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CHARLES LAMB 
 From the water color drawing by G. F. Joseph, (18 J 9) 
 
LAME 
 
 Essays of Elia 
 
 (CHOSEN' 
 
 The Old 
 Press* 
 
 NewKiriL 
 
 Greek. 
 
 GAicaoo 
 Boston 
 
LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 Copyright Entry 
 
 A/fo 7. 
 SS A xXc.,Ne. 
 
 COPY B. 
 
 
 
 i 9 
 
 COPYRIGHT, I907 
 BY SHERWIN CODY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Lamb, Life .......... 7 
 
 Essays of Elia. 
 
 
 
 The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple 33 
 
 Dream Children ; A Reverie 49 
 
 My First Play 54 
 
 Amicus Redivivus 61 
 
 A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig 68 
 
 Poor Relations 78 
 
 Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist 88 
 
 Old China 98 
 
 Imperfect Sympathies 106 
 
 The Superannuated Man 118 
 
LAMB 
 
 If you would read the works of Charles Lamb, 
 you must know Charles Lamb the man, for he is 
 the principal character in his own writings (at 
 least-those that we remember now and really care 
 to read), and our love for the works and our love 
 for the man are one and inseparable. The best a 
 critic or biographer can do is to arrange Lamb's 
 letters and essays in suitable order, and add a few 
 hard facts here and there to make the connection 
 plain. 
 
 In the heart of the old corporate city of London 
 is a series of groups of buildings called the Inns 
 of Court. There were and still are four of these 
 "Inns," which are societies or corporations for the 
 education of law students. In their old-fashioned 
 way they correspond to our law schools. The courts 
 are there, too, and the lawyers, young and old, have 
 "chambers" there, where, amid ancient traditions 
 and somewhat gloomy surroundings, they live and 
 even keep their families, or at least their servants' 
 families. 
 
 Born in the Law Courts of the Inner Temple. 
 
 Of these four "Inns," one of the most famous is 
 "The Inner Temple," a name which hints of the fact 
 that the law was originally administered by the 
 clergy, who had their chapels here. "The Inner 
 
 7 
 
8 LAMB 
 
 Temple" was the general name for a group of build- 
 ings, including a little park. At No. 2 Crown Of- 
 fice Row, Charles Lamb was born Feb. 10, 1775, the 
 youngest of seven children, only two of whom lived 
 to grow up. His father, John Lamb, was the clerk, 
 companion, and servant of Samuel Salt, a "Bencher" 
 (one of the governing board of the school), and, 
 with his family, occupied one of the two sets of 
 chambers belonging to Samuel Salt. 
 
 In his essay on the Old Benchers, Lamb describes 
 his father under the name of Lovel. He took ab- 
 solute charge of Samuel Salt, and "was at once his 
 clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, his 
 'flapper/ his guide, his stop-watch, auditor, treas- 
 urer." Salt "did nothing without consulting Lovel, 
 or failed in anything without expecting and fearing 
 his admonishing." "L. was the liveliest little fellow 
 breathing," Lamb goes on, "had a face as gay as 
 Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to resemble 
 (I have a portrait of him which confirms it), pos- 
 sessed a fine turn for humorous poetry — next to 
 Swift and Prior — moulded heads in clay or plaster 
 of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural ge- 
 nius merely; turned cribbage boards, and such 
 small cabinet toys, to perfection ; took a hand at 
 quadrille or bowls with equal facility; made punch 
 better than any man of his degree in England; had 
 the merriest quips and conceits, and was altogether 
 as brimful of rogueries and inventions as you could 
 desire." 
 
 And here is Lamb's picture of Samuel Salt: "S. 
 had the reputation of being a very clever man, and 
 
LIFE 9 
 
 of excellent discernment in the chamber practice of 
 law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount to 
 much. When a case of difficult disposition of money, 
 testamentary or otherwise came before him he ordi- 
 narily handed it over with a few instructions to his 
 man Lovel, who was a quick little fellow, and would 
 dispatch it out of hand by the light of natural 
 understanding, of which he had an uncommon share. 
 It was incredible what repute for talents S. en- 
 joyed" by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy 
 man; a child might pose him in a minute — indolent 
 and procrastinating to the last degree. Yet men 
 would give him credit for vast application in spite 
 of himself. He was not to be trusted with himself 
 with impunity. He never dressed for a dinner party 
 but he forgot his sword — they wore swords then — 
 or some other necessary part of his equipage. Lovel 
 had his eye upon him on all these occasions, and 
 ordinarily gave him his cue. If there was anything 
 which he could speak unseasonably, he was sure to 
 do it. He was to dine at a relative's of the unfor- 
 tunate Miss Blandy on the day of her execution, 
 and L., who had a wary foresight of his probable 
 hallucinations, before he set out schooled him with 
 great anxiety not in any possible manner to allude 
 to her story that day. S. promised faithfully to ob- 
 serve the injunction. He had not been seated in 
 the parlour where the company was expecting the 
 dinner summons, four minutes when, a pause in the 
 conversation ensuing, he got up, looked out of the 
 window, and, pulling down his ruffles — an ordinary 
 motion with him — observed, 'It was a gloomy day,' 
 
10 LAMB 
 
 and added, 'Miss Blandy must be hanged by this 
 time, I suppose.' 
 
 "Instances of this sort were perpetual. Yet S. 
 was thought by some of the greatest men of his 
 time a fit person to be consulted, not alone in mat- 
 ters pertaining to the law, but in the ordinary nice- 
 ties and embarrassments of conduct — from force of 
 manner entirely. He never laughed. He had the 
 same good fortune among the female world — was a 
 known toast with the ladies, and one or two are said 
 to have died for love of him — I suppose because he 
 never trifled or talked gallantry with them, or paid 
 them, indeed, hardly common attentions. He had a 
 fine face and person." 
 
 Aunt Hetty. 
 
 In the Lamb family was a sister of Mr. Lamb, 
 known as "Aunt Hetty." Mary Lamb describes her 
 in a letter as follows : "My father had a sister who 
 lived with us — of course, lived with my mother, 
 her sister-in-law ; they were, in their different ways, 
 the best creatures in the world, but they set out 
 wrong at first. They made each other miserable 
 for full twenty years of their lives. My mother 
 was a perfect gentlewoman, my aunty as unlike a 
 gentlewoman as you can possibly imagine a good 
 old woman to be; so that my dear mother (who, 
 though you do not know it, is always in my poor 
 head and heart) used to distress and weary her 
 with incessant and unceasing attention and polite- 
 ness, to gain her affection. 
 
 The old woman could not return this in kind, 
 
LIFE 11 
 
 and did not know what to make of it — thought it 
 all deceit, and used to hate my mother with a bitter 
 hatred — which, of course, was soon returned with 
 interest. A little frankness, and looking into each 
 other's characters at first, would have spared all 
 this, and they would have lived, as they died, fond 
 of each other for the last few years of their life." 
 
 Says Mr. Lucas, Lamb's biographer: "Probably 
 Aunty Hetty found in her little nephew (Charles 
 Lamb) the understanding that she needed ; for im- 
 aginative sympathy, of which Charles Lamb had so 
 great a share, is not a graft, but, in those who are 
 blessed with it, a possession from their earliest 
 days. One of Aunt Hetty's methods of requiting 
 his comforting comprehension of her temperament 
 was very practical," namely, giving him cakes, a sub- 
 ject to which he alludes in that passage in the "Essay 
 on Roast Pig," in which he speaks of giving his cake 
 to a beggar. And when Lamb went away to school 
 he fared much better than the others by reason of 
 Aunt Hetty's provisions. 
 
 In the Blue-Coat School with Coleridge. 
 
 As for Charles Lamb himself, we know he must 
 have had a sense of humor from the earliest years, 
 for when he was a child, Talfourd tells us, he was 
 walking through a graveyard with his sister Mary, 
 ten years older than he, and they read the inscrip- 
 tions, all telling of the wonderful virtues of the dead, 
 when the little fellow asked naively, "Mary, where 
 are the naughty people buried?" - 
 
 When the boy was seven and a half years old he 
 
12 LAMB 
 
 was admitted to Christ's Hospital, the famous "Blue- 
 coat School," where so many famous writers have 
 been educated, and whose boys in their long blue 
 coats, knee breeches, and yellow stockings, with 
 never a hat or cap on their heads, were familiar 
 figures on the streets of London only a few years 
 ago. The old school building has now been sold 
 and the school itself removed to the country. 
 
 Coleridge, the poet, was admitted at almost the 
 same time, though he was ten years old, and he 
 became one of Lamb's closest and lifelong friends. 
 Another of his school fellows was Charles Valen- 
 tine Le Grice, who describes him as follows : "Lamb," 
 he says, "was an amiable, gentle boy, very sensible 
 and keenly observing, indulged by his school fellows 
 and by his master on account of his infirmity of 
 speech.* His countenance was mild; his complexion 
 clear brown, with an expression which might lead 
 you to think that he was of Jewish descent. His 
 eyes were not each of the same colour, one was 
 hazel, the other had specks of grey in the iris, min- 
 gled as we see red spots in the bloodstone. His 
 step was plantigrade, which makes 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 
 unnecessary; but there was an implied kindness in 
 it, and it was a proof that his gentle manners ex- 
 cited that kindness. 
 
 *Lamb was a stammerer all his life. 
 
LIFE 13 
 
 "His delicate frame and his difficulty of utter- 
 ance, which was increased by agitation, unfitted him 
 for joining in any boisterous sport. The description 
 which he gives, in his 'Recollections of Christ's Hos- 
 pital/ of the habits and feelings of the schoolboy, is 
 true in general, but is more particularly a delinea- 
 tion of himself — the feelings were all in his own 
 heart-^-the portrait was his own : 'While others were 
 all fire and play, he stole along with all the self- 
 concentration of a young monk.' These habits and 
 feelings were awakened and cherished in him by 
 peculiar circumstances ; he had been born and bred 
 in the Inner Temple; and his parents continued to 
 reside there while he was at school, so he passed 
 from cloister to cloister, and this was all the change 
 his young mind ever knew. On every half-holiday 
 (and there were two in the week) in ten minutes he 
 was in the gardens, on the terrace, or at the foun- 
 tain of the Temple; here was his home, here his 
 recreation ; and the influence they had on his infant 
 mind is vividly shown in his description of the Old 
 Benchers." 
 
 Christ's Hospital had been founded for the bene- 
 fit of the children of gentlemen, and Lamb and Cole- 
 ridge were both charity students there. Admission 
 had doubtless been procured for Lamb through Sam- 
 uel Salt, one of the governors. There were scholar- 
 ships which might have enabled Lamb to go on to 
 the university, as did a majority of his school fel- 
 lows, who were destined for the church. But Lamb's 
 impediment in his speech precluded this, so at fif- 
 teen he left Christ's Hospital and two years later 
 
14 LAMB 
 
 we find him a clerk under his brother, John Lamb, 
 at the South Sea House, which was the subject of 
 his first essay. He did not stay there long, how- 
 ever, for Samuel Salt died in 1792 and the Lambs 
 moved away from the Inner Temple, probably to 
 Little Queen street. Both Mr. and Mrs. Lamb were 
 remembered in Samuel Salt's will, and doubtless had 
 accumulated considerable savings, though we soon 
 hear of Mary Lamb at work as a mantua-maker. 
 Within two months Charles was established in a 
 new position in the East India house, where he re- 
 mained for thirty-three years, finally retiring with a 
 pension. He was a clerk or bookkeeper in the ac- 
 countant's office and playfully referred to his "real 
 works" as the hundred odd volumes which he filled 
 with commercial entries. 
 
 His Only Love Affair. 
 
 Lamb lived and died a bachelor, but he had a 
 love affair with a girl he afterward in his essays 
 called Alice W . She was probably Ann Sim- 
 mons, and he met her, it is supposed, during visits 
 at his grandmother's, who lived in the country at 
 Blakesware. He probably spent part of the two 
 months between his leaving the South Sea House 
 and his entry upon his duties at the India House at 
 Blakesware, and here the romance reached its ma- 
 turity. Nothing came of it, perhaps on account of 
 Lamb's tendency to insanity, and the subsequent in- 
 sanity of his sister Mary. That it was more than a 
 youthful romance we have no reason to believe, 
 though lovers of Lamb seem to like to dwell upon 
 
LIFE 15 
 
 it as a serious thing. About all we know of it is 
 what Lamb tells us in his essay. Many years later 
 he proposed marriage to Fanny Kelly, the actress, 
 who was, and long continued to be, an intimate 
 friend of his family; but she refused him, and they 
 did not let this proposal interfere in their friend- 
 ship. 
 
 Lamb's Sister Mary Kills Her Mother. 
 
 Lamb says himself that he was confined for a 
 few weeks at one time in a madhouse, but he soon 
 recovered and never had any return of the malady. 
 Such was not the case with his sister Mary. She 
 had been working hard, caring for her mother, who 
 was ill and to whom she was devoted, and also la- 
 boring assiduously as a mantua-maker, in Septem- 
 ber, 1796, when, on September 22nd, she suddenly 
 became violently insane and stabbed her mother to 
 death. She wounded her father, but not seriously. 
 Lamb in a letter to Coleridge says he came in only 
 in time to snatch the knife from her hand. She was 
 immediately removed to a madhouse and placed in 
 confinement. 
 
 On the 3rd of October Lamb wrote to Coleridge : 
 "It will be a comfort to you to know that our pros- 
 pects are somewhat brighter. My poor dear dearest 
 sister, the unhappy and unconscious instrument of 
 the Almighty's judgments to our house, is restored 
 to her senses; to a dreadful sense and recollection 
 of what has passed, awful to her mind, and impres- 
 sive (as it must be to the end of life), but tempered 
 with religious resignation, and the reasonings of a 
 sound judgment, which in this early stage knows 
 
16 LAMB 
 
 how to distinguish between a deed committed in a 
 transient fit of frenzy and the terrible guilt of a 
 mother's murder. I have seen her. I found her this 
 morning calm and serene, far, very, very far from 
 an indecent forgetful serenity; she has a most af- 
 fectionate and tender concern for what has hap- 
 pened. Indeed, from the beginning, frightful and 
 hopeless as her disorder seemed, I had confidence 
 enough in her strength of mind and religious prin 
 ciple to look forward to a time when ever she might 
 recover tranquillity." 
 
 While the father lived, Mary was not allowed to 
 return home; but after his death Charles Lamb 
 undertook the care of his sister, and she was released 
 on his guarantee to be responsible for her. Barry 
 Cornwall says in his memoir of Lamb: "Whenever 
 the approach of one of her fits of insanity was an- 
 nounced, by some irritability or change of manner, 
 Lamb would take her, under his arm, to Hoxton 
 asylum. It was very affecting to encounter the 
 young brother and his sister walking together (weep- 
 ing together) on this painful errand; Mary herself, 
 although sad, was very conscious of the necessity for 
 temporary separation from her only friend. The; 
 used to carry a straight jacket with them." Latei 
 as Lamb's finances improved, Mary was cared foi 
 privately, either at home or with a nurse elsewhere. 
 Her fits lasted apparently for several weeks at ; 
 time, when she recovered completely and for a Ion* 
 time was her brother's most intimate and helpfu* 
 companion, sharing in his literary work, entertain- 
 ing his friends, and giving him the loving care he 
 
LIFE 17 
 
 might otherwise have received from a wife. The 
 pair were very fond of each other, and not happy 
 when long separated. 
 
 Lamb's Love for London. 
 
 In 1800 Lamb v/as offered rooms with his friend 
 Gutch, and he writes to Coleridge, — "I have got three 
 rooms (including servant) under £34 a year. Here 
 P soon found myself at home; and here, in six 
 weeks after, Mary was well enough to join me. So 
 we are once more settled, .... I have passed two 
 days at Oxford on a visit, which I have long put 
 off, to Gutch's family. The sight of the Bodleian 
 Library, and, above all, a fine bust of Bishop Taylor 
 at All Souls', were particularly gratifying to me; 
 unluckily, it was not a family where I could take 
 Mary with me, and I am afraid there is something 
 of dishonesty in any pleasures I take without her. 
 She never goes anywhere." 
 
 Lamb made the acquaintance of Wordsworth and 
 his sister Dorothy, and visited Grasmere, but he 
 was all his life as passionate a lover of the city as 
 Wordsworth was of the country. In a letter to Man- 
 fling he says, — "I must confess that I am not ro- 
 mance-bit about Nature. The earth, and sea, and sky 
 '(when all is said) is but as a house to dwell in. If 
 •the inmates be courteous, and good liquors flow like 
 *the conduits at an old coronation, if they can talk 
 Sensibly and feel properly, I have no need to stand 
 Istaring upon the gilded looking-glass (that strained 
 my friend's purse-strings in the purchase), nor his 
 five-shilling print over the mantelpiece of old Nabbs 
 
18 LAMB 
 
 the carrier (which only betrays his false taste). Just 
 as important to me (in a sense) is all the furniture 
 of my world — eye-pampering, but satisfies no heart. 
 Streets, streets, streets, markets, theatres, churches, 
 Covent Gardens, shops sparkling with pretty faces 
 of industrious milliners, neat semptresses, ladies 
 cheapening, gentlemen behind counters lying, authors 
 in the streets with spectacles, George Dyers (you 
 may know them by their gait), lamps lit at night, 
 pastry cooks, and silversmiths' shops, beautiful Quak- 
 ers of Pentonville, noise of coaches, drowsy cry of 
 mechanic watchmen at night, with bucks reeling home 
 drunk; if you happen to wake at midnight, cries 
 of 'fire' and 'stop thief; inns of court, with their 
 learned air, and halls, and butteries, just like Cam- 
 bridge colleges, old book-stalls, Jeremy Taylors, 
 Burtons on Melancholy, and Reli io Medicis on every 
 stall ! These are thy pleasures, O London with-the- 
 many-sins." 
 
 To the modern reader, Lamb is the literary spirit 
 of London. Says Walter Pater in his Apprecia- 
 tions : "He felt the genius of places ; and I some- 
 times thing he resembles the place he knew and liked 
 best — London, sixty-five years ago, with Covent Gar- 
 den and the old theatres, and the Temple gardens 
 still unspoiled, Thames gliding down, and beyond to 
 north and south the fields of Enfield or Hampton, 
 to which, 'with their living trees,' the thoughts wan- 
 der 'from the hard wood of the desk.' " 
 
 Mary Lamb and Her Brother. 
 
