The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb. Charles Lamb
of the present volume, and "Barbara S——" in Elia essays. See also note to "Miss Kelly at Bath," page 486).
Page 177, at foot. The Glovers … Johnstons … St. Legers. Mrs. Julia Glover (1779–1850), the original Alhadra in Coleridge's "Remorse" in 1813. Mrs. Johnstone, a well-known Elvira in "Pizarro." She made her London début in 1797. Mrs. Saint Ledger (née Williams) made her London début in 1799, and began well, but declined into pantomime.
Page 178, line 1. Miss Candour. Probably a misprint for Mrs. Candour in "The School for Scandal," a part created by Miss Pope.
Page 178. III.—[Books with One Idea in Them.]
The Examiner, July 18, 1813. Reprinted by Leigh Hunt in The Indicator, December 13, 1820, under the title of Table Talk, together with the notes on "Gray's Bard" and "Playhouse Memoranda," on pages 181 and 184 of the present volume. Leigh Hunt thus introduced these reprints:—
It has been a great relief to us during our illness (from which, we trust, we are now recovering) to find that the re-publication of some former pieces from other periodical works has not been disapproved. Being still compelled to make up our numbers in this way, we have the pleasure of supplying the greater part of the present one with some Table-Talk, with which a friend entertained us on a similar occasion a few years ago in The Examiner. To the reader who happens not to be acquainted with them they will be acceptable for very obvious reasons: those who remember them, will be glad to read them again; and as for ourselves, besides the other reasons for being gratified, we feel particular satisfaction in recalling to the author's memory as well as our own, some genuine morsels of writing which he appears to have forgotten.
Page 178, line 11., Patrick's "Pilgrim." The Parable of the Pilgrim, 1664, by Simon Patrick, Bishop of Ely (1626–1707), which bears a curious accidental likeness to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Writing to Wordsworth, in 1815, Lamb says: "Did you ever read Charron on Wisdom or Patrick's Pilgrim? If neither, you have two great pleasures to come." The particular passage quoted from Patrick is in one of Lamb's Commonplace Books.
Page 178, line 22. Single-Speech Hamiltons. William Gerard Hamilton (1729–1796). He entered Parliament in 1754, and made his famous maiden speech in 1755. It was not, however, by any means his only speech, although his nickname still prevails.
Page 178, line 24. Killigrew's play. "The Parson's Wedding," a comedy, by Thomas Killigrew (1612–1683). Lamb included this speech of the Fine Lady under the heading Facetiæ in his extracts from the Garrick plays in Hone's Table Book, 1827.
Page 178, line 32. Charron on "Wisdom." Two translations of the Sieur de Charron, De la Sagesse, might have been read by Lamb: Dean Stanhope's (1697) and Samson Lennard's (1612). Probably it was Lennard's, since the passage may be found on page 129 of his 1670 edition, a quarto, and page 145 in the 1640 edition, whereas in Stanhope it is page 371. Lennard's translation runs thus (Book I., Chap. 39):—
The action of planting and making man is shameful, and all the parts thereof; the congredients, the preparations, the instruments, and whatsoever serves thereunto is called and accounted shameful; and there is nothing more unclean, in the whole Nature of man. The action of destroying and killing him [is] honorable, and that which serves thereunto glorious: we guild it, we enrich it, we adorn ourselves with it, we carry it by our sides, in our hands, upon our shoulders. We disdain to go to the birth of man; every man runs to see him die, whether it be in his bed, or in some public place, or in the field. When we go about to make a man, we hide ourselves, we put out the candle, we do it by stealth. It is a glory and pomp to unmake a man, to kill himself; we light the candles to see him die, we execute him at high noon, we sound a trumpet, we enter the combat, and we slaughter him when the sun is at highest. There is but one way to beget, to make a man, a thousand and a thousand means, inventions, arts to destroy him. There is no reward, honour or recompense assigned to those that know how to encrease, to preserve human nature; all honour, greatness, riches, dignities, empires, triumphs, trophies are appointed for those that know how to afflict, trouble, destroy it.
Page 178, last line. What could Pope mean?
What made (say Montaigne, or more sage Charron)
Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon?
Pope's Moral Essays, Ep. I., 87–88.
It has been held that Pope called Charron more sage because he somewhat mitigated the excessive fatalism (Pyrrhonism) of Montaigne.
Page 179. IV.—[A Sylvan Surprise.]
The Examiner, September 12, 1813. Reprinted in The Indicator, January 3, 1821. We know it to be Lamb's by the signature ‡; also from a sentence in Leigh Hunt's essay on the "Suburbs of Genoa," in The Literary Examiner, August 23, 1823, where, speaking of an expected sight, he says: "C. L. could not have been more startled when he saw the chimney-sweeper reclining in Richmond meadows."
Page 179. V.—[Street Conversation.]
The Examiner, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.
Page 180. VI.—[A Town Residence.]
The Examiner, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.
This note is another contribution to Lamb's many remarks on London. Allsop, in his reminiscences of Lamb in his Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge, 1836, remarks:—
Somerset House, Whitehall Chapel (the old Banqueting Hall), the church at Limehouse and the new church at Chelsea, with the Bell house at Chelsea College, which always reminded him of Trinity College, Cambridge, were the objects most interesting to him [Lamb] in London.
Page 181. VII.—[Gray's "Bard."]
The Examiner, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡. Reprinted by Leigh Hunt under the above title in The Indicator, December 13, 1820. In the Appendix (pages 425–6) will be found other critical comments upon Gray, which I conjecture to be Lamb's.
Page 181, line 1 of essay. The beard of Gray's bard.
Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream'd like a meteor, to the troubled air.
The Bard.
Gray himself noted the Miltonic anticipation of this line (see Gosse's edition, 1884). The lines Lamb quotes are from Paradise Lost, I., lines 536–537.
Page 181, line 6 of essay. Heywood's old play. "The Four 'Prentices of London," by Thomas Heywood. The speech is that of Turnus respecting the Persian Sophy. It is copied in one of Lamb's Commonplace Books.
Page 182. VIII.—[An American War for Helen.]
The