* *!^ ■^"' Treatment Date: April 2009 ^^ w> ► tj^^i^M^^g • AQ Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide ^ ^> * «^^^yfl'* i."^ ■^"' Treatment Date: April 2009 ^^ ,.^ '^^*'"\v ... 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