 Though it was Mary Lamb who brought the dark 
 
LIFE 19 
 
 cloud over the life of her brother, she was his com- 
 panion, his collaborator, his friend, filling almost 
 adequately the place of a wife to him, as Dorothy 
 Wordsworth did for her brother William. Says 
 Talfourd, Lamb's first adequate biographer, — "Miss 
 Lamb would have been remarkable for the sweetness 
 of her disposition, the clearness of her understand- 
 ing, and the gentle wisdom of all her acts and words, 
 even if these qualities had not been presented in mar- 
 vellous contrast with the distraction under which 
 she suffered for weeks, latterly for months, every 
 year. There was no tinge of insanity discernible in 
 her manner to the most observant eye; not even in 
 those distressful periods when the premonitory symp- 
 toms had apprised her of its approach, and she was 
 making preparations for seclusion. In all its essen- 
 tial sweetness, her character was like her brother's, 
 while, by a temper more placid, a spirit of enjoy- 
 ment more serene, she was enabled to guide, to coun- 
 sel, to cheer him, and to protect him on the verge 
 of the mysterious calamity, from the depths of which 
 she rose so often unruffled to his side. To a friend 
 in any difficulty she was the most comfortable of ad- 
 visers, the wisest of consolers. Hazlitt used to say 
 he never met with a woman who could reason, and 
 had met with only one thoroughly reasonable — the 
 sole exception being Mary Lamb." 
 
 Odd, Quaint, and Curious Friends. 
 
 Lamb had a genius for picking up odd, quaint, and 
 curious friends of every description. It mattered not 
 to him whether the man had two shirts to his back, 
 
20 LAMB 
 
 or was able to eat two square meals a day, so he 
 had some vein of quaint humor (for many of 
 Lamb's friends evidently little suspected their own 
 amusing side). 
 
 One of the first of these was George Dyer, whom 
 Lamb has immortalized as "G. D." in two of his 
 essays, "Oxford in Vacation" and "Amicus Redi- 
 vivus." In a letter to Manning (another of his 
 friends), dated Nov. 3, 1800, Lamb describes a new 
 acquaintance, one after his own heart and charac- 
 teristic of the genius he particularly fancied. "I have 
 made an acquisition latterly of a pleasant hand," 
 says he, "one Rickman, to whom I was introduced 
 by George Dyer, not the most flattering auspices 
 under which one man can be introduced to another 
 — George brings all sorts of people together, setting 
 up a sort of agrarian law, or common property, in 
 matter of society; but for once he has done me a 
 great pleasure, while he was only pursuing a prin- 
 ciple, as ignes fatui may light you home. This Rick- 
 man lives in our buildings, immediately opposite our 
 house; the finest fellow to drop in a' nights, about 9 
 or 10 o'clock — cold bread-and-cheese time — just in 
 the wishing time of the night, when you wish for 
 somebody to come in, without a distinct idea of a 
 probable anybody. Just in the nick, neither too early 
 to be tedious, nor too late to sit a reasonable time. 
 He is a most pleasant hand; a fine, rattling fellow, 
 has gone through life laughing at solemn apes; 
 himself hugely literate, oppressively full of infor- 
 mation in all stuff of conversation, from matter-of- 
 fact to Xenophon and Plato — can talk Greek with 
 
LIFE 21 
 
 Porson, politics with Thelwall, conjecture with 
 George Dyer, nonsense with me, and anything with 
 anybody; a great farmer, somewhat concerned in an 
 agricultural magazine — reads no poetry but Shaks- 
 pere, very intimate with Southey, but never reads 
 his poetry; relishes George Dyer, thoroughly pene- 
 trates into the ridiculous wherever found, under- 
 stands the first time (a great desideratum in common 
 mind*) — you need never speak twice to him; does 
 not want explanations, translations, limitations, as 
 Professor Godwin does when you make an asser- 
 tion; up to anything, down to everything — whatever 
 sapit hominem. A perfect man. All this farrago, 
 which must perplex you to read, and has put me to 
 a little trouble to select! only proves how impossible 
 it is to describe a pleasant hand. You must see Rick- 
 man to know him, for he is a species in one. A new 
 class. An exotic, any slip of which I am proud to 
 put in my garden spot. The clearest-headed fellow. 
 Fullest of matter with least verbosity." 
 
 That is just the sort of fellow Lamb liked and was 
 always looking for, and very often finding. In his 
 modest chambers with his sister Mary as uncon- 
 ventional hostess, he gathered these about him, and 
 probably enjoyed life as much as any man who ever 
 lived. 
 
 The "Convivial Cup." 
 
 Of course, in those days, the "convivial cup" was 
 ever present when friends were gathered together, 
 and under the influence of it Lamb bubbled over with 
 his choicest humor. It has been hinted that the cup 
 
22 LAMB 
 
 was Lamb's single weakness. On this point Talfourd 
 says, "Will anyone, acquainted with these secret 
 passages of Lamb's history, wonder that, with a 
 strong physical inclination for the stimulus and sup- 
 port of strong drinks — which man is framed moder- 
 ately to rejoice in — he should snatch some wild pleas- 
 ure 'between the acts' (as he called it) 'of his dis- 
 tressful drama,' and that, still more, during the lone- 
 liness of the solitude created by his sister's absences, 
 he should obtain the solace of an hour's feverish 
 dream? That, notwithstanding that fraility, he per- 
 formed the duties of his hard lot with exemplary 
 steadiness and discretion is indeed wonderful — es- 
 pecially when it is recollected that he had himself 
 been visited, when in the dawn of manhood, with 
 his sister's malady, the seeds of which were doubt- 
 less in his frame. While that original predisposition 
 may explain an occasional flightiness of expression 
 on serious matters, fruit of some wayward fancy, 
 which flitted through his brain, without disturbing 
 his constant reason^©!* reaching his heart, and some 
 little extravagances oiiitful mirth, how does it 
 heighten the moral courage"x^y which the disease 
 was controlled and the severest^ ^duties performed ! 
 Never, surely, was there a more striking example of 
 the power of a virtuous, rather say of a pious, wish 
 to conquer the fiery suggestions of latent insanity 
 than that presented by Lamb's history. Nervous, 
 tremulous, as he seemed — so slight of frame that 
 he looked only fit for the most placid fortune — when 
 the dismal emergencies which checkered his life 
 
LIFE 23 
 
 arose, he acted with as much promptitude and vigour 
 as if he had never penned a stanza nor taken a glass 
 too much, or was strung with herculean sinews." 
 
 A Clerk All His Life. 
 
 Lamb was a clerk at the East India House for 
 thirty-three years. The first three years, beginning 
 in 1792, he was on probation and received no sal- 
 ary. In 1795 he began to get a salary of forty 
 pounds a year, which was increased the next year 
 to seventy pounds, and rose steadily till, when he 
 retired, he was getting seven hundred and thirty 
 pounds a year. He was then retired on a pension 
 of four hundred and fifty pounds a year, which -he 
 received until his death. Any bookkeeper in these 
 days even who received as much would be thought 
 fortunate. As far as money was concerned, Lamb 
 lived in moderate comfort all his life. 
 
 No mention has been made of Lamb's literary 
 work. The fact is, he obtained no real success till 
 he was forty-five, and in 1820 began the essays of 
 Elia in the London Magazine. Yet all his life he 
 had been an aspiring unsuccessful author, trying 
 poetry first under the influence of Coleridge and 
 having some of his verses published in a volume with 
 Coleridge in 1796. In 1798, after the death of his 
 mother and also of his Aunt Hetty, Lamb wrote 
 the one poem which is today a household word, 
 "The Old Familiar Faces." In their original form 
 the verses ran thus: 
 
24 LAMB 
 
 THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES. 
 
 Where are they gone, the old familiar faces? 
 I had a mother, but she died, and left me, 
 Died prematurely in a day of horrors — 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 I have had playmates, I have had companions, 
 
 In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days — 
 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 I have been laughing, I have been carousing, 
 Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies — 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 I loved a love, once, fairest among women, 
 Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her — 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man. 
 Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly; 
 Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. 
 
 Ghost-like I paced 'round the haunts of my childhood, 
 Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, 
 Seeking to find the old familiar faces. 
 
 Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother's, 
 Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? 
 So might we talk of the old familiar faces? 
 
 For some they have died, and some they have left me, 
 And some are taken from me; all are departed; 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
LIFE 25 
 
 When the poem was reprinted in 1818 Lamb 
 omitted the first stanza, no doubt to avoid paining 
 his sister. The friend of the fifth stanza is Charles 
 Lloyd, some of whose verses are published with 
 Lamb's in Coleridge's volume, and who occasioned 
 an estrangement between Lamb and Coleridge, and 
 finally went out of the lives of both. The friend m 
 the seventh stanza is Coleridge himself. The itali- 
 cized words in the last stanza refer to Mary Lamb's 
 sequestration at the asylum. One other beautiful 
 poem he wrote when past fifty, "On an Infant Dy- 
 ing as Soon as Born." 
 
 Literary Ambitions. 
 
 In 1898 he wrote a novel, Rosamund Gray. It was 
 a simple story, into which Lamb introduced himself 
 and many of his friends, and it has "a very distinct 
 and interesting strain of eeriness." Had it not been 
 for the later essays the book would be quite forgot- 
 ten in our day, however. In the same year, 1798, 
 Lamb had been writing a tragedy entitled John 
 Woodvil. In 1800 we find him trying to get John 
 Philip Kemble to put the piece on the stage, but 
 in vain, and in 1802 he had it published in book 
 form. The critics did not receive it at all kindly. 
 
 In 1801 we find Lamb writing paragraphs for a 
 poor, struggling, anti-ministerial political paper— "an 
 outcast from politer bread," he says, "we attached 
 our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our 
 friend. Our occupation was now to write treason." 
 
 The same year Lamb tried to write paragraphs for 
 the Morning Chronicle, to add something to his in- 
 
26 LAMB 
 
 come, but most of his work was rejected. And then 
 he tried the Morning Post, whose editor, Stuart, 
 was a friend of Coleridge. "But as for poor Charles 
 Lamb," says Stuart, writing many years later of 
 Coleridge's contributions to the morning Post, "I 
 never could make anything of him." His contribu- 
 tions consisted for the most part of very short hu- 
 morous personal paragraphs, such as today we find 
 on the editorial pages of most of our newspapers. 
 Their strong points seems to be the italicizing of 
 three or four words in each paragraph. He de- 
 scribes his work in his Elia essay on ' "Newspapers," 
 in which he says he received sixpence a joke. In 
 1805 he had lost this work, and did not again return 
 to it. 
 
 In the later years he wrote some verses for chil- 
 dren, which were published in a very small illus- 
 trated volume, by William Godwin, who was trying 
 to add to his income by bringing out juvenile books 
 (his own and such others as he could obtain). The 
 next year, however, Mary Lamb prepared for Godwin 
 six "Tales from Shakespeare," and Charles Lamb 
 himself did others. In a letter to Manning he says 
 the work is to bring in sixty guineas. In a letter to 
 her friend, Sarah Stoddart, Mary Lamb writes : 
 "Charles has written Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, 
 and has begun Hamlet; you would like to see us, 
 as we often sit writing at one table (but not on one 
 cushion sitting), like Hermia and Helena in Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream; or rather, like an old liter- 
 ary Darby and Joan; I taking snuff, and he groan- 
 ing all the while, and saying he can make nothing of 
 
LIFE 27 
 
 it, which he always says till he has finished, and then 
 he finds out that he has made something of it. 
 . . . . Charles smokes still, and will smoke to the 
 end of the chapter." 
 
 These Tales from Shakespeare are more popular 
 today than they ever were, and are no more likely to 
 be forgotten than "The Old Familiar Faces." The 
 brother and sister collaborated on a series of stories 
 for children publisher as Mrs. Leicester's School, but 
 Mary Lamb wrote all but three. Charles was busy 
 editing a volume of "Specimens of English Dramatic 
 Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare." 
 Lamb also wrote and published a story for children 
 entitled Adventures of Ulysses, but it was not as 
 popular as the other children's volumes. In 1809 
 appeared a volume of Poetry for Children, and in 
 1811 Prince Dorus, a fairy tale. 
 
 In 1810 a quarterly was projected by Leigh Hunt, 
 and Lamb contributed to it some of his first essays. 
 His criticisms of Hogarth and of Shakspere's 
 tragedies were never surpassed. Yet he had not 
 found himself. The ReUector went "out of existence 
 with its fourth number. 
 
 Lamb was determined to be a dramatic author and 
 finally a farce entitled "Mr. H." (it turns on the un- 
 pleasant name of the principal character, which was 
 "Hogflesh") was actually put on the stage. A 
 friendly company of clerks came from the East India 
 House, and another from the South-Sea House, 
 but it would not do. It was heartily condemned 
 and Lamb himself, we are told, joined in the 
 hisses as cordially as any — he said later because he 
 
28 LAMB 
 
 was so damnably afraid of being taken for the 
 author. This ended his ambitions as a playwright. 
 
 Nothing else of importance was produced until 
 1818, when Lamb brought out his collected "Works," 
 thinking his literary career was ended. As a matter 
 of fact, the work by which alone he is known had 
 not even been thought of. 
 
 The Origin of Elia. 
 
 The London Magazine was started in 1820, and 
 Lamb was asked for a contribution. He wrote "Rec- 
 ollections of the South-Sea House," where he had 
 been a clerk for a few months eighteen years before, 
 but with which he was no doubt familiar through 
 his brother's engagement there for many years. Says 
 Lamb in a letter to Taylor, who published the maga- 
 zine, "Having a brother now there (at the South- 
 Sea House), and doubting how he might relish cer- 
 tain descriptions of it, I clapt down the name of Elia 
 to it, which passed off pretty well, for Elia himself 
 added the functions of an author t@ that of a scrive- 
 ner, like myself." Elia was the name of a clerk at 
 the South- Sea House when Lamb was there, and in 
 a letter to Taylor he adds, "I went the other day 
 (not having seen him [Elia] for a year) to laugh over 
 with him at my usurpation of his name, and found 
 him, alas ! no more than a name, for he had died of 
 consumption eleven months ago, and I knew not of 
 it. So the name had fairly devolved on me, I think; 
 and 'tis all he has left me." It is said all trace of 
 the original Elia and his writings has disappeared. 
 
 Mr. Lucas thinks the "comparative thinness of 
 
LIFE 29 
 
 Lamb's pre-Elian writings and the Elian richness 
 and colour" may be accounted for by the very fact 
 that Lamb was constitutionally unable to do his best 
 except affecting to be some one else. "The innocent 
 imposture confers courage, disarms diffidence." Says 
 Barry Cornwall, "He was himself eminently modest; 
 he never put himself forward; he was always sought. 
 He had* much to say on many subjects, and he was 
 repeatedly pressed to say this before he consented 
 to do so. He was almost teased into writing the 
 Elia essays." He was paid two or three times as 
 much as the other authors, yet in two years he had 
 been paid less than a thousand dollars. 
 
 What Elia is to Literature. 
 
 The Essays of Elia are nearly all simple descrip- 
 tions of Lamb himself and his friends and the scenes 
 he was familiar with. They were very little influ- 
 enced by anything before their time, and they have 
 never since been successfully imitated. "Their 'facts' 
 are not of the utilitarian order; their humour leads 
 rarely to loud laughter; rather to the quiet smile; 
 they are not stories, they are not poems; they are 
 not difficult enough to suggest 'mental improvement' 
 to those who count it loss unless they are puzzled, 
 nor simple enough for those who demand of their 
 authors no confounded nonsense. 
 
 "At the same time, English literature has nothing 
 that in its way is better than Elia's best. The blend 
 of sanity, sweet reasonableness, tender fancy, high 
 imagination, sympathetic understanding of human na- 
 ture, and humour, now wistful, now frolicsome, with 
 
30 LAMB 
 
 literary skill of unsurpassed delicacy, make Elia 
 unique. . . . 
 
 "But why is Elia so treasured a volume. . . . Be- 
 cause Elia describes with so much sympathy most of 
 the normal feelings of mankind, because Lamb un- 
 derstands so much, and is so cheering to the lowly, 
 so companionable to the luckless. He is always on 
 the side of those who need a friend. He is 'in love 
 with the green earth/ he never soars out of reach, 
 never withholds his tolerance for our weaknesses." 
 
 Swinburne says, "No good criticism of Lamb, 
 strictly speaking, can ever be written ; because no- 
 body can do justice to his work who does not love 
 it too well to feel himself capable of giving judgment 
 upon it. . . . The truth is simple and indisputable 
 that no labour could be at once so delightful and so 
 useless, so attractive and so vain, as the task of 
 writing in praise of Lamb. Any man or any child 
 who can feel anything of his charm utters better 
 praise of him in silence than any array of epithets 
 or periods could give. Any man or any woman who 
 can feel nothing of his charm is outside the pale of 
 any possible influence or impression from any rea- 
 soning or any enthusiasm of others." 
 
 Lamb has described himself so well in his own 
 essays, notably "New Year's Eve," "Imperfect Sym- 
 pathies," and the "Character of the Late Elia," that 
 it seems foolish to waste our time upon the words of 
 others. 
 
 Writing to John Taylor, editor of the London 
 Magazine, Lamb says of himself, "Poor Elia does 
 not pretend to so very clear revelations of a future 
 
LIFE 31 
 
 state of being as Olen seems gifted with. He stum- 
 bles about dark mountains at best; but he knows at 
 least how to be thankful for this life, and is too 
 thankful indeed for certain relationships lent him 
 here, not to tremble for a possible resumption of 
 the gift. He is too apt to express himself lightly, 
 and cannot be sorry for the present occasion, as it 
 has called forth a reproof so Christian-like." This 
 was apropos of a poem published in the London 
 Magazine in which Charles Abraham Elton, signing 
 himself "Olen," reasoned gently but firmly with 
 Elia's unhappy skepticism — "it set up a cheerful 
 Christian certainty in place of Lamb's wistful hesi- 
 tancies," and finally offered him a blissful picture of 
 union with his "Alice" in heaven if he was good. 
 Elsewhere Lamb says, "I am in love with this green 
 earth." His religious creed was that it was best 
 to be thankful for this life and make the most of it, 
 whatever may be beyond. 
 
 The last years of Lamb's life were made happy by 
 a young girl whom he and Mary adopted in 1823. 
 She was Emma Isola, granddaughter of Agostino 
 Isola, a teacher of Italian at Cambridge. The Lambs 
 first saw the little girl on a visit to Cambridge in 
 1820. She was eleven years old and motherless. In 
 the following January she went to visit them, and 
 when her father died they adopted her. She mar- 
 ried Edward Moxon, the publisher, in 1833. Lamb 
 in a letter describing the wedding says, "I tripped 
 a little at the altar, was engaged in admiring the 
 altar-piece, but, recalled seasonably by a Parsonic 
 
32 LAMB 
 
 rebuke, 'Who gives this woman!' was in time to re- 
 ply resolutely, 'I do.' " 
 
 At the end of 1822 he tired of Elia and attempted 
 to kill off the character, but it was revived and 
 more Elia essays were written. The contributions 
 to the London Magazine continued until 1825. The 
 first volume of Essays of Elia was published in 
 1823. Ten years later was published Last Essays of 
 Elia, and in the following year, December 27, 1834, 
 Lamb died. Mary Lamb lived eleven years longer. 
 She received one hundred and twenty pounds a year 
 pension from the East India House Clerks' Fund, 
 and Lamb left two thousand pounds. 
 
ESSAYS OF EUA 
 
 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER 
 TEMPLE. 
 
 I was born, and passed the first seven years of my 
 life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gar- 
 dens, its fountains, its river, I had almost said — 
 for in those young years, what was this king of 
 rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleas- 
 ant places? these are of my oldest recollection. I 
 repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more fre- 
 quently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of 
 Spenser, where he speaks of this spot: 
 
 There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, 
 The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride. 
 Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers. 
 There whylome wont the Templar knights to bide, 
 Till they decayed through pride. 
 
 Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metrop- 
 olis. What a transition for a countryman visiting 
 London for the first time — the passing from the 
 crowded Strand or Fleet street, by unexpected ave- 
 nues, into its magnificent ample squares, its classic 
 green recesses ! What a cheerful, liberal look hath 
 that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks 
 the greater garden ; that goodly pile 
 
84 LAMB 
 
 Of building strong, albeit of paper height, 
 
 confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, 
 more fantastically-shrouded one, named of Harcourt, 
 with the cheerful Crown-Office-row (place of my 
 kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream; 
 which washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely 
 trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned 
 from her Twickenham Naiades ! a man would give 
 something to have been born in such places. What 
 a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, 
 where the fountain plays, which I have made to rise 
 and fall, how many times, to the astoundment of the 
 young urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being 
 able to guess at its recondite machinery, were al- 
 most tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic. 
 What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun- 
 dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals 
 with that Time which they measured, and to take 
 their revelations of its flight immediately from 
 heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain 
 of light. How would the dark line steal impercep- 
 tibly on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager to 
 detect its movement, never catched, nice as an 
 evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep. 
 
 Ah ! yet doth beauty like a dial hand 
 
 Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! 
 
 What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous 
 embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn 
 dullness of communication, compared with the sim- 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS 35 
 
 pie, altar-like structure and silent heart-language of 
 the old dial! It stood as the garden god of Chris- 
 tian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished ? 
 If its business use be superseded by more elaborate 
 inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have 
 pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate 
 labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of 
 temperance and good hours. It was the primitive 
 clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could 
 scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the meas- 
 ure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to spring 
 by, for the birds to apportion their silver warblings 
 by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold by. The 
 shepherd "carved it out quaintly in the sun"; and, 
 turning philosopher by the very occupation, provided 
 it with mottoes more touching than tombstones. It 
 was a pretty device of the gardener, recorded by 
 Marvell, who, in the days of artificial gardening, 
 made a dial out of herbs and flowers. I must quote 
 his verses a little higher up, for they are full, as all 
 his serious poetry was, of witty delicacy. They will 
 not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of foun- 
 tains and sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet garden 
 scenes : 
 
 What wondrous life is this I lead! 
 Ripe apples drop about my head. 
 The luscious clusters of the vine 
 Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 
 The nectarine, and curious peach, 
 Into my hands themselves do reach. 
 Stumbling on melons as I pass, 
 Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 
 
36 LAMB 
 
 Meanwhile the mind from pleasures less 
 
 Withdraws into its happiness. 
 
 The mind, that ocean, where each kind 
 
 Does straight its own resemblance find; 
 
 Yet it creates, transcending these, 
 
 Far other worlds and other seas ; 
 
 Annihilating all that's made 
 
 To a green thought in a green shade. 
 
 Here at the fountain's sliding foot 
 
 Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 
 
 Casting the body's vest aside, 
 
 My soul into the boughs does glide; 
 
 There, like a bird, it sits and sings, 
 
 Then whets and claps its silver wings, 
 
 And, till prepared for longer flight, 
 
 Waves in its plumes the various light. 
 
 How well the skillful gardener drew 
 
 Of flowers and herbs, this dial new, 
 
 Where, from above, the milder sun 
 
 Does through a fragrant zodiac run: 
 
 And, as it works, the industrious bee 
 
 Computes its time as well as we. 
 
 How could such sweet and wholesome hours 
 
 Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers?* 
 
 The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in 
 like manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried 
 up or bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in 
 that little green nook behind the South-Sea House, 
 what a freshness it gives to the dreary pile. Four 
 little winged marble boys used to play their virgin 
 
 'From a copy of verses entitled "The Garden." 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS 37 
 
 fancies, spouting out ever fresh streams from their 
 innocent-wanton lips in the square of Lincoln's Inn, 
 when I was no bigger than they were figured. They 
 are gone and the spring choked up. The fashion, 
 they tell me, is gone by, and these things are 
 esteemed childish. Why not, then, gratify children, 
 by letting them stand? Lawyers, I suppose, were 
 children once. They are awakening images to them 
 at least. Why must everything smack of man and 
 mannish? Is the world all grown up? Is childhood 
 dead? Or is there not in the bosoms of the wisest 
 and the best some of the child's heart left to respond 
 to its earliest enchantments? The figures were gro- 
 tesque. Are the stiff-wigged living figures, that still 
 flitter and chatter about that area, less Gothic in 
 appearance? or is the splutter of their hot rhetoric 
 one-half so refreshing and innocent as the little 
 cool, playful streams those exploded cherubs ut- 
 tered? 
 
 They have lately gothicized the - entrance to the 
 Inner Temple-hall, and the library front; to assim- 
 ilate them, I suppose, to the body of the hall, which 
 they do not at all resemble. What is become of the 
 winged horse that stood over the former? a stately 
 arms ! and who has removed those frescoes of the 
 Virtues, which Italianized the end of the Paper- 
 buildings? my first hint of allegory! They must 
 account to me for these things, which I miss so 
 greatly. 
 
 The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call 
 the parade ; but the traces are passed away of the 
 footsteps which made its pavement awful! It is 
 
38 LAMB 
 
 become common and profane. The old benchers had 
 it almost sacred to themselves, in the fore part of 
 the day at least. They might not be sided or jostled. 
 Their air and dress asserted the parade. You left 
 wide spaces betwixt you when you passed them. We 
 walk on even terms with their successors. The 
 roguish eye of J — 11, ever ready to be delivered of a 
 jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee with 
 it. But what insolent familiar durst have mated 
 Thomas Coventry? whose person was a quadrate, 
 his step massy and elephantine, his face square as 
 the lion's, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, in- 
 divertible from his way as a moving column, the 
 scarecrow of his inferiors, the browbeater of equals 
 and superiors, who made a solitude of children 
 wherever he came, for they fled his insufferable 
 presence, as they would have shunned an Elisha 
 bear. His growl was as thunder in their ears, 
 whether he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke; 
 his invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most 
 repulsive and horrid. Clouds of snuff, aggravating 
 the natural terrors of his speech, broke from each 
 majestic nostril, darkening the air. He took it, not 
 by pinches, but a palmful at once, diving for it un- 
 der the mighty flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat 
 pocket; his waistcoat red and angry, his coat dark 
 rappee, tinctured by dye original, and by adjuncts, 
 with buttons of absolute gold. And so he paced the 
 terrace. 
 
 By his side a milder form was sometimes to be 
 seen; the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They 
 were coevals, and had nothing but that and their 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS 39 
 
 benchership in common. In politics Salt was a whig, 
 and Coventry a staunch tory. Many a sarcastic 
 growl did the latter cast out — for Coventry had a 
 rough spinous humor — at the political confederates 
 of his associate, which rebounded from the gentle 
 bosom- of the latter like cannon-balls from wool. You 
 could not ruffle Samuel Salt. 
 
 S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, 
 and of excellent discernment in the chamber prac- 
 tice of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not 
 amount to much. When a case of difficult disposi- 
 tion of money, testamentary or otherwise, came be- 
 fore him, he ordinarily handed it over, with a few 
 instructions, to his man Lovel, who was a quick little 
 fellow, and would despatch it out of hand by the 
 light of natural understanding, of which he had an 
 uncommon share. It was incredible what repute for 
 talents S. enjoyed by the mere trick of gravity. He 
 was a shy man ; a child might pose him in a minute 
 — indolent and procrastinating to the last degree. Yet 
 men would give him credit for vast application, in 
 spite of himself. He was not to be trusted with 
 himself with impunity. He never dressed for a din- 
 ner party but he forgot his sword — they wore swords 
 then — or some other necessary part of his equipage. 
 Lovel had his eye upon him on all these occasions, 
 and ordinarily gave him his cue. If there was any- 
 thing which he could speak unseasonably, he was 
 sure to do it. He was to dine at a relative's of the 
 unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of her exe- 
 cution; and L., who had a wary foresight of his 
 probable hallucinations, before he set out schooled 
 
40 LAM3 
 
 him, with great anxiety, not in any possible manner 
 to allude to her story that day. S. promised faith- 
 fully to observe the injunction. He had not been 
 seated in the parlour, where the company was ex- 
 pecting the dinner summons, four minutes, when, a 
 pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up, looked 
 out of the window, and pulling down his ruffles — 
 an ordinary motion with him — observed, "it was a 
 gloomy day," and added, "Miss Blandy must be 
 hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances of this 
 sort were perpetual. Yet S. was thought by some 
 of the greatest men of his time a fit person to be 
 consulted, not alone in matters pertaining to the 
 law, but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments 
 of conduct — from force of manner entirely. He 
 never laughed. He had the same good fortune among 
 the female world — was a known toast with the ladies, 
 and one or two are said to have died for love of 
 him — I suppose, because he never trifled or talked 
 gallantly with them, or paid them, indeed, hardly 
 common attentions. He had a fine face and person, 
 but wanted, methought, the spirit that should have 
 shown them off with advantage to the women. His 
 
 eye lacked luster. Not so, thought Susan P ; 
 
 who, at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the 
 cold evening time, unaccompanied, wetting the pave- 
 ment of B d Row with tears that fell in drops 
 
 which might be heard, because her friend had died 
 that day — he, whom she had pursued with a hope- 
 less passion for the last forty years — a passion which 
 years could not extinguish or abate; nor the long- 
 resolved, yet gently-enforced, puttings off of unre- 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS 41 
 
 lenting bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished pur- 
 pose. Mild Susan P , thou hast now thy friend 
 
 in heaven ! 
 
 Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family 
 of that name. He passed his youth in contracted 
 circumstances, which gave him early those parsi- 
 monious habits which in after life never forsook 
 him; so that with one windfall or another, about the 
 time I knew him, he was master of four or five 
 hundred thousand pounds ; nor did he look or walk 
 worth a moidore less. He lived in a gloomy house 
 opposite the pump in Serjeant's-inn, Fleet street. 
 J., the counsel, is doing self-imposed penance in it, 
 for what reason I divine not, at this day. C. had an 
 agreeable seat at North Cray, where he seldom spent 
 above a day or two at a time in the summer ; but 
 preferred, during the hot months, standing at his 
 window in this damp, close, well-like mansion, to 
 watch, as he said, "the maids drawing water all day 
 long." I suspect he had his within-door reasons for 
 the preference. Hie currus ei arma fuere. He might 
 think his treasures more safe. His house had the 
 aspect of a strong box. C. was a close hunks — a 
 hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a miser, none of 
 the mad Elwes breed, who have brought discredit 
 upon a character which cannot exist without cer- 
 tain admirable points of steadiness and unity of pur- 
 pose. One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I 
 suspect, so easily despise him. By taking care of the 
 pence he is often enabled to part with the pounds, 
 upon a scale that leaves us careless, generous fellows 
 halting at an immeasurable distance behind. C. gave 
 
42 LAMB 
 
 ftway i30,000 at once in his lifetime to a blind char- 
 ity. His housekeeping was severely looked after, but 
 he kept the table of a gentleman. He would know 
 who came in and who went out of his house, but 
 his kitchen chimney was never suffered to freeze. 
 
 Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never 
 knew what he was worth in the world; and having 
 but a competency for his rank, which his indolent 
 kabits were little calculated to improve, might have 
 suffered severely if he had not had honest people 
 about him. Lovel took care of everything. He was 
 at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his 
 friend, his "flapper," his guide, stop-watch, auditor, 
 treasurer. He did nothing without consulting Lovel, 
 or failed in anything without expecting and fearing 
 his admonishing. He put himself almost too much 
 in his hands, had they not been the purest in the 
 world. He resigned his title almost to respect as a 
 master, if L. could ever have forgotten for a mo- 
 ment that he was a servant. 
 
 I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incor- 
 rigible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, 
 and "would strike." In the cause of the oppressed 
 he never considered inequalities, or calculated the 
 number of his opponents. He once wrested a sword 
 out of the hand of a man of quality that had drawn 
 upon him, and pommeled him severely with the hilt 
 of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a fe- 
 male — an occasion upon which no odds against him 
 could have prevented the interference of Lovel. He 
 would stand next day bareheaded to the same per- 
 son modestly to excuse his interference — for L. never 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS 43 
 
 forgot rank where something better was not con- 
 cerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing, 
 had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said 
 greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him which 
 confirms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous 
 poetry — next to Swift and Prior — molded heads in 
 clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of 
 natural genius merely; turned cribbage boards, and 
 such small cabinet toys, to perfection; took a hand 
 at quadrille or bowls with equal facility ; made punch 
 better than any man of his degree in England; had 
 the merriest quips and conceits; and was altogether 
 as brimful of rogueries and inventions as you could 
 desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, 
 and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as 
 Mr. Izaak Walton would have chosen to go a-fishing 
 with. I saw him in his old age and the decay of 
 his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of 
 human weakness — "a remnant most "forlorn of what 
 he was" — yet even then his eye would light up upon 
 the mention of favorite Garrick. He was greatest, 
 he would say, in Bayes — "was upon the stage nearly 
 throughout the whole performance, and as busy as a 
 bee." At intervals, too, he would speak of his former 
 life, and how he came up a little boy from Lincoln, 
 to go to service, and how his mother cried at parting 
 with him, and how he returned, after some few years' 
 absence, in his smart new livery, to see her, and she 
 blest herself at the change, and could hardly be 
 brought to believe that it was "her own bairn." And 
 then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, till 
 I have wished that sad second-childhood might have 
 
44 LAMB 
 
 a mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the 
 common mother of us all in no long time after re- 
 ceived him gently into hers. 
 
 With Coventry and with Salt, in their walks upon 
 the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join 
 to make up a third. They did not walk linked arm- 
 in-arm in those days — "as now our stout triumvirs 
 sweep the streets" — but generally with both hands 
 folded behind them for state, or with one at least 
 behind the other carrying a cane. P. was a benev- 
 olent, but not a prepossessing man. He had that in 
 his face which you could not term unhappiness ; it 
 rather implied an incapacity of being happy. His 
 cheeks were colorless, even to whiteness. His look 
 was uninviting, resembling (but without his sour- 
 ness) that of our great philanthropist. I know that 
 he did good acts, but I could never make out what 
 he was. Contemporary with these, but subordinate, 
 was Daines Barrington — another oddity — he walked 
 burly and square, in imitation, I think, of Coventry 
 — howbeit he attained not to the dignity of his pro- 
 totype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, upon the 
 strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, and having 
 a brother a bishop. When the account of his year's 
 treasurership came to be audited, the following sin- 
 gular charge was unanimously disallowed by the 
 bench : "Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the gardener, 
 twenty shillings for stuff to poison the sparrows, by 
 my orders." Next to him was old Barton, a jolly 
 negation, who took upon him the ordering of the 
 bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where the 
 benchers dine — answering to the combination rooms 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS 45 
 
 at College — much to the easement of his less epi- 
 curean brethren. I know nothing more of him. Then 
 Read, and Twopenny — Reed good-humoured and per- 
 sonable — Twopenny, good-humoured, but thin, and fe- 
 licitous in jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, 
 Wharry was attenuated and fleeting. Many must 
 member him (for he was rather of later date) and 
 his singular gait, which was performed by three steps 
 and a jump regularly succeeding. The steps were 
 little efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk; 
 the jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot to an 
 inch. Where he learned this figure, or what occa- 
 sioned it, I could never discover. It was neither 
 graceful in itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose 
 any better than common walking. The extreme 
 tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It 
 was a trial of poising. Twopenny would often rally 
 him upon his leanness, and hail him as Brother 
 Lusty; but W. had no relish of a joke. His features 
 were spiteful. I have heard that he would pinch his 
 cat's ears extremely when anything had offended 
 him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson, he was called 
 — was of this period. He had the reputation of pos- 
 sessing more multifarous knowledge than any man 
 of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the less 
 literate portion of the Temple. I remember a pleas- 
 ant passage of the cook applying to him, with much 
 formality of apology, for instructions how to write 
 down edge bone of beef in his bill of commons. He 
 was supposed to know, if any man in the world did. 
 He decided the orthography to be — as I have given 
 it — fortifying his authority with such anatomical rea- 
 
46 LAMB 
 
 sons as dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned 
 and happy. Some do spell it yet, perversely, aitch 
 bone, from a fanciful resemblance between its shape 
 and that of the aspirate so denominated. I had al- 
 most forgotten Mingay with the iron hand — but he 
 was somewhat later. He had lost his right hand by 
 some accident, and supplied it with a grappling-hook, 
 which he wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I de- 
 tected the substitute before I was old enough to 
 reason whether it were artificial or not. I remember 
 the astonishment it raised in me. He was a blus- 
 tering, loud-talking person ; and I reconciled the phe- 
 nomenon to my ideas as an emblem of power — 
 somewhat like the horns in the forehead of Michael 
 Angelo's Moses. Baron Maseres, who walks (or did 
 till very lately) in the costume of the reign of George 
 the Second, closes my imperfect recollections of the 
 old bachelors of the Inner Temple. 
 
 Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled? Or, if the 
 like of you exist, why exist they no more for me? 
 Ye inexplicable, half-understood appearances, why 
 comes in reason to tear away the preternatural mist, 
 bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you? Why make 
 ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to 
 me — to my childish eyes — the mythology of the Tem- 
 ple? In those days I saw Gods, as "old men cov- 
 ered with a mantle," walking upon the earth. Let 
 the dreams of classic idolatry perish — extinct be the 
 fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, in 
 the heart of childhood there will, forever, spring up 
 a well of innocent or wholesome superstition — the 
 seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital 
 
THE OLD BENCHERS 47 
 
 < — from every-day forms educing the unknown and 
 the uncommon. In that little Goshen there will be 
 light when the grown world flounders about in the 
 darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, 
 and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, 
 imagination shall not have spread her holy wings 
 totally to fly the earth. 
 
 P. S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of 
 Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect 
 memory, and the erring notices of childhood! Yet 
 I protest that I always thought that he had been a 
 bachelor! This gentleman, R. N. informs me, mar- 
 ried young, and losing his lady in childbed, within 
 the first year of their union, fell into a deep melan- 
 choly, from the effects of which, probably, he never 
 thoroughly recovered. In what a new light does 
 this place his rejection (O call it by a gentler 
 
 name!) of mild Susan P , unravelling into beauty 
 
 certain peculiarities of this very shy and retiring 
 character! Henceforth let no one receive the nar- 
 ratives of Elia for true records! They are, in 
 truth, but shadows of fact — versimilitudes, not veri- 
 ties — or sitting but upon the remote edges and out- 
 skirts of history. He is no such honest chronicler 
 as R. N. and would have done better perhaps to 
 have consulted that gentleman before he sent these 
 incondite reminiscences to press. But the worthy 
 sub-treasurer — who respects his old and his new 
 masters — would but have been puzzled at the in- 
 decorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots not, 
 peradventure, of the license which Magazines have 
 arrived at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly 
 
48 LAMB 
 
 dreams of their existence beyond the Gentleman's 
 — his furthest monthly excursions in this nature 
 having been long confined to the holy ground of 
 honest Urban 's obituary. May it be long before his 
 own name shall help to swell those columns of un- 
 envied flattery. Meantime, O ye New Benchers of 
 the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is 
 himself the kindliest of human creatures. Should 
 infirmity overtake him — he is yet in green and vig- 
 orous senility — make allowances for them, remem- 
 bering that "ye yourselves are old." So may the 
 Winged Horse, your ancient badge and cognizance, 
 still flourish; So may future Hookers and Seldens 
 illustrate your church and chambers! So may the 
 sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers, 
 unpoisoned hop about your walks ! So may the 
 fresh-colored and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by 
 leave, airs her playful charge in your stately gar- 
 dens, drop her prettiest blushing courtesy as ye 
 pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion! So may 
 the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing 
 your stately terrace, with the same superstitious 
 veneration with which the child Elia gazed on the 
 Old Worthies that solemnized the parade before ye! 
 
DREAM CHILDREN 49 
 
 DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE. 
 
 Children love to listen to stories about their elders, 
 when they were children; to stretch their imagina- 
 tion to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, 
 or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this 
 spirit that my little ones crept about me the other 
 evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, 
 who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred 
 times bigger than that in which they and papa lived) 
 which had been the scene — so at least it was gener- 
 ally believed in that part of the country — of the 
 tragic incidents which they had lately become fa- 
 miliar with from the ballad of the Children in the 
 Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the 
 children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly 
 carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the 
 great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Red- 
 breasts ; till a foolish rich person pulled it down to 
 set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, 
 with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of 
 her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called up- 
 braiding. Then I went on to say, how religious and 
 how good their great-grandmother Field was, how 
 beloved and respected by everybody, though she was 
 not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had 
 only charge of it and yet in some respects she might 
 be said to be mistress of it too) committed to her by 
 the owner, who preferred living in a newer and 
 more fashionable mansion which he had purchased 
 
50 LAMB 
 
 somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she 
 lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and 
 kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while 
 she lived, which afterward came to decay and was 
 nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments 
 stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, 
 where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if 
 some one were to carry away the old tombs they 
 had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in 
 Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John 
 smiled, as much as to say, "that would be foolish 
 indeed." And then I told how, when she came to 
 die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all 
 the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neigh- 
 bourhood for miles round to show their respect for 
 her memory, because she had been such a good and 
 religious woman; so good indeed that she knew all 
 the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the 
 Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her 
 hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful 
 person their great-grandmother Field once was; and 
 how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer — 
 here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary 
 movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted — 
 the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a 
 cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her 
 down with pain; but it could never bend her good 
 spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still up- 
 right, because she was so good and religious. Then 
 I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone 
 chamber of the great lone house ; and how she believed 
 that an apparition of two infants was to be seen 
 
DREAM CHILDREN 51 
 
 at midnight gliding up and down the great stair- 
 case near where she slept, but she said "those inno- 
 cents would do her no harm;" and how frightened 
 I used to be, though in those days I had my maid 
 to sleef) with me, because I was never half so good 
 or religious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. 
 Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to 
 look courageous. Then I told how good she was 
 to all her grandchildren, having us to the great house 
 in the holy-days, where I in particular used to spend 
 many hours by myself in gazing upon the old busts 
 of the twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of 
 Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live 
 again, or I to be turned into marble with them; how 
 I never could be tired with roaming about the huge 
 mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn- 
 out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken 
 panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out — some- 
 times in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I 
 had almost to myself, unless when now and then a 
 solitary gardening man would cross me — and how 
 the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, 
 without my ever offering to pluck them, because they 
 were forbidden fruit, unless now and then — and be- 
 cause I had more pleasure in strolling about the old 
 melancholy-looking yew-trees or the firs, and picking 
 up the red berries, and the fir-apples which were 
 good for nothing but to look at — or in lying about 
 upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden smells 
 around me — or basking in the orangery till I could 
 almost fancy myself ripening too, along with the 
 oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth, 
 
52 LAMB 
 
 or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in 
 the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with 
 here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway 
 down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at 
 their impertinent friskings. I had more pleasure in 
 these busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet fla- 
 vors of peaches, nectarines, oranges and such-like 
 common baits of children. Here John slyly de- 
 posited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, 
 not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing 
 with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them 
 for the present as irrelevant. Then, in somewhat more 
 heightened tone, I told how, though their great- 
 grandmother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet 
 in an especial manner she might be said to love their 
 
 uncle John L , because he was so handsome and 
 
 spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us; and 
 instead of moping about in solitary corners, like 
 some of us, he would mount the most nettlesome 
 horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than 
 themselves, and make it carry him half over the 
 county in a morning, and join the hunters when 
 there were any out — and yet he loved the old great 
 house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to 
 be always pent up within their boundaries — and how 
 their great uncle grew up to man's estate as brave 
 as he was handsome, to the admiration of everybody, 
 but of their great grandmother Field most especially, 
 and how he used to carry me upon his back when I 
 was a lame-footed boy — for he was a good bit older 
 than me — many a mile when I could not walk for 
 pain; and how in after life he became lame- footed 
 
DREAM CHILDREN 53 
 
 too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances 
 enough for him when he was impatient and in pain, 
 nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had 
 been to me when I was lame-footed; and how when 
 he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it 
 seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such 
 a distance there is betwixt life and death ; and how 
 I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, 
 but afterward it haunted and haunted me; and 
 though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, 
 and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet 
 I missed him all day long, and knew not till then 
 how much I loved him. I missed his kindness, and 
 I missed his crossness, and I wished him to be alive 
 again, to be quarreling with him (for we quarreled 
 sometimes), rather than not have him again, and 
 was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor uncle, 
 must have been when the doctor took off his limb. 
 Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if their 
 little mourning which they had on was not for 
 Uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed me not 
 to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some 
 stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told 
 how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, some- 
 times in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the 
 
 fair Alice W n; and as much as children could 
 
 understand, I explained to them what coyness, and 
 difficulty, and denial, meant in maidens — when sud- 
 denly turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice 
 looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re- 
 presentment, that I became in doubt which of them 
 stood there before me, or whose that bright hair 
 
54 LAMB 
 
 was; and while I stood gazing both the children 
 gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and 
 still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful 
 features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, 
 without speech, strangely impressed upon me the 
 effects of speech : "We are not of Alice, nor of 
 thee, nor are we children at all! The children of 
 Alice called Bartrum father. We are nothing, less 
 than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might 
 have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores 
 of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence 
 and a name" — and immediately awaking, I found 
 myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, 
 where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget 
 unchanged by my side — but John L. (or James Elia) 
 was gone forever. 
 
 MY FIRST PLAY. 
 
 At the north end of Cross-court there yet stands 
 a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though 
 reduced to humble use, serving at present for an en- 
 trance to a printing-office. This old door-way, if 
 you are young, reader, you may not know was the 
 identical pit entrance to old Drury — Garrick's Drury 
 — all of it that is left. I never pass it without shak- 
 ing some forty years from off my shoulders, recur- 
 ring to the evening when I passed through it to see 
 my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and the 
 condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) 
 was, that the rain should cease. With what a beat- 
 
MY FIRST PLAY 55 
 
 ing heart did I watch from the window the puddles, 
 from the stillness of which I was taught to prog- 
 nosticate the desired cessation ! I seem to remember 
 the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to 
 announce it. 
 
 We went with orders, which my godfather F. had 
 sent us. He kept the oil shop (now Davis') at the 
 corner of Featherstone-buildings, in Holborn. F. 
 was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had 
 pretensions above his rank. He associated in those 
 days with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait 
 and bearing he seemed to copy; if John (which is 
 quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat 
 of his manner from my godfather. He was also 
 known to and visited by Sheridan. It was to his 
 house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought his 
 first wife on her elopement with him from the board- 
 ing school at Bath — the beautiful Maria Linley. My 
 parents were present (over a quadrille table) when 
 he arrived in the evening with his harmonious 
 charge. From either of these connections it may be 
 inferred that my godfather could command an order 
 for the then Drury-lane Theater at pleasure — and, 
 indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets, in 
 Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say was 
 the sole remuneration which he had received for 
 many years' nightly illumination of the orchestra 
 and various avenues of that theater — and he was 
 content it should be so. The honour of Sheridan's 
 familiarity — or supposed familiarity — was better to 
 my godfather than money. 
 
 F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen; grandilo- 
 
56 LAMB 
 
 quent, yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest 
 matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin 
 words almost constantly in his mouth (how odd 
 sounds Latin from an oilman's lips) which my bet- 
 ter knowledge since has enabled me to correct. In 
 strict pronunciation they should have been sounded 
 vice versa, but in those young ears they impressed 
 me with more awe than they would now do, read 
 aright from Seneca or Varro, in his own peculiar 
 pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or An- 
 glicised, into something like verse verse. By an im- 
 posing manner, and the help of these distorted 
 syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the 
 highest parochial honours which St. Andrew's has 
 to bestow. 
 
 He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his 
 memory, both for my first orders (little wondrous 
 talismans ! — slight keys, and insignificant to outward 
 sight, but opening to me more than Arabian para- 
 dises!) and, moreover, that by his testamentary 
 beneficence I came into possession of the only landed 
 property which I could ever call my own — situate 
 near the road-way village of pleasant Puckeridge, in 
 Hertfordshire. When I journeyed down to take pos- 
 session, and planted foot on my own ground, the 
 stately habits of the donor descended upon me, and 
 I strode (shall I confess the vanity?) with larger 
 paces over my allotment of three-quarters of an 
 acre, with its commodious mansion in the midst, 
 with the feeling of an English freeholder that all 
 betwixt sky and center was my own. The estate has 
 
MY FIRST PLAY 57 
 
 passed into more prudent hands, and nothing but 
 an agrarian can restore it. 
 
 In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the un- 
 comfortable manager who abolished them! with 
 one of these we went. I remember the waiting at 
 the door — not that which is left — but between that 
 and an inner door in shelter — O when shall I be 
 such an expectant again, with the cry of nonpareils, 
 an indispensable play-house accompaniment in those 
 days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable 
 pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses then was, 
 "Chase some oranges, chase some numparels, chase 
 a bill of the play"; chase pro chuse. But when we 
 got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a 
 heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be 
 disclosed — the breathless anticipations I endured! 
 I had seen something like it in the plate prefixed 
 to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe s Shakespeare — 
 the tent scene with Diomede — and a sight of that 
 plate can always bring back in a measure the feeling 
 of that evening. The boxes at that time, full of well- 
 dressed women of quality, projected over the pit; 
 and the pilasters reaching down were adorned with 
 a glistening substance (I know not what) under 
 glass as it seemed), resembling a homely fancy — 
 but I judged it to be sugar-candy — yet to my raised 
 imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it ap^ 
 peared a glorified candy! The orchestra lights at 
 length rose, those "fair Auroras !" Once the bell 
 sounded. It was to ring out yet once again — and, in- 
 capable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in 
 a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It 
 
58 LAMB 
 
 rang the second time. The curtain drew up — I was 
 not past six years old, and the play was Artaxerxes ! 
 
 I had dabbled a little in the Universal History — 
 the ancient part of it — and here was the court of 
 Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the past. 
 I took no proper interest in the action going on, 
 for I understood not its import — but I heard the 
 word Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel. All 
 feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, 
 gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before me. I 
 knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the time, 
 and the burning idol of their devotion almost con- 
 verted me into a worshiper. I was awe-struck, and 
 believed those significations to be something more 
 than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a 
 dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but in 
 dreams. Harlequin's invasion followed; where, I 
 remember, the transformation of the magistrates 
 into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave 
 historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head 
 to be as sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys. 
 
 The next play to which I was taken was the Lady 
 of the Manor, of which, with the exception of some 
 scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory. 
 It was followed by a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost 
 •—a satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long 
 since dead — but to my apprehension (too sincere for 
 satire), Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity as 
 Lud, the father of a line of Harlequins, transmitting 
 his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through 
 countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come 
 from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white 
 
MY FIRST PLAY 59 
 
 patchwork, like the apparition of a dead rainbow. 
 So Harlequins (thought I) look when they are dead. 
 
 My third play followed in quick succession. It 
 was the Way of the World. I think I must have sat 
 at it as grave as a judge; for I remember the hys- 
 teric affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected 
 me like some solemn tragic passion. Robinson Cru- 
 soe followed; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and the 
 parrot, were as good and authentic as in the story. 
 The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes 
 have clean passed out of my head. I believe I no 
 more laughed at them than at the same age I should 
 have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic 
 heads (seeming to me then replete with devout 
 meaning) that gape and grin in stone around the 
 inside of the old Round Church (my church) of the 
 Templars. s, 
 
 I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was 
 from six to seven years old. After the intervention 
 of six or seven other years (for at school all play- 
 going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of 
 a theater. That old Artaxerxes evening had never 
 done ringing in my fancy. I expected the same 
 feelings to come again with the same occasion. But 
 we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen 
 than the latter does from six. In that interval what 
 had I not lost! At the first period I knew nothing, 
 understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt 
 all, loved all, wondered all — 
 
 Was nourished, I could not tell how — 
 I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a 
 rationalist. The same things were there materially; 
 
60 LAMB 
 
 but the emblem, the reference, was gone. The green 
 curtain was no longer a veil, drawn between two 
 worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back 
 past ages, to present a "royal ghost," but a certain 
 quantity of green baize, which was to separate the 
 audience for a given time from certain of their 
 fellow men who were to come forward and pretend 
 those parts. The lights — the orchestra lights — came 
 up a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the sec- 
 ond ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell, 
 which had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phan- 
 tom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which 
 ministered to its warning. The actors were men 
 and women painted. I thought the fault was in 
 them; but it was in myself, and the alteration which 
 those many centuries — of six short twelvemonths — 
 had wrought in me. Perhaps it was fortunte for me 
 that the play of the evening was but an indifferent 
 comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreason- 
 able expectations, which might have interfered with 
 the genuine emotions with which I was soon after 
 enabled to enter upon the first appearance to me of 
 Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and retro- 
 spection soon yielded to the present attraction of the 
 scene; and the theater became to me, upon a new 
 stock, the most delightful of recreations. 
 
AMICUS REDIVIVUS 61 
 
 AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 
 
 Where were ye, Nymphs,, when the remorseless deep 
 Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas? 
 
 I do not know when I have experienced a stranger 
 sensation than on seeing my old friend, G. D., who 
 had been paying me a morning visit, a few Sundays 
 back, at my cottage at Islington, upon taking leave, 
 instead of turning down the right-hand path by 
 which he had entered — with staff in hand, and at 
 noonday, deliberately march right forward into the 
 midst of the stream that runs by us and totally dis- 
 appear. 
 
 A spectacle like this at dusk would have been ap- 
 palling enough; but in the broad, open daylight, to 
 witness such an unreserved motion toward self-de- 
 struction in a valued friend took from me all power 
 of speculation. 
 
 How I found my feet I know not. Conscious- 
 ness was quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, 
 whirled me to the spot. I remember nothing but 
 the silvery apparition of a good white head emerg- 
 ing; nigh with a staff (the hand unseen that wielded 
 it) pointed upward, as feeling for the skies. In 
 a moment (if time was in that time) he was on 
 my shoulders, and I — freighted with a load more 
 precious than his who bore Anchises. 
 
 And here I cannot but do justice to the officious 
 zeal of sundry passers-by, who, albeit arriving a 
 little too late to participate in the honors of the res- 
 
62 LAMB 
 
 cue, in philanthropic shoals came thronging to com- 
 municate their advice as to the recovery; prescrib- 
 ing variously the application, or non-application of 
 salt, etc., to the person of the patient. Life, mean- 
 time, was ebbing fast away, amid the stifle of con- 
 flicting judgments, when one, more sagacious than 
 the rest, by a bright thought, proposed sending for 
 the Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and im- 
 possible, as one should think, to be missed on — 
 shall I confess? — in this emergency it was to me as 
 if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exertions — 
 and mine had not been inconsiderable — are common- 
 ly followed by a debility of purpose. This was a mo- 
 ment of irresolution. 
 
 Monoculus — for so, in default of catching his true 
 name, I choose to designate the medical gentleman 
 who now appeared — is a grave, middle-aged person, 
 who without having studied at the college, or 
 truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath em- 
 ployed a great portion of his valuable time in ex- 
 perimental processes upon the bodies of unfortunate 
 fellow creatures, in whom the vital spark, to mere 
 vulgar thinking, would seem extinct and lost for- 
 ever. He omitteth no occasion of intruding his 
 services, from a case of common surfeit suffocation 
 to the ignobler obstructions, sometimes induced by 
 a too willful application of the plant cannabis out- 
 wardly. But though he declineth not altogether these 
 drier extinctions, his occupation tendeth, for the 
 most part, to water-practice; for the convenience of 
 which he has judiciously fixed his quarters near the 
 grand repository of the stream mentioned, where 
 
AMICUS REDIVIVUS 63 
 
 day and night from his little watch-tower at the 
 Middleton's Head, he listeneth to detect the wrecks 
 of drowned mortality — partly, as he saith, to be 
 upon the spot — and partly, because the liquids which 
 he useth to prescribe to himself and his patients, on 
 these distressing occasions, are ordinarily more con- 
 veniently to be found at these common hostelries 
 than in the shops and phials of the apothecaries. 
 His ear hath arrived to such finesse by practice that 
 it is reported he can distinguish a plunge at half a 
 furlong distance, and can tell if it be casual or de- 
 liberate. He weareth a medal, suspended over a 
 suit, originally of a sad brown, but which, by time 
 and frequency of nightly divings, has been dinged 
 into a true professionable sable. He passeth by the 
 name of Doctor, and is remarkable, for wanting his 
 left eye. His remedy — after a sufficient application 
 of warm blankets, friction, etc., is a simple tumbler, 
 or more, or the purest Cognac, with water, made 
 as hot as the convalescent can bear it. Where he 
 findeth, as in the case of my friend, a squeamish 
 subject, he condescendeth to be a taster; and show- 
 eth, by his own example, the innocuous nature of 
 the prescription. Nothing can be more kind or en- 
 couraging than this procedure. It addeth confidence 
 to the patient, to see his medical adviser go hand in 
 hand with himself in the remedy. When the doctor 
 swalloweth his own draught, what peevish invalid 
 can refuse to pledge him in the potion? In fine, 
 Monoculus is a humane, sensible man, who, for a 
 slender pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, is con- 
 tent to wear it out in the endeavour to save the lives 
 
64 LAMB 
 
 of others — his pretensions so moderate, that with 
 difficulty I could press a crown upon him, for the 
 price of restoring the existence of such an invaluable 
 creature to society as G. D. 
 
 It was pleasant to observe the effect of the sub- 
 siding alarm upon the nerves of the dear absentee. 
 It seemed to have given a shake to memory, calling 
 up notice after notice of all the providential deliv- 
 erances he had experienced in the course of his long 
 and innocent life. Sitting up on my couch — my 
 couch which, naked and void of furniture hitherto, 
 for the salutary repose which it administered, shall 
 be honoured with costly valance, at some price, and 
 henceforth be a state-bed at Colebrook — he dis- 
 coursed of marvelous escapes — by carelessness of 
 nurses; by pails of gelid, and kettles of the boiling 
 element, in infancy; by orchard pranks, and snap- 
 ping twigs, in school-boy frolics; by descent of tiles 
 at Trumpington ; and of heavier tomes at Pembroke ; 
 by studious watchings, inducing frightful vigilance; 
 by want, and the fear of want, and all the sore throb- 
 bings of the learned head. Anon, he would burst 
 out into little fragments of chanting, of songs, long 
 ago, ends of deliverance hymns, not remembered 
 before since childhood, but coming up now, when 
 his heart was made as tender as a child's — for the 
 tremor cordis, in the retrospect of a recent deliver- 
 ance, as in the case of impending danger, acting 
 upon an innocent heart, will produce a self-tender- 
 ness, which we should do ill to christen cowardice; 
 and Shakespeare, in the latter crisis, has made his 
 
AMICUS REDIVIVUS 65 
 
 good Sir Hugh to remember the sitting by Babylon, 
 and to mutter of shallow rivers. 
 
 Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton, what a spark you 
 were like to have extinguished forever! Your sa- 
 lubrious streams to this city, for now near two cen- 
 turies, would hardly have atoned for what you 
 were in a moment washing away. Mockery of a 
 river — liquid artifice — wreathed conduit! henceforth 
 rank with canals and sluggish aqueducts. Was it 
 for this that, smit in boyhood with the explorations 
 of that Abyssinian traveller, I paced the vales of 
 Amwell to explore your tributary springs, to trace 
 your salutary waters sparkling through green Hert- 
 fordshire, and cultured Enfield parks? Ye have no 
 swans, no Naiads, no river god — or did the benevo- 
 lent hoary aspect of my friend tempt ye to suck him 
 in, that ye also might have the tutelary genius of 
 your waters? 
 
 Had he been drowned in Cam, there would have 
 been some consonancy in it; but what willows had 
 ye to wave and rustle over his moist sepulture? or 
 having no name, besides that unmeaning assumption 
 of eternal novity, did ye think to get one by the 
 noble prize, and henceforth to be termed the stream 
 Dyerian? 
 
 And could such spacious virtue find a grave 
 Beneath the impo^thumed bubble of a wave? 
 
 I protest, George, you shall not venture out again 
 — no, not by daylight — without a sufficient pair of 
 spectacles — in your musing moods especially. Your 
 absence of mind we have borne, till your presence 
 
66 LAMB 
 
 of body came to be called in question by it. You 
 shall not go wandering into Euripus with Aristotle, 
 if we can help it. Fie, man, to turn dipper at your 
 years, after your many tracts in favor of sprinkling 
 only! 
 
 I have nothing but water in my head o' nights 
 since this frightful accident. Sometimes I am with 
 Clarence in his dream. At others, I behold Chris- 
 tian beginning to sink, and crying out to his good 
 brother Hopeful (that is, to me), "I sink in deep 
 waters ; the billows go over my head, all the waves 
 go over me. Selah." Then I have before me Pali- 
 nurus, just letting go the steerage. I cry out too 
 late to save. Next follow a mournful procession, 
 suicidal faces, saved against their will from drown- 
 ing; dolefully trailing a length of reluctant grateful- 
 ness, with ropy weeds pendant from locks of watchet 
 hue; constrained Lazari, Pluto's half-subjects, stolen 
 fees from the grave, bilking Charon of his fare. 
 At their head Arion — or is it G. D. ? — in his singing 
 garments marcheth singly, with harp in hand, and 
 votive garland, which Machaon (or Dr. Hawes) 
 snatcheth straight, intending to suspend it to the 
 stern God of Sea. Then follow dismal streams of 
 Lethe, in which the half-drenched on earth are con- 
 strained to drown downright, by wharfs where 
 Ophelia twicts acts her muddy death. 
 
 And, doubtless, there is some notice of that in- 
 visible world when one of us approacheth (as my 
 friend did so lately) to their inexorable precincts. 
 When a soul knocks once, twice, at Death's door, 
 the sensation aroused within the palace must be 
 
AMICUS REDIVIVUS 67 
 
 considerable; and the grim Feature, by modern 
 science so often dispossessed of his prey, must have 
 learnecl by this time to pity Tantalus. 
 
 A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of the 
 Elysian shades, when the near arrival of G. D. was 
 announced by equivocal indications. From their 
 seats of Asphodel arose the gentler and the graver 
 ghosts — poet, or historian — of Grecian or of Roman 
 lore — to crown with unfading chaplets the half-fin- 
 ished love-labors of their unwearied scholiast. Him 
 Markland expected, him Tyrwhitt hoped to en- 
 counter, him the sweet lyrist of Peter House, whom 
 he had barely seen upon earth,* with newest airs 
 
 prepared to greet ; and patron of the gentle 
 
 Christ's boy, who should have been his patron 
 through life — the mild Askew, with longing aspira- 
 tions leaning foremost from his venerable ^Escula- 
 pian chair, to welcome into that happy company the 
 matured virtues of the man, whose tender scions in 
 the boy he himself upon earth had so prophetically 
 fed and watered. 
 
 *Graium tantum vidit. 
 
68 LAMB 
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 
 
 Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my 
 friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to 
 me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat 
 raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just 
 as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is 
 not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in 
 the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where 
 he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho- 
 fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript 
 goes on to say that the art of roasting, or rather 
 broiling (which I take to be the elder brother), was 
 accidentally discovered in the manner following. The 
 swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one 
 morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for 
 his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest 
 son Bo-ho, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of 
 playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly 
 are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, 
 which kindling quickly spread the conflagration over 
 every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced 
 to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry ante- 
 diluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it), 
 what was of much more importance, a fine litter of 
 new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, 
 perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury 
 all over the East, from the remotest periods that we 
 read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as 
 you may think, not so much for the sake o£ the tene- 
 
ROAST PIG 69 
 
 ment, which his father and he could easily build up 
 again with a few dry branches, and the labour of an 
 hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. 
 While he was thinking what he should say to his 
 father, and wringing his hands over the smoking 
 remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour 
 assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had 
 before experienced. What could it proceed from? 
 not from the burnt cottage, he had smelt that smell 
 before; indeed, this was by no means the first acci- 
 dent of the kind which had occurred through the 
 negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much 
 less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or 
 flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time 
 overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to 
 think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there 
 were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, 
 and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion 
 to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched 
 skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first 
 time in his life (in the world's life, indeed, for be- 
 fore him no man had known it) he tasted — crackling! 
 Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not 
 burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers 
 from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into 
 his slow understanding, that it was the pig that 
 smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and 
 surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, 
 he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched 
 skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it 
 down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire 
 entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retrib- 
 
70 LAMB 
 
 utory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began 
 to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as 
 thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any 
 more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleas- 
 ure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had 
 rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he 
 might feel in those remote quarters. His father 
 might lay on, but he could not beat him from his 
 pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, be- 
 coming a little more sensible of his situation, some- 
 thing like the following dialogue ensued: 
 
 "You graceless whelp, what have you got there 
 devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me 
 down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be 
 hanged to you ! but you must be eating fire, and I 
 know not what — what have you got there, I say?" 
 
 "O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste 
 how nice the burnt pig eats." 
 
 The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed 
 his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should 
 beget a son that should eat burnt pig. 
 
 Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened 
 since morning, soon raked out another pig, and 
 fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by 
 main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, 
 "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — O 
 Lord!" — with such-like barbarous ejaculations, 
 cramming all the while as if he would choke. 
 
 Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the 
 abominable thing, wavering whether he should not 
 put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, 
 when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had 
 
ROAST PIG 71 
 
 done his son's, and applying the same remedy to 
 them, 4ie in turn tasted some of the flavour, which 
 make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, 
 proved not altogether displeasing to him. In con- 
 clusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious), 
 both father and son fairly set down to the mess, 
 and never left off till they had dispatched all that 
 remained of the litter. 
 
 Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret 
 escape, for the neighbours would certainly have 
 stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, 
 who could think of improving upon the good meat 
 which God had sent them. Nevertheless, strange 
 stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's cot- 
 tage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. 
 Nothing but fires from this time "forward. Some 
 would break out in broad day, others in the night 
 time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was 
 the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti him- 
 self, which was the more remarkable, instead of 
 chastening his son, seemed to grow more indulgent 
 to him than ever. At length they were watched, the 
 terrible mystery discovered, and father and son sum- 
 moned to take their trial at Pekin, then an incon- 
 siderable assize town. Evidence was given, the ob- 
 noxious food itself produced in court, and verdict 
 about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the 
 jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which 
 the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the 
 box. He handled it, and they all handled it; and 
 burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had 
 done before them, and nature prompting to each of 
 
72 LAMB 
 
 them the same remedy, against the face of all the 
 facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever 
 given — to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, 
 strangers, reporters, and all present — without leaving 
 the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, 
 they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not 
 Guilty. 
 
 The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at 
 the manifest iniquity of the decision : and when the 
 court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all 
 the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a 
 few days his lordship's town-house was observed to 
 be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was 
 nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel 
 and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. 
 The insurance-offices one and all shut up shop. 
 People built slighter and slighter every day, until it 
 was feared that the very science of architecture 
 would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus 
 this custom of firing houses continued, till in process 
 of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our 
 Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, 
 or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked 
 (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of 
 consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first 
 began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the 
 string or spit came in a century or two later, T for- 
 get in whose dynasty. By such sl6w degrees, con- 
 cludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and seem- 
 ingly the most obvious, arts make their way among 
 mankind. 
 
 Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
 
ROAST PIG T3 
 
 above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pre- 
 text for so dangerous an experiment as setting 
 houses on fire (especially in these days) could be 
 assigned in favor of any culinary object, that pretext 
 and excuse might be found in roast pig. 
 
 Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, 
 I will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps 
 obsoniorum. 
 
 I speak not of your grown porkers — things between 
 pig and pork — those hobbledehoys — but a young and 
 tender suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet 
 of the sty, with no original speck of the amor im- 
 munditicB, the hereditary failing of the first parent, 
 yet manifest — his voice as yet not broken, but some- 
 thing between a childish treble and a grumble — the 
 mild forerunner or prceludium of a grunt. 
 
 He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our 
 ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled — but what a 
 sacrifice of the exterior tegument! 
 
 There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to 
 that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over- 
 roasted, crackling, as it is well called — the very 
 teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at 
 this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resist- 
 ance — with the adhesive oleaginous — O call it not 
 fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it — 
 the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the bud 
 — taken in the shoot, in the first innocence, the 
 cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure 
 food, the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna, 
 or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended 
 and running into each other, that both together 
 
74 LAMB 
 
 make but one ambrosian result or common sub- 
 stance. 
 
 Behold him while he is "doing" — it seemeth rather 
 a refreshing warmth than a scorching heat, that he is 
 so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the 
 string! Now he is just done. To see the extreme 
 sensibility of that tender age! he had wept out his 
 pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting stars. 
 
 See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek 
 he lieth ! wouldst thou have had this innocent grow 
 up to the grossness and indocility which too often 
 accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one 'he 
 would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, 
 disagreeable animal — wallowing in all manner of 
 filthy conversation — from these sins he is happily 
 snatched away — 
 
 Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
 Death came with timely care — 
 
 his memory is odoriferous — no clown curseth, while 
 his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon — no coal- 
 heaver bolteth him in reeking sausages — he hath a 
 fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judi- 
 cious epicure, and for such a tomb might be content 
 to die. 
 
 He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. She 
 is indeed almost too transcendent; a delight, if not 
 sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender- 
 conscienced person would do well to pause; too 
 ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and ex- 
 coriateth the lips that approach her; like lovers' 
 kisses she biteth ; she is pleasure bordering on 
 pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish, 
 
ROAST PIG 75 
 
 but she stoppeth at the palate; she meddleth not 
 with the appetite, and the coarsest hunger might bar- 
 ter her consistently for a mutton-chop. 
 
 Pig, let me speak his praise, is no less provocative 
 of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the critical* 
 ness of the censorious palate. The strong man may 
 batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his 
 mild juices. 
 
 Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of 
 virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not 
 to be unravelled without hazard, he is good through- 
 out. No part of him is better or worse than another. 
 He helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all 
 around. He is the least envious of banquets. He is 
 all neighbours' fare. 
 
 I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly 
 impart a share of the good things of this life which 
 fall to their lot (few as mine are" in this kind) to a 
 friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my 
 friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satis- 
 factions, as in mine own. "Presents," I often say, 
 "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, 
 snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame villatic 
 fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I 
 dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste 
 them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But 
 a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like 
 Lear, "give everything." I make my stand upon 
 pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of 
 all good flavours to extradomiciliate, or send out of 
 the house slightingly (under pretext of friendship, 
 or I know not what) a blessing so particularly 
 
76 LAMB 
 
 adapted, predestined, I may say, to my individual 
 palate. It argues an insensibility. 
 
 I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at 
 school. My good old aunt, who never parted from 
 me at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweet- 
 meat, or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dis- 
 missed me one evening with a smoking plum-cake, 
 fresh from the oven. In my way to school (it was 
 over London Bridge) a gray-headed old beggar 
 saluted me (I have no doubt, at this time of day, 
 that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to con- 
 sole him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and 
 the very coxcombry of charity, school-boy like, I 
 made him a present of — the whole cake ! I walked 
 on a little, buoyed up, as one is on such occasions, 
 with a sweet soothing of self-satisfaction; but, be- 
 fore I had got to the end of the bridge, my better 
 feelings returned, and I burst into tears, thinking 
 how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go 
 and give her good gift away to a stranger that I 
 had never seen before, and who might be a bad man 
 for aught I knew ; and then I thought of the pleas- 
 ure my aunt would be taking in thinking that I — I 
 myself, and not another — would eat her nice cake, 
 and what should I say to her the next time I saw 
 her; how naughty I was to part with her pretty 
 present ! and the odour of that spicy cake came back 
 upon my recollection, and the pleasure and the 
 curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, and her 
 joy when she sent it to the oven, and how dis- 
 appointed she would feel that I had never had a bit 
 of it in my mouth at last; and I blamed my imper- 
 
ROAST PIG 77 
 
 tinent spirit of alms-giving, and out-of-place hypoc- 
 risy of goodness; and above all I wished never to 
 see the face again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, 
 old gray impostor. 
 
 Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri- 
 ficing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipped 
 to death with something of a shock, as we hear of 
 any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is 
 gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a 
 philosophical light merely) what effect this process 
 might have toward intenerating and dulcifying a 
 substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh 
 of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet 
 we should be cautious, while we condemn the in- 
 humanity, how we censure the wisdom of the prac- 
 tice. It might impart a gusto. 
 
 I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the 
 young students when I was at St. Omer's, and main- 
 tained with much learning and pleasantry on both 
 sides, "Whether, supposing that the flavour of a pig 
 who obtained his death by whipping (per Hagella- 
 tionem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the 
 palate of a man more intense than any possible suf- 
 fering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified 
 in using that method of putting the animal to death ?" 
 I forget the decision. 
 
 His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few 
 bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and 
 a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, 
 I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your 
 whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, 
 stuff them out with plantations of the rank and 
 
78 LAMB 
 
 guilty garlic; you cannot poison them, or make 
 them stronger than they are — but consider, he is a 
 weakling — a flower. 
 
 POOR RELATIONS. 
 
 A Poor Relation is the most irrelevant thing in 
 nature, a piece of impertinent correspondency, an 
 odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a pre- 
 posterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of 
 our prosperity; an unwelcome remembrancer, a per- 
 petually recurring mortification, a drain on your 
 purse, a more intolerable dun upon your pride, a 
 drawback upon success, a rebuke to your rising, a 
 stain in your blood, a blot on your 'scutcheon, a rent 
 in your garment, a death's head at your banquet, 
 Agathocle's pot, a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus 
 at your door, a lion in your path, a frog in your 
 chamber, a fly in your ointment, a mote in your eye, 
 a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends, 
 the one thing not needful, the hail in harvest, the 
 ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. 
 
 He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you 
 
 "That is Mr. ." A rap, between familiarity and 
 
 respect; that demands, and at the same time seems 
 to despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling 
 and embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you 
 to shake, and draweth it back again. He casually 
 looketh in about dinner-time — when the table is full. 
 He offereth to go away, seeing you have company, 
 but is induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your 
 
POOR RELATIONS TO 
 
 visitor's two children are accommodated at a side- 
 table. He never cometh upon open days, when your 
 wife says, with some complacency, "My dear, perhaps 
 Mr. — — will drop in today." He remembereth 
 birthdays, and professeth he is fortunate to have 
 stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, the 
 turbot being small, yet suffereth himself to be im- 
 portuned into a slice against his first resolution. He 
 sticketh by the port, yet he will be prevailed upon to 
 empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger 
 press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, 
 who are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil 
 enough, to him. The guests think "they have seen 
 him before." Every one speculateth upon his con- 
 dition; and the most part take him to be a tide- 
 waiter. He calleth you by your Christian name to 
 imply that his other is the same with your own. He 
 is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had less 
 diffidence. With half his familiarity he might pass 
 for a casual dependent; with more boldness, he 
 would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. 
 He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh on him 
 more state than befits a client. He is a worse guest 
 than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up 
 no rent, yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, 
 that your guests take him for one. He is asked to 
 make one at the whist table; refuseth on the score 
 of poverty, and resents being left out. When the 
 company breaks up, he proffereth to go for a coach, 
 and lets the servant go. He recollects your grand- 
 father, and will thrust in some mean and quite un- 
 important anecdote of the family. He knew it 
 
80 LAMB 
 
 when it was not quite so flourishing as "he is blest in 
 seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to 
 institute what he calleth favourable comparisons. 
 With a reflecting sort of congratulation he will in- 
 quire the price of your furniture, and insults you 
 with a special commendation of your window-cur- 
 tains. He is of opinion that the urn is the more 
 elegant shape; but, after all, there was something 
 more comfortable about the old tea-kettle, which 
 you must remember. He dare say you must find a 
 great convenience in having a carriage of your own, 
 and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth 
 if you have had your arms done on vellum yet ; and 
 did not know, till lately, that such-and-such had 
 been the crest of the family. His memory is un- 
 seasonable ; his compliments perverse ; his talk a 
 trouble ; his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth 
 away, you dismiss his chair into a corner as pre- 
 cipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two 
 nuisances. 
 
 There is a wors"e evil under the sun, and that is 
 a female poor relation. You may do something 
 with the other; you may pass him off tolerably 
 well; but your indigent she-relative is hopeless. 
 "He is an old humorist," you may say, "and affects 
 to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than 
 folks would take them to be. You are fond of hav- 
 ing a character at your table, and truly he is one." 
 But in the indications of female poverty there can 
 be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself 
 from caprice. The truth must out without shuffling. 
 "She is plainly related to the L 's; or what does 
 
POOR RELATIONS 81 
 
 she at their house?" She is, in all probability, your 
 wife's cousin. Nine times out of ten, at least, this 
 is thejcase. Her garb is something between a gen- 
 tlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently 
 predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and 
 ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He may 
 require to be repressed sometimes — aliquando suf- 
 Aaminandus erat — but there is no raising her. You 
 send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped 
 
 — after the gentlemen. Mr. requests the honour 
 
 of taking wine with her; she hesitates between Port 
 and Madeira, and chooses the former because he 
 does. She calls the servant Sir; and insists on not 
 troubling him to hold her plate. The housekeeper 
 patronizes her. The children's governess takes 
 upon her to correct her, when she has mistaken the 
 piano for a harpsichord. 
 
 Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable in- 
 stance of the disadvantages to which this chimerical 
 notion of affinity constituting a claim to acquaint- 
 ance, may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A lit- 
 tle foolish blood is all that is between him and the 
 lady with a great estate. His stars are perpetually 
 crossed by the malignant maternity of an old 
 woman, who persists in calling him "her son Dick." 
 But she has wherewithal in the end to recompense 
 his indignities, and float him again upon the bril- 
 liant surface, under which it had been her seeming 
 business and pleasure all along to sink him. All 
 men, besides, are not of Dick's temperament. I 
 knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting Dick's 
 buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W was of my own 
 
82 LAMB 
 
 standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth of 
 promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much 
 pride; but its quality was inoffensive; it was not 
 of that sort which hardens the heart, and serves to 
 keep inferiors at a distance; it only sought to 
 ward off derogation from itself. It was the prin- 
 ciple of self-respect carried as far as it could go, 
 without infringing upon that respect which he would 
 have every one else equally maintain for himself. 
 He would have you to think alike with him on this 
 topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him, when 
 we were rather older boys, and our tallness made 
 us more obnoxious to observation in the blue 
 clothes, because I would not tread the alleys and 
 blind ways of the town with him to elude notice, 
 when we have been out together on a holiday in 
 the streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. 
 
 W went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, 
 
 where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life, 
 meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction, 
 wrought in him a passionate devotion to the place, 
 with a profound aversion from the society. The 
 servitor's gown (worse than his school array) clung 
 to him with Nessian venom. He thought himself 
 ridiculous in a garb, under which Latimer must 
 have walked erect, and in which Hooker, in his 
 young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no dis- 
 commendable vanity. In the depth of college 
 shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor student 
 shrunk from observation. He found shelter among 
 books, which insult not; and studies, that ask no 
 questions of a youth's finances. He was lord of 
 
POOR RELATIONS 83 
 
 his library, and seldom cared for looking out beyond 
 his domains. The healing influence of studious pur- 
 suits "was upon him to soothe and to abstract. He 
 was almost a healthy man, when the waywardness 
 of his fate broke out against him with a second 
 
 and worse malignity. The father of W had 
 
 hitherto exercised the humble profession of house- 
 painter, at N , near Oxford. A supposed inter- 
 est with some of the heads of colleges had now in- 
 duced him to take up his abode in that city, with 
 the hope of being employed upon some public works 
 which were talked of. From that moment I read 
 in the countenance of the young man the determina- 
 tion which at length tore him from academical pur- 
 suits for ever. To a person unacquainted with our 
 universities, the distance between the gownsmen 
 and the townsmen, as they are called — the trading 
 part of the latter especially — is carried to an excess 
 that would appear harsh and incredible. The tem- 
 perament of W 's father was diametrically the 
 
 reverse of his own. Old W was a little, busy, 
 
 cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon his 
 arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, 
 to anything that wore the semblance of a gown — 
 insensible to the winks and opener remonstrances 
 of the young man, to whose chamber-fellow, or 
 equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously 
 and gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things 
 could not last. W must change the air of Ox- 
 ford, or be suffocated. He chose the former; and 
 let the sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the 
 filial duties as high as they can bear, censure the 
 
84: LAMB 
 
 dereliction; he cannot estimate the struggle. I 
 
 stood with W , the last afternoon I ever saw 
 
 him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It 
 was in the fine lane leading from the High Street 
 
 to the back of college, where W kept his 
 
 rooms. He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. 
 I ventured to rally him — finding him in a better 
 mood — upon a representation of the Artist Evan- 
 gelist, which the old man, whose affairs were be- 
 ginning to flourish, had caused to be set up in a 
 splendid sort of frame over his really handsome 
 shop, either as a token of prosperity or badge of 
 
 gratitude to his saint. W looked up at the 
 
 Luke, and, like Satan, "knew his mounted sign — 
 and fled." A letter on his father's table, the next 
 morning, announced that he had accepted a com- 
 mission in a regiment about to embark for Por- 
 tugal. He was among the first who perished before 
 the walls of St. Sebastian. 
 
 I do not know how, upon a subject which I began 
 with treating half seriously, I should have fallen 
 upon a recital so eminently painful ; but this theme 
 of poor relationship is replete with so much matter 
 for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is 
 difficult to keep the account distinct without blend- 
 ing. The earliest impressions which I received on 
 this matter are certainly not attended with any- 
 thing painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. 
 At my father's table (no very splendid one) was to 
 be found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of 
 an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad 
 yet comely appearance. His deportment was of the 
 
POOR RELATIONS 85 
 
 essence of gravity; his words few or none; and I 
 was not to make a noise in his presence. I had 
 little inclination to have done so, for my cue was 
 to admire in silence. A particular elbow-chair was 
 appropriated to him, which was in no case to be 
 violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which 
 appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the 
 days of his coming. I used to think him a pro- 
 digiously rich man. All I could make out of him 
 was, that he and my father had been school-fellows, 
 a world ago, at Lincoln, and that he came from the 
 Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all 
 the money was coined — and I thought he was the 
 owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower 
 twined themselves about his presence. He seemed 
 above human infirmities and passjons. A sort of 
 melancholy grandeur invested him. From some in- 
 explicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about 
 in an eternal suit of mourning; a captive — a stately 
 being let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often 
 have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, 
 in spite of an habitual general respect which we all 
 in common manifested toward him, would venture 
 now and then to stand up against him in some argu- 
 ment touching their youthful days. The houses of 
 the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of 
 my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill 
 and in the valley. This marked distinction formed 
 an obvious division between the boys who lived 
 above (however brought together in a common 
 school) and the boys whose paternal residence was 
 on the plain; a sufficient cause of hostility in the 
 
86 LAMB 
 
 code of these young Grotiuses. My father had been 
 a leading Mountaineer; and would still maintain 
 the general superiority in skill and hardihood of the 
 Above Boys (his own faction) over the Below Boys 
 (so were they called), of which party his contem- 
 porary had been a chieftain. Many and hot were 
 the skirmishes on this topic — the only one upon 
 which the old gentleman was ever brought out — and 
 bad blood bred; even sometimes almost to the 
 recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostili- 
 ties. But my father, who scorned to insist upon 
 advantages, generally contrived to turn the conver- 
 sation upon some adroit by-commendation of the 
 old Minister; in the general preference of which, 
 before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller 
 on the hill, and the plain-born, could meet on a con- 
 ciliating level, and lay down their less important 
 differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman 
 really ruffled, and I remember with anguish the 
 thought that came over me : "Perhaps he will never 
 come here again." He had been pressed to take 
 another plate of the viand, which I have already 
 mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his 
 visits. He had refused with a resistance amounting 
 to rigor, when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who 
 had something of this, in common with my cousin 
 Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out 
 of season, uttered the following memorable applica- 
 tion — "Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you 
 do not get pudding every day." The old gentleman 
 said nothing at the time, but he took occasion in 
 the course of the evening, when some argument 
 
POOR RELATIONS 87 
 
 had intervened between them, to utter with an em- 
 phasis which chilled the company, and which chills 
 me now as I write it — "Woman, you are superan- 
 nuated!" John Billet did not survive long after the 
 digesting of this affront; but he survived long 
 enough to assure me that peace was actually re- 
 stored; and, if I remember aright, another pudding 
 was discreetly substituted in the place of that 
 which had occasioned the offense. He died at the 
 Mint (anno 1781) where he had long held what he 
 accounted a comfortable independence ; and with 
 five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which 
 were found in his escritoir after his decease, left 
 the world, blessing God that he had enough to 
 bury him, and that he had never been obliged to 
 any man for a sixpence. This was — a Poor Rela- 
 tion. 
 
88 LAMB 
 
 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 
 
 "A clear fire, a clean hearth,* and a rigour of the 
 game." This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah 
 Battle (now with God), who, next to her devotions, 
 loved a good game of whist. She was none of your 
 lukewarm gamesters, your half-and-half players who 
 have no objection to take 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 adver- 
 sary, who has slipped a wrong card, to take it up 
 and play another.t 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 at them. 
 
 Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She de- 
 tested them 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 passed it over in 
 her adversary without exacting the utmost forfeiture. 
 
 *This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You 
 must remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinders 
 betwixt your foot and the marble. 
 
 tAs if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a foac 
 one day and lose him the next. 
 
MRS. BATTLE ON WHIST 89 
 
 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. All people have their 
 blind side — their superstitions; and I have heard her 
 declare under the rose, that hearts was her favourite 
 suit. 
 
 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 snuff a candle 
 in the middle of a game; or ring for a servant, till 
 it was fairly over. She never introduced, or con- 
 nived at miscellaneous conversation during its pro- 
 cess. As she emphatically observed, cards were 
 cards; and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her 
 fine last-century countenance, it w.as at the airs of a 
 young gentleman of a literary turn, who had been 
 with difficulty persuaded to take a hand ; and who, in 
 his excess of candour, 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 occupation, to 
 which she wound up her faculties, considered in that 
 light. It was her business, her duty, the thing she 
 came into the world to do, and she did it. She 
 unbent her mind afterward — over a book. 
 
 Pope was her favourite author: his Rape of the 
 Lock her favourite work. She once did me the favour 
 to play over with me (with the cards) his celebrated 
 game of Omber 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 
 
90 LAMB 
 
 were opposite and poignant; and I had the pleasure 
 of sending the substance of them 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 persons. The uncertainty and 
 quick shifting of partners — a thing which the con- 
 stancy of whist abhors; the dazzling supremacy and 
 regal investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she 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 overpowering attractions of a Sans 
 Prendre Vole, to the triumph of which there is cer- 
 tainly nothing parallel or approaching, in the contin- 
 gencies of whist; all these, she would say, make 
 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 quad- 
 rille, 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, 
 reminded her of the petty ephemeral embroilmnts of 
 the little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel : per- 
 petually changing postures and connections; bitter 
 foes today, sugared darlings tomorrow; kissing and 
 
MRS. BATTCE ON WHIST 91 
 
 scratching in a breath; but the wars of whist were 
 comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, national 
 antipathies of the great French and English nations. 
 
 A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired 
 in her favourite game. There was nothing silly in 
 it, like the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. No 
 Hushes — that most irrational of all pleas that a rea- 
 sonable being can set up: that any one should claim 
 four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark 
 and colour, without reference to the playing of the 
 game, or the individual worth or pretentions of the 
 cards themselves ! She held this to be a solecism ; 
 as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in 
 authorship. She despised superficiality, and looked 
 deeper than the color of things. Suits were soldiers, 
 she would say, and must have a uniformity of array 
 to distinguish them ; but what should we say to a 
 foolish squire, who should claim a merit from dress- 
 ing up his tenantry in red jackets, that never were 
 to be marshalled — 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 appen- 
 dages, which, in the state of human frailty, may be 
 venially, ana 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 colours, when the mark of the suit would 
 have sufficiently distinguished them without it? 
 
 "But the eye, my dear madam, is agreeably re- 
 freshed 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 coun- 
 
92 LAMB 
 
 tries, where the music and the paintings draw in 
 many to worship, whom your Quaker spirit of un- 
 sensualizing would have kept out. You yourself 
 have a pretty collection of paintings — but confess 
 to me, whether, walking in your gallery at Sand- 
 ham, 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 com- 
 parable to that you have it in your power to experi- 
 ence most evenings over a well-arranged asortment 
 of the court-cards? the pretty antic habits, like 
 heralds in a procession, the gay triumph-assuring 
 scarlets, the contrasting 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 on very well, pictureless ; but the 
 beauty of cards would be extinguished forever. 
 Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they 
 must degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a 
 dull deal board, or drum-head, to spread them on, 
 instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to na- 
 ture's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants 
 to play their gallant jousts and turneys in! Ex- 
 change 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 
 
MRS. BATTLE ON WHIST 93 
 
 of my logic; and to her approbation of my argu- 
 ments .on her favourite 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 the 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 "That's 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 turn-up knave, which would have 
 given it her, but which she must have claimed by 
 the disgraceful tenure of declaring "two for his 
 heels." There is something extremely genteel in 
 this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentle- 
 woman born. 
 
 Piquet she held the best game at the cards for 
 two persons, though she would ridicule the pedan- 
 try 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 dis- 
 
94 LAMB 
 
 guise of a sport: when single adversaries encounter, 
 the ends proposed 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 in- 
 centives of profit with honour, common to every 
 species — though the latter can be but very imper- 
 fectly enjoyed in those other games, where the 
 spectator is only feebly a participator. But the par- 
 ties in whist are spectators and principals too. They 
 are a theater 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 be- 
 cause your partner sympathizes 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 tak- 
 ing off the invidiousness) your glories. Two losing 
 to two are better reconciled than one to one in that 
 close butchery, The hostile feeling is weakened by 
 
MRS. BATTLE ON WHIST 95 
 
 multiplying the channels. War becomes a civil game. 
 By such reasonings as these the old lady was accus- 
 tomed to defend her favorite pastime. 
 
 No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play 
 at any game, where chance entered into the com- 
 position, for nothing. Chance, she would argue — and 
 here again admire 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 together 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 won- 
 derment, could it gratify to gain that number as 
 many times successively without a prize? There- 
 fore she disliked the mixture of chance in back- 
 gammon, 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-en- 
 gagement at a review, bloodless and profitless. She 
 could not conceive a game wanting the spritely 
 infusion of chance, the handsome excuses of good 
 fortune. Two people playing at chess in a corner 
 of a room whilst whist was stirring in the center, 
 would inspire her with insufferable horror and 
 
96 LAMB 
 
 ennui. Those well-cut similitudes of Castles and 
 Knights, the imagery of the board, she would argue 
 (and I think in this case justly), were entirely mis- 
 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 com- 
 batants. 
 
 To those puny objectors against cards, as nur- 
 turing the bad passions, she would retort, that man 
 is a gaming animal. He must be always trying to 
 get the better in something or other: that this pas- 
 sion can scracely be more safely expended than 
 upon a game at cards : that cards are a temporary 
 illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do but 
 play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle 
 shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we 
 are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is 
 crowns and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream- 
 fighting; much ado, great battling, and little blood- 
 shed ; mighty means for disproportioned ends : quite 
 as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, than 
 many of those more serious games of life, which 
 men play without esteeming them to be such. 
 
 With great deference to the old lady's judgment 
 in these matters, I think I have experienced some 
 moments in my life when playing at cards for noth- 
 ing has even been agreeable. When I am in sick- 
 ness, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for 
 the cards, and play a game at piquet for love with 
 my cousin Bridget — Bridget Elia. 
 
 I grant there is something sneaking in it; but 
 
MRS. BATTLE ON WHIST 97 
 
 with a toothache, or a sprained ankle, when you 
 are subdued and humble, you are glad to put up 
 with an inferior spring of action. 
 
 There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, 
 as sick whist. 
 
 I grant it is not the highest style of man — I dep- 
 recate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, 
 alas ! to whom I should apologize. 
 
 At such times, those terms which my old friend 
 objected to, come in as something admissible. I 
 love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they 
 mean nothing. I am subdued to an inferior interest. 
 Ihose shadows of winning amuse me. 
 
 That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I 
 capotted her — dare I tell thee, how foolish I am?), 
 I wished it might have lasted forever, though we 
 gained nothing, and lost nothing, though it was a 
 mere shade of play: I would be content to go on 
 in that idle folly forever. The pipkin should be 
 ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle leni- 
 tive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply 
 after the game was over : and, as I do not much 
 relish appliances, there it should ever bubble. 
 Bridget and I should be ever playing. 
 
LAMB 
 
 OLD CHINA. 
 
 I have an almost feminine partiality for old china. 
 When I go to see any great house, I inquire for 
 the china closet, and next for the picture gallery. 
 I cannot defend the order of preference, but by 
 saying that we have all some taste or other, of too 
 ancient a date to admit of our remembering dis- 
 tinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to 
 mind the first play, and the first exhibition, that 
 I was taken to; but I am not conscious of a time 
 when china jars and saucers were introduced into 
 my imagination. 
 
 I had no repugnance then — why should I now 
 have? — to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured gro- 
 tesques, that, under the notion of men and women, 
 float about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that 
 world before perspective — a china tea cup. 
 
 I like to see my old friends, whom distance can- 
 not diminish, figuring up in the air (so they appear 
 to our optics), yet on terra Hrrna still — for so we 
 must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper 
 blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, 
 had made to spring up beneath their sandals. 
 
 I love the men with women's faces, and women, 
 if possible, with still more womanish expressions. 
 
 Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing 
 tea to a lady from a salver — two miles off. See 
 how distance seems to set off respect! And here 
 the same lady, or another — for likeness is identity 
 on tea cups — is stepping into a little fairy boat, 
 
OLD CHINA 99 
 
 moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, 
 with a -dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle 
 of incidence (as angles go in our world) must in- 
 fallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead — 
 a furlong off on the other side of the same strange 
 stream ! 
 
 Farther on — if far and near can be predicated of 
 their world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing 
 the hays. 
 
 Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-exten- 
 sive — so objects show, seen through the lucid at- 
 mosphere of fine Cathay. 
 
 I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over 
 our Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to 
 drink unmixed still of an afternoon), some of these 
 speciosa miracula upon a set of extraordinary old 
 blue china (a recent purchase) which we are now 
 for the first time using; and could not help remark- 
 ing how favorable circumstances had been to us of 
 late years, that we could afford to please the eye 
 sometimes with trifles of this sort — when a passing 
 sentiment seemed to overshade the brows of my 
 companion. I am quick at detecting these summer 
 clouds in Bridget. 
 
 "I wish the good old times would come again," 
 she said, "when we were not qute so rich. I do not 
 mean that I want to be poor ; but there was a middle 
 state," so she was pleased to ramble on, "in which 
 I am sure we were a great deal happier. A pur- 
 chase is but a purchase, now that you have money 
 enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a 
 triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, 
 
 Lofa 
 
100 LAMB 
 
 O ! how much ado I had to get you to consent in 
 those times!) we were used to have a debate two 
 or three days before, and to weigh the for and 
 against, and think what we might spare it out of, 
 and what saving we could hit upon, that should be 
 an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, 
 when we felt the money that we paid for it. 
 
 "Do you remember the brown suit, which you 
 made to hang upon you, till all our friends cried 
 shame upon you, it grew so threadbare — and all 
 because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which 
 you dragged home late at night from Barker's in 
 Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed 
 it for weeks before we could make up our minds 
 to the purchase, and had not come to a determina- 
 tion till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday 
 night, when you set off from Islington, fearing 
 you should be too late — and when the old book- 
 seller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by 
 the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedward) 
 lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures — and 
 when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as 
 cumbersome — and when you presented it to me — • 
 and when we were exploring the perfectness of it 
 {collating, you called it) — and while I was repair- 
 ing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your 
 impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak 
 — was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or 
 can those neat black clothes which you wear now 
 and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have 
 become rich and finical — give you half the honest 
 vanity with which you flaunted it about in that 
 
OLD CHINA 101 
 
 overworn suit — your old carbeau — for four or five 
 weeks* longer than you should have done, to pacify 
 your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen — or 
 sixteen shillings was it? — a great affair we thought 
 it then — which you had lavished on the old folio. 
 Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases 
 you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home 
 any nice old purchases now. 
 
 "When you came home with twenty apologies for 
 laying out a less number of shillings upon that 
 print after Lionardo, which we christened the 'Lady 
 Blanch/ when you looked at the purchase, and 
 thought of the money — and thought of the money, 
 and looked again at the picture — was there no pleas- 
 ure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing 
 to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilder- 
 ness of Lionardos. Yet do you? 
 
 "Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to 
 Enfield, and Potter's bar, and Waltham, when we 
 had a holiday — holidays and all other fun are gone 
 now we are rich — and the little handbasket in 
 which I used to deposit our day's fare of savory 
 cold lamb and salad — and how you would pry about 
 at noontide for some decent house, where we might 
 go and produce our store — only paying for the ale 
 that you must call for — and speculate upon the looks 
 of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow 
 us a tablecloth — and wish for such another honest 
 hostess as Izaak Walton has described many a one 
 on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a 
 fishing — and sometimes they would prove obliging 
 enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly 
 
102 LAMB 
 
 upon us — but we had cheerful looks still for one 
 another, and would eat our plain food savorily, 
 scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall? Now, 
 when we go out a day's pleasuring, which is seldom, 
 moreover, we ride part of the way, and go into a 
 fine inn, and order the best of dinners, never de- 
 bating the expense, which, after all, never has half 
 the relish of those chance country snaps, when we 
 were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a pre- 
 carious welcome. 
 
 "You are too proud to see a play anywhere now 
 jut in the pit. Do you remember where it was we 
 used to sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexham, 
 and the Surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. 
 Bland in the Children in the Wood — when we 
 squeezed out our shilling apiece to sit three or four 
 times in a season in the one-shilling gallery — where 
 you felt all the time that you ought not to have 
 brought me — and more strongly I felt obligations to 
 you for having brought me — and the pleasure was the 
 better for a little shame — and when the curtain drew 
 up, what care we for our place in the house or what 
 mattered it where we were sitting, when our 
 thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with 
 Viola at the Court of Illyria? You used to say 
 that the gallery was the best place of all for en- 
 joying a play socially ; that the relish of such ex- 
 hibitions must be in proportion to the infrcquency 
 of going; that the company we met there, not being 
 in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend 
 the more, and did attend, to what was going on on 
 the stage, because a word lost would have been a 
 
OLD CHINA 103 
 
 chasm which it was impossible for them to fill up. 
 With -such reflections we consoled our pride then, 
 and I appeal to you whether, as a woman, I met 
 generally with less attention and accommodation 
 than I have done since in more expensive situations 
 in the house? The getting in, indeed, and the 
 crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad 
 enough, but there was still a law of civility to 
 women recognized to quite as great an extent as 
 we ever found in other passages, and how a little 
 difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat and 
 the play afterward! Now we can only pay our 
 money and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in 
 the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard, too, 
 well enough then, but sight, and all, I think, is gone 
 with our poverty. 
 
 "There was pleasure in eating strawberries before 
 they became quite common ; in the first dish of peas, 
 while they were yet dear, to have them for a nice 
 supper, a treat. What treat can we have now? If 
 we were to treat ourselves now — that is, to have 
 dainties a little above our means, it would be selfish 
 and wicked. It is the very little more that we allow 
 ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, 
 that makes what I call a treat — when two people 
 living together as we have done, now and then in- 
 dulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both 
 like; while each apologizes, and is willing to take 
 both halves of the blame to his single share. I see 
 no harm in people making much of themselves, in 
 that sense of the word. It may give them a hint 
 how to make much of others. But now, what I 
 
104 LAMB 
 
 mean by the word, we never do make much of our- 
 selves. None but the poor can do it. I do not 
 mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we 
 were, just above poverty. 
 
 "I know what you were going to say, that it is 
 mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all 
 meet — and much ado we used to have every thirty- 
 first night of December to account for our exceed- 
 ings — many a long face did you make over your 
 puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out 
 how we had spent so much, or that we had not 
 spent so much, or that it was impossible that we 
 should spend so much next year, and still we found 
 our slender capital decreasing; but then, betwixt 
 ways and projects, and compromises of one sort 
 or another, and talk of curtailing this charge, and 
 doing without that for the future, and the hope that 
 youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which you 
 were never poor till now), we pocketed up our loss, 
 and in conclusion, with 'lusty brimmers' (as we 
 used to quote it out of hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton, 
 as you called him), we used to welcome in the 'com- 
 ing guest.' Now we have no reckoning at all at the 
 end of the old year ; no flattering promises about the 
 new year doing better for us." 
 
 Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occa- 
 sions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I 
 am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, 
 however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which 
 her dear imagination had conjured up out of a 
 
 clear income of poor hundred pounds a year. 
 
 "It is true we were happier when we were poorer, 
 
OLD CHINA 105 
 
 but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid 
 we myst put up with the excess, for if we were to 
 shake the superflux into the sea, we should not 
 much mend ourselves. That we had much to strug- 
 gle with, as we grew up together, we have reason 
 to be most thankful. It strengthened and knit our 
 compact closer. We could never have been what 
 we have been to each other, if we had always had 
 the sufficiency which you now complain of. The 
 resisting power, those natural dilations of the youth- 
 ful spirit, which circumstances can not straighten — 
 with us are long since passed away. Competence 
 to age is supplementary to youth, a sorry supple- 
 ment indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. 
 We must ride where we formally walked : live 
 better and lie softer — and shall be wise to do so — 
 than we had means to do in those good old days you 
 speak of. Yet could those days return, could you 
 and I once more walk our thirty miles a day, could 
 Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and 
 you and I be young to see them, could the good 
 old one shilling gallery days return — they are 
 dreams, my cousin, now — but could you and I at 
 this moment — instead of this quiet argument, by our 
 well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa 
 — be once more struggling up those inconvenient 
 staircases, pushed about and squeezed, and elbowed 
 by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers — 
 could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of 
 yours, and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, 
 which always followed, when the topmost stair, 
 conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheer- 
 
106 LAMB 
 
 ful theater down beneath us — I know not the fathom 
 line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would 
 be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, 
 
 or the great Jew R is supposed to have, to 
 
 purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little 
 Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for 
 a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid 
 half-Madonna-ish chit of a lady in that very blue 
 summer house." 
 
 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 
 
 I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts 
 and sympathizeth with all things. I have no an- 
 tipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy in anything. Those 
 natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I be- 
 hold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, 
 or Dutch. — Religio Medici. 
 
 That the author of the Religio Medici mounted 
 upon the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about 
 notional and conjectural essences; in whose cate- 
 gories of Being the possible took the upper hand 
 of the actual; should have overlooked the imper- 
 tinent individualities of such poor concretions as 
 mankind, is not much to be admired. It is rather 
 to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals he 
 should have condescended to distinguish that 
 species at all. For myself, earth-bound and fet- 
 tered to the scene of my activities, 
 
 Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky. 
 
 I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 107 
 
 national or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I 
 can look with no indifferent eye upon things or 
 persons. Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste 
 or distaste; or when once it becomes indifferent it 
 begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, 
 a bundle of prejudices, made up of likings and dis- 
 likings, the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, 
 antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be 
 said of me that I am a lover of my species. I can 
 feel for all indifferently, but I cannot feel toward 
 all equally. The more purely English word that 
 expresses sympathy, will better explain my meaning. 
 I can be a friend to a worthy man, who upon an- 
 other account cannot be my mate or fellow. I can 
 not like all people alike.* 
 
 *I would be understood as confining myself to the subject 
 of imperfect sympathies. _ To nations or classes of men 
 there can be no direct antipathy. There may be individuals 
 born and constellated so opposite to another individual 
 nature that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met 
 with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two 
 persons meeting (who never saw one another before in 
 their lives) and instantly fighting. 
 
 We by proof find there should be 
 
 'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, 
 That though he can show no just reason why 
 For any former wrong or injury, 
 Can neither find a blemish in_ his fame, 
 Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
 Can challenge or accuse him of no evil. 
 Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 
 The lines are from old Heywood's "Hierarchie of Angels," 
 and he subjoins a curious story in confirmation of a Spaniard 
 who attempted to assassinate a king Ferdinand of Spain, 
 and being put to the rack could give no other reason for 
 the deed but an inveterate antipathy which he had taken 
 to the first sight of the king. 
 
 The cause which to that act compell'd him 
 
 Was* he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 
 
108 LAMB 
 
 I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, 
 and am obliged to desist from the experiment in 
 despair. They cannot like me — and in truth, I never 
 knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. 
 There is something more plain and ingenuous in 
 their mode of proceeding. We know one another 
 at first sight. There is an order of imperfect in- 
 tellects (under which mine must be content to rank) 
 which in its constitution is essentially anti-Caledo- 
 nian. The owners of the sort of faculties I allude 
 to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehen- 
 sive. They have no pretences to much clearness or 
 precision in their ideas, or in their manner of ex- 
 pressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to 
 confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They 
 are content with fragments and scattered pieces of 
 Truth. She presents no full front to them — a feature 
 or side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses, 
 germs and crude essays at a system, is the utmost 
 they pretend to. They beat up a little game perad- 
 venture — and leave it to knottier heads, more robust 
 constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights 
 them is not steady and polar, but mutable and 
 shifting; waxing, and again waning. Their conver- 
 sation is accordingly. They will throw out a ran- 
 dom word in or out of season, and be content to let 
 it pass for what it is worth. They cannot speak 
 always as if they were upon their oath — but must 
 be understood, speaking or writing, with some 
 abatement. They seldom wait to mature a propo- 
 sition, but e'en bring it to market in the green ear. 
 They delight to impart their defective discoveries 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 109 
 
 as they arise, without waiting for their full develop- 
 mentf They are no systematizers, and would but 
 err more by attempting it. Their minds, as I said 
 before, are suggestive merely. The brain of a true 
 Caledonian (if I am not mistaken) is constituted 
 upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born 
 in panoply. You are never admitted to see his ideas 
 in their growth — if, indeed, they do grow, and are 
 not rather put together upon principles of clock- 
 work. You never catch his mind in an undress. 
 He never hints or suggests anything, but unlades 
 his stock of ideas in perfect order and complete- 
 ness. He brings his total wealth into company, and 
 gravely unpacks it. His riches are always about 
 him. He never stoops to catch a glittering some- 
 thing in your presence to share it with you, before 
 he quite knows whether it be true touch or not. 
 You cannot cry halves to anything that he finds. 
 He does not find, but bring. You never witness 
 his first apprehension of a thing. His understand- 
 ing is always at its meridian — you never see the 
 first dawn, the early streaks. He has no falterings 
 of self-suspicion. Surmises, guesses, misgivings, 
 half-intuitions, semi-consciousness, partial illumina- 
 tions, dim instincts, embryo conceptions, have no 
 place in his brain or vocabulary. The twilight of 
 dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox — he 
 has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he has none 
 either. Between the affirmative and the negative 
 there is no border-land with him. You cannot 
 hover with him on the confines of truth, or wander 
 in the maze of a profeable argument. He always 
 
110 LAMB 
 
 keeps the path. You cannot make excursions with 
 him — for he sets you right. His taste never fluctu- 
 ates. His morality never abates. He cannot com- 
 promise, or understand middle actions. There can 
 be but a right and a wrong. His conversation is as 
 a book. His affirmations have the sanctity of an 
 oath. You must speak upon the square with him. 
 He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an 
 enemy's country. "A healthy book," said one of 
 his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give 
 that appellation to John Buncle, "Did I catch rightly 
 what you said? I have heard of a man in health, 
 and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see 
 how that epithet can be properly applied to a book." 
 Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions 
 before a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher on your 
 irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. 
 Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print 
 of a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci, which 
 I was showing off to Mr. . After he had exam- 
 ined it minutely, I ventured to ask him how he 
 liked my beauty (a foolish name it goes by among 
 my friends), when he very gravely assured me, 
 that "he had considerable respect for my character 
 and talents (so he was pleased to say), but had 
 not given himself much thought about the degree of 
 my personal pretensions." The misconception stag- 
 gered me but did not seem much to disconcert him. 
 Persons of this nation are particularly fond of 
 affirming a truth — which nobody doubts. They do 
 not so properly affirm as annunciate it. They do 
 indeed appear to have such a love of truth (as if, 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 111 
 
 like virtue, it were valuable for itself) that all 
 truth* becomes equally valuable, whether the propo- 
 sition that contains it be new or old, disputed, or 
 such as is impossiible to become a subject of dis- 
 putation. I was present not long since at a party 
 of North Britons, where a son of Burns was ex- 
 pected; and happened to drop a silly expression 
 (in my South British way), that I wished it were 
 the father instead of the son — when four of them 
 started up at once to inform me, that "that was 
 impossible, because he was dead." An impractica- 
 ble wish, it seems, was more than they could con- 
 ceive. Swift has hit off this part of their character, 
 namely their love of truth, in his biting way, but 
 with an illiberality that necessarily confines the 
 passage to the margin.* The tediousness of these 
 people is certainly provoking. I wonder if they ever 
 tire one another ! In my early life I had a passion- 
 ate fondness for the poetry of Burns. I have some- 
 times foolishly hoped to' ingratiate myself with his 
 countrymen by expressing it. But I have always 
 found that a true Scot resents your admiration of 
 his compatriot even more than he would your con- 
 tempt of him. The latter he imputes to your "im- 
 perfect acquaintance with many of the words which 
 
 *There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit 
 themselves, and entertain their company with relating facts 
 of no consequence, not at all out of the road of such common 
 incidents as happen every day; and this I have observed 
 more frequently among the Scots than any other nation, 
 who are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances 
 of time or place; which kind of discourse, if it were not a 
 little relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases as well as 
 accent and gesture peculiar to that country, would be hardly 
 tolerable. — Hints toward an Essay on Conversation. 
 
112 LAMB 
 
 he uses;" and the same objection makes it a pre- 
 sumption in you to suppose that you can admire 
 him. Thomson they seem to have forgotten. Smol- 
 lett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven, for 
 his delineation of Rory and his companion, upon 
 their first introduction to our metropolis. Speak of 
 Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon 
 you Hume's History compared with his Continua- 
 tion of it. What if the historian had continued 
 Humphrey Clinker? 
 
 I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. 
 They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared 
 with which Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date 
 beyond the pyramids. But I should not care to be 
 in habits of familiar intercourse with any of that 
 nation. I confess that I have not the nerves to en- 
 ter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling about 
 me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh of Lin- 
 coln. Centuries of injury, contempt and hate, on 
 the one side; of cloaked revenge, dissimulation and 
 hate, on the other, between our and their fathers, 
 must and ought to affect the blood of the children. 
 I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly yet; or 
 that a few fine words, such as candor, liberality, 
 the light of a nineteenth century, can close up the 
 breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is 
 nowhere congenial to me. He is least distasteful 
 on 'Change, for the mercantile spirit levels all dis- 
 tinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly 
 confess that I do not relish the approximation of 
 Jew and Christian, which has become so fashion- 
 able. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 113 
 
 something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I 
 do not like to see the Church and Synagogue kiss- 
 ing and congeeing in awkward postures of an af- 
 fected civility. If they are converted, why do they 
 not come over to us altogether? Why keep up a 
 form of separation, when the life of it is fled? If 
 they can sit with us at table, why do they knock 
 at our cookery? I do not understand these half 
 convertites. Jews christianizing, Christians juda- 
 izing, puzzle me. I like fish or flesh. A moderate 
 Jew is a more confounding piece of anomaly than a 
 wet Quaker. The spirit of the synagogue is essen- 
 tially separative. B would have been more in 
 
 keeping if he had abided by the faith of his fore- 
 fathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, which 
 nature meant to be of — Christians. The Hebrew 
 spirit is strong in him, in spite of his proselytism. 
 He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it breaks 
 out when he sings, "The Children of Israel passed 
 through the Red Sea !" The auditors, for the mo- 
 ment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides over 
 our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him. 
 B has a strong expression of sense in his coun- 
 tenance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The 
 foundation of his vocal excellence is sense. He 
 sings with understanding, as Kemble delivered dia- 
 logue. He would sing the Commandments, and 
 give an appropriate character to each prohibition. 
 His nation, in general, have not oversensible coun- 
 tenances. How should they? but you seldom see 
 a silly expression among them. Gain, and the pur- 
 suit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard 
 
114 LAMB 
 
 of an idiot being born among them. Some admire 
 the Jewish female-physiognomy. I admire it, but 
 with trembling. Jael had those full dark inscruta- 
 ble eyes. 
 
 In the negro countenance you will often meet 
 with strong straits of benignity. I have felt yearn- 
 ings of tenderness toward some of these faces — or 
 rather masks — that have looked out kindly upon 
 one in casual encounters in the streets and high- 
 ways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls — these 
 "images of God cut in ebony." But I should not 
 like to associate with them, to share my meals and 
 my good nights with them — because they are black. 
 
 I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I ven- 
 erate the Quaker principles. It does me good for the 
 rest of the day when I meet any of their people in 
 my path. When I am ruffled or disturbed by any 
 occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, 
 acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and 
 taking off a load from the bosom. But I cannot like 
 the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) "to live 
 with them." I am all over sophisticated — with hu- 
 mors, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I must 
 have books, theaters, chit-chats, scandal, jokes, am- 
 biguities and a thousand whim-whams, which their 
 simpler taste can do without. I should starve at 
 their primitive banquet. My appetites are too high 
 for the salads which (according to Evelyn) Eve 
 dressed for the angel ; my gusto too excited 
 To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 
 
 The indirect answers which Quakers are often 
 found to return to a question put to them may be 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 115 
 
 explained, I think, without the vulgar assumption, 
 that tfiey are more given to evasion and equivocating 
 than other people. They naturally look to ^ their 
 words more carefully, and are more cautious of com- 
 mitting themselves. They have a peculiar character 
 to keep up on this head. They stand in a manner 
 upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted 
 from taking an oath. The custom of resorting to 
 an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all 
 religious antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) to 
 introduce into the laxer sort of minds the notion of 
 two kinds of truth — the one applicable to the solemn 
 affairs of justice, and the other to the common pro- 
 ceedings of daily intercourse. As truth bound upon 
 the conscience by an oath can be .but truth, so in 
 the common affirmations of the shop and the market- 
 place a latitude is expected and conceded upon ques- 
 tions wanting this solemn covenant. Something less 
 than truth satisfies. It is common to hear a person 
 say, "You do not expect me to speak as if I were 
 upon my oath." Hence a great deal of incorrectness 
 and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps into 
 ordinary conversation ; and a kind of secondary or 
 laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy truth — oath- 
 truth, by the nature of the circumcstances — is not 
 required. A Quaker knows none of this distinction. 
 His simple affirmation being received upon the most 
 sacred occasions, without any further test, stamps 
 a value upon the words which he is to use upon the 
 most indifferent topics of life. He looks to them, 
 naturally, with more severity. You can have of him 
 no more than his word. He knows, if he is caught 
 
116 LAMB 
 
 tripping in a casual expression, he forfeits, for him- 
 self at least, his claim to the invidious exemption. 
 He knows that his syllables are weighed — and how 
 far a consciousness of this particular watchfulness, 
 exerted against a person, has a tendency to produce 
 indirect answers, and a diverting of the question by 
 honest means, might be illustrated, and the practice 
 justified by a more sacred example than is proper 
 to be adduced upon this occasion. The admirable 
 presence of mind, which is notorious in Quakers 
 upon all contingencies, might be traced to this im- 
 posed self-watchfulness, if it did not seem rather an 
 humble and secular scion of that old stock of reli- 
 gious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in the 
 Primitive Friends, or gave way to the winds of 
 persecution, to the violence of judge or accuser, un- 
 der trials and racking examinations. "You will 
 never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your ques- 
 tions till midnight," said one of those upright Jus- 
 tices to Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a 
 puzzling subtlety. "Thereafter as the answers may 
 be,"-* retorted the Quaker. The astonishing com- 
 posure of his people is sometimes ludicrously dis- 
 played in lighter instances. I was travelling in a 
 stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up 
 in the straightest nonconformity of their sect. We 
 stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly 
 tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My 
 friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in 
 my way took supper. When the landlady brought 
 in the bill, the eldest of my companions discovered 
 that she had charged for both meals. This was 
 
IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES 117 
 
 resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous and posi- 
 tive. Some mild arguments were used on the part 
 of the* Quakers, for which the heated mind of the 
 good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The 
 guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. 
 The Quakers pulled out their money and formally 
 tendered it — so much for tea — I, in humble imitation, 
 tendering mine — for the supper which I had taken. 
 She would not relax in her demand. So they all 
 three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and 
 marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest 
 going first, with myself closing up the rear, who 
 thought I could not do better than follow the ex- 
 ample of such grave and warrantable personages. 
 We got in. The steps went up. The coach drove 
 off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indis- 
 tinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a 
 time inaudible — and now my conscience, which the 
 whimsical scene had for a while suspended, begin- 
 ning to give some twitches, I waited in the hope that 
 some justification would be offered by these serious 
 persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct. 
 To my great surprise not a syllable was dropped on 
 the subject. Thep sat as mute as at a meeting. 
 At length the eldest of them broke silence, by in- 
 quiring of his next neighbor, "Hast thee heard how 
 indigos go at the India House?" and the question 
 operated as a soporific on my moral feeling as far 
 as Exeter. 
 
118 LAMB 
 
 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 
 
 Sera tamen respexit 
 Libertas. — Virgil. 
 
 A Clerk I was in London gay. — O'Keefe. 
 
 If peradventure, reader, it has been thy lot to 
 waste the golden years of thy life — thy shining youth 
 — in the irksome confinement of an office; to have 
 thy prison days prolonged through middle age down 
 to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of re- 
 lease or respite; to have lived to forget that there 
 are such things as holidays, or to remember them 
 but as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and then 
 only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance. 
 
 It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my 
 seat at the desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was 
 the transition at fourteen from the abundant play- 
 time, and the frequently intervening vacations of 
 school-days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten 
 hours' a day attendance at the counting-house. But 
 time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually 
 became content — doggedly contented, as wild animals 
 in cages. 
 
 It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sun- 
 days, admirable as the institution of them is for 
 purposes of worship, are for that very reason the 
 very worst adapted for days of unbending recrea- 
 tion. In particular, there is a gloom for me attend- 
 ant upon a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss 
 the cheerful cries of London, the music, and the 
 ballad singeis — the buzz and stirring murmur of 
 
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 119 
 
 the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. The 
 closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the 
 glittering and endless succession of knacks and gew- 
 gaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of trades- 
 men, which make a week-day saunter through the 
 less busy parts of the metropolis so delightful, are 
 shut out. No bookstalls deliciously to idle over, no 
 busy faces to recreate the idle man who contem- 
 plates them ever passing by — the very face of busi- 
 ness a charm by contrast to his temporary relaxa- 
 tion from it. Nothing to be seen but unhappy coun- 
 tenances — or half-happy at best — of emancipated 
 'prentices and little tradesfolks, with here and there 
 a servant maid that has got leave to go out, who, 
 slaving all the week, with the habit has lost almost 
 the capacity of enjoying a free hour; and livelily 
 expressing the hollowness of a day's pleasuring. 
 The very strollers in the fields on that day look 
 anything but comfortable. 
 
 But besides Sundays, I had a day at Easter, and 
 a day at Christmas, with a full week in the summer 
 to go and air myself in my native fields at Hert- 
 fordshire. This last was a great indulgence; and 
 the prospect of its recurrence I believe, alone kept 
 me through the year, and made my durance toler- 
 able. But when the week came round, did the 
 glittering phantom of the distance keep touch with 
 me, or rather was it not a series of seven uneasy 
 days, spent in restless pursuit of pleasure, and a 
 wearisome anxiety to find out how to make the 
 most of them? Where was the quiet, where was 
 the promised rest? Before I had a taste of it, it 
 
120 LAMB 
 
 was vanquished. I was at the desk again, counting 
 upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must inter- 
 vene before such another snatch would come. Still 
 the prospect of its coming threw something of an 
 illumination upon the darker side of my captivity. 
 Without it, as I have said, I could scarcely have 
 sustained my thraldom. 
 
 Independently of the rigors of attendance, I have 
 ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere 
 caprice) of incapacity for business. This, during 
 my latter years, had increased to such a degree that 
 it was visible in all the lines of my countenance. 
 My health and my good spirits flagged. I had 
 perpetually a dread of some crisis to which I should 
 be found unequal. Besides my daylight servitude, 
 I served over again all night in my sleep, and would 
 awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors 
 in my accounts, and the like. I was fifty years of 
 age and no prospect of emancipation presented it- 
 self. I had grown to my desk, as it were; and the 
 wood had entered into my soul. 
 
 My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me 
 upon the trouble legible in my countenance; but I 
 did not know it had raised the suspicions of any 
 of my employers, when, on the fifth of last month, 
 
 a day ever to be remembered by me, L , the 
 
 junior partner in the firm, calling me on one side, 
 directly taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly 
 inquired the cause of them. So taxed, I honestly 
 made confession of my infirmity, and added that 
 I was afraid I should eventually be obliged to re- 
 sign his service. He spoke some words of course 
 
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 121 
 
 to hearten me, and there the matter rested. A 
 whole week I remained laboring under the impres- 
 sion tliat I had acted imprudently in my disclosure; 
 that I had foolishly given a handle against myself, 
 and had been anticipating my own dismissal. A 
 week passed in this manner — the most anxious one, 
 I verily believe, in my whole life — when on the 
 evening of the 12th of April, just as I was about 
 quitting my desk to go home (it might be about 
 eight o'clock), I received an awful summons to 
 attend the presence of the whole assembled firm in 
 the formidable back parlor. I thought now my time 
 is surely come, I have done for myself, I am going 
 to be told that they have no longer occasion for me. 
 
 L , I could see, smiled at the terror I was in, 
 
 which was a little relief to me, when to my utter 
 
 astonishment B , the eldest partner, began a 
 
 formal harangue to me on the length of my serv- 
 ices, my very meritorious conduct during the whole 
 of the time (the deuce, thought I, how did he find 
 out that? I protest I never had the confidence to 
 think as much). He went on to descant on the ex- 
 pediency of retiring at a certain time of life (how 
 my heart panted!), and asking me a few questions 
 as to the amount of my own property, of which I 
 have a little, ended with a proposal, to which his 
 three partners nodded a grave assent, that I should 
 accept from the house, which I had served so well, 
 a pension for life to the amount of two-thirds of 
 my accustomed salary — a magnificent offer. I do 
 not know what I answered, between surprise and 
 gratitude, but it was understood that I accepted 
 
122 LAMB 
 
 their proposal, and I was told that I was free from 
 that hour to leave their service. I stammered out 
 a bow, and at just ten minutes after eight I went 
 home — forever. This noble benefit — gratitude for- 
 bids me to conceal their names — I owe to the kind- 
 ness of the most munificent firm in the world — the 
 house of Boldero, Merryweather, Bosanquet and 
 Lacy. 
 
 Esto perpetual 
 
 For the first day or two I felt stunned, over- 
 whelmed. I could only apprehend my felicity; I was 
 too confused to taste it sincerely. I wandered 
 about, thinking I was happy, and knowing that I 
 was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner in 
 the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty 
 years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with 
 myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eter- 
 nity — for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have 
 all his Time to himself. It seemed to me that I 
 had more time on my hands than I could ever 
 manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was 
 suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see 
 no end of my possessions ; I wanted some steward, 
 or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time 
 for me. And here let me caution persons grown 
 old in active business, not lightly, nor without 
 weighing their own resources, to forego their cus- 
 tomary employment all at once, for there may be 
 danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that 
 my resources are sufficient; and now that those 
 first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet 
 home-feeling of the blessedness of my condition. 
 
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 123 
 
 I am in no hurry. Having all holidays, I am as 
 though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon me, 
 I could walk it away; but I do not walk all day long, 
 as I used to do in those old transient holidays, 
 thirty miles a day, to make the most of them. If 
 Time were troublesome, I could read it away; but 
 I do not read in that violent measure, with which, 
 having no time my own but candlelight Time, I used 
 to weary out my head and eyesight in bygone win- 
 ters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when 
 the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure; 
 I let it come to me. I am like the man 
 
 that's born, and has his years come to him, 
 
 In some green desert. 
 "Years !" you will say ; "what is this superannuated 
 simpleton calculating upon? He has already told 
 us he is past fifty." 
 
 I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but 
 deduct out of them the hours which I have lived 
 to other people, and not to myself, and you will 
 find me still a young fellow. For that is the only 
 true Time, which a man can properly call his own 
 — that which he has all to himself; the rest, though 
 in some sense he may be said to live it, is other 
 people's Time, not his. The remnant of my poor 
 days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me 
 threefold. My next ten years, if I stretch so far, 
 will be as long as any preceding thirty. 'Tis a fair 
 rule-of-three sum. 
 
 Among the strange fantasies which beset me at 
 the commencement of my freedom, and of which all 
 traces are not yet gone, one was, that a vast tract 
 
124 LAMB 
 
 of time had intervened since I quitted the Counting- 
 house. I could not conceive of it as an affair of 
 yesterday. The partners, and the clerks with whom 
 I had for so many years, and for so many hours in 
 each day of the year, been closely associated — being 
 suddenly removed from them — they seemed as dead 
 to me. There is a fine passage which may serve to 
 illustrate this fancy in a Tragedy by Sir Robert 
 Howard, speaking of a friend's death : 
 
 -'Twas but just now he went away; 
 
 I have not since had time to shed a tear; 
 And yet the distance does the same appear 
 As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
 Time takes no measure in Eternity. 
 
 To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain 
 to go among them once or twice since ; to visit 
 my old desk-fellows — my co-brethren of the quill — 
 that I had left below in the state militant. Not all 
 the kindness with which the}'- received me could 
 quite restore to me that pleasant familiarity which 
 I had heretofore enjoyed among them. We cracked 
 some of our old jokes, but methought they went 
 off but faintly. My old desk, the peg where I hung 
 my hat, were appropriated to another. I knew it 
 
 must be, but I could not take it kindly. D 1 
 
 take me, if I did not feel some remorse — beast, 
 if I had not — at quitting my old compeers, the faith- 
 ful partners of my toils for six-and-thirty years, 
 that soothed for me with their jokes and conun- 
 drums the ruggedness of my professional road. Had 
 it been so rugged then, after all? or was I a coward 
 simply? Well, it is too late to repent; and I also 
 know that these suggestions are a common fallacy 
 
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 125 
 
 of the mind on such occasions. But my heart smote 
 me. I had violently broken the bands betwixt us. 
 It was - at least not courteous. It shall be some 
 time before I get quite reconciled to the separa- 
 tion. Farewell, old cronies, yet not for long, for 
 again and again I will come among ye, if I shall 
 
 have your leave. Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, 
 
 and friendly ! Do , mild, slow to move, and 
 
 gentlemanly ! PI , officious to do, and to vol- 
 unteer, good services ! and thou, thou dreary pile, 
 fit mansion for a Gresham or a Whittington of 
 old, stately house of Merchants ; with thy laby- 
 rinthine passages, and light-excluding, pent-up of- 
 fices, where candles for one-half the year supplied 
 the place of the sun's light ; unhealthy contributor 
 to my weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! 
 In thee remain, and not in the obscure recollection 
 of some wandering book-seller, my "works !" There 
 let them rest, as I do from my labors, piled on thy 
 massy shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aqui- 
 nas left, and full as useful. My mantle I bequeath 
 among ye. 
 
 A fortnight has passed since the date of my first 
 communication. At that period I was approaching 
 to tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of 
 a calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Some- 
 thing of the first flutter was left; an unsettling 
 sense of novelty; the dazzle to weak eyes of unac- 
 customed light. I missed my old chains, forsooth, 
 as if they had been some necessary part of my 
 apparel. I was a poor Carthusian, from strict 
 cellular discipline suddenly by some revolution re- 
 
126 LAMB 
 
 turned upon the world. I am now as if I had 
 never been other than my own master. I find 
 myself at eleven o'clock in the day in Bond Street, 
 and it seems to me that I have been sauntering 
 there at that very hour for years past. I digress 
 into Soho, to explore a book-stall. Methinks I have 
 been thirty years a collector. There is nothing 
 strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine 
 picture in the morning. Was it ever otherwise? 
 What is become of Fish Street Hill? Where is 
 Fenchurch Street? Stones of old Mincing Lane, 
 which I have worn with my daily pilgrimage for 
 six-and-thirty years, to the footsteps of what toil- 
 worn clerk are your everlasting flints now vocal? I 
 indent the gayer flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change 
 time, and I am strangely among the Elgin marbles. 
 It was no hyperbole when I ventured to compare 
 the change in my condition to passing into another 
 world. Time stands still in a manner to me. I 
 have lost all distinction of season. I do not know 
 the day of the week or of the month. Each day 
 used to be individually felt by me in its reference 
 to the foreign post-days ; in its distance from, or 
 propinquity to, the next Sunday. I had my Wednes- 
 day feelings, my Saturday night's sensations. The 
 genius of each day was upon me distinctly during the 
 whole of it, effecting my appetite, spirits, etc. The 
 phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to 
 follow, sat as a load upon my poor Sabbath recre- 
 ations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? 
 What is gone of Black Monday r All days are the 
 same. Sunday itself — that unfortunate failure of a 
 
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 127 
 
 holiday, as it too often proved, what with my 
 sense of fugitiveness, and over-care to get the 
 greatesr quantity of pleasure out of it — is melted 
 down into a weekday. I can spare to go to church 
 now, without grudging the huge cantle which it 
 used to seem to cut out of the holiday. I have time 
 for everything. I can visit a sick friend. I can 
 interrupt the man of much occupation when he is 
 busiest. I can insult over him with an invitation 
 to take a day's pleasure with me to Windsor this 
 fine May morning. It is Lucretian pleasure to be- 
 hold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind 
 in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a 
 mill, drudging on in the same eternal round — and 
 what is it all for? A man can never have too much 
 Time to himself, nor too little to^do. Had I a 
 little son, I would christen him Nothing-to-do; he 
 should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of 
 his element as long as he is operative. I am alto- 
 gether for the life contemplative. Will no kindly 
 earthquake come and swallow up those accursed 
 cotton-mills? Take me that lumber of a desk 
 there, and bowl it down 
 
 As low as to the fiends. 
 
 I am no longer , clerk to the firm of, etc. I 
 
 am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim 
 gardens. I am already come to be known by my 
 vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at 
 no fixed pace, nor with any settled purpose. I walk 
 about; not to and from. They tell me, a certain 
 cum dignitate air, that has been buried so long with 
 my other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in 
 
128 LAMB 
 
 my person. I grow into gentility perceptibly. When 
 I take up a newspaper, it is to read the state of the 
 opera. Opus operatum est. I have done all that 
 I came into this world to do. I have worked task- 
 work, and have the rest of the day to myself. 
 
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