The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb. Charles Lamb
This is the old joke about tailors "cabbaging," that is to say, stealing cloth. The term is thus explained in Phillips' History of Cultivated Vegetables:—
The word cabbage … means the firm head or ball that is formed by the leaves turning close over each other. … From thence arose the cant word applied to tailors, who formerly worked at the private houses of their customers, where they were often accused of cabbaging: which means the rolling up of pieces of cloth instead of the list and shreds, which they claim as their due.
Lamb returned to this jest against tailors in his verses "Satan in Search of a Wife," in 1831.
In The Champion for December 11, 1814, was printed a letter defending tailors against Lamb.
Page 204. On Needle-Work.
The British Lady's Magazine and Monthly Miscellany, April 1, 1815. By Mary Lamb.
The authority for attributing this paper to Mary Lamb is Crabb Robinson. In his Diary for December 11, 1814, he writes: "I called on Miss Lamb, and chatted with her. She was not unwell, but she had undergone great fatigue from writing an article about needle-work for the new Ladies' British Magazine. She spoke of writing as a most painful occupation, which only necessity could make her attempt."
We know that Mary Lamb's needle was required to help keep the Lamb family, not only after Samuel Salt's death in 1792, when they had to move from the Temple, but very likely while they were there also. In one of the newspaper accounts of the tragedy of September, 1796, she is described as "a mantua-maker." Possibly she continued to sew for a while after she joined her brother, in 1799, but she would hardly call that "early life," being thirty-five in that year.
Page 210. On the Poetical Works of George Wither.
This is the one prose article that, to the best of our knowledge, made its first and only appearance in the Works (1818). It was inspired by John Mathew Gutch (1776–1861), Lamb's schoolfellow at Christ's Hospital, with whom he shared rooms in Southampton Buildings in 1800. Later, when Gutch had become proprietor, at Bristol, of Felix Farley's Bristol Journal (in which many of Chatterton's poems had appeared), he took advantage of his press to set up a private edition of selections from Wither, a poet then little known and not easily accessible, an interleaved copy of which, in two volumes, was sent to Lamb in 1809 or 1810. Gutch told the story in an Appendix to his Lytell Geste of Robin Hoode (1847), wherein he printed a letter from Lamb dated April 9, 1810, concerning the edition, in the course of which Lamb remarks: "I never saw Philarete before—judge of my pleasure. I could not forbear scribbling certain critiques in pencil on the blank leaves. … Perhaps I could digest the few critiques prefixed to the 'Satires,' 'Shepherd's Hunting,' etc., into a short abstract of Wither's character and works. … "
Lamb returned the book with this letter; and Gutch seems to have then sent it to Dr. John Nott (1751–1825), of the Hot Wells, Bristol, a medical man with literary tastes, and the author of a number of translations, medical treatises, and subsequently of an edition of Herrick; who added comments of his own both upon Wither and upon Lamb.
Lamb, Gutch tells us, subsequently asked for the book again, with the intention of preparing from it the present essay on Wither, and coming then upon Nott's criticisms of himself, superimposed sarcastic criticisms of Nott. Thus the volumes contain first Wither, then Gutch and Lamb on Wither, then Nott on Wither and Lamb, and then Lamb on Nott again and incidentally on Wither again, too, for some of his earlier opinions were slightly modified.
Lamb gave the volume to his friend John Brook Pulham of the East India House, and the treasure passed to the fitting possession of the late Mr. Swinburne, who described it in a paper in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1885, afterwards republished in his Miscellanies, 1886. Mr. Swinburne permitted me to quote from his very entertaining analysis:—
The second fly-leaf of the first volume bears the inscription, "Jas Pulham Esqr. from Charles Lamb." A proof impression of the well-known profile sketch of Lamb by Pulham has been inserted between this and the preceding fly-leaf. The same place is occupied in the second volume by the original pencil drawing, to which is attached an engraving of it "Scratched on Copper by his Friend Brook Pulham;" and on the fly-leaf following is a second inscription—"James Pulham Esq. from his friend Chas Lamb." On the reverse of the leaf inscribed with these names in the first volume begins the commentary afterwards republished, with slight alterations and transpositions, as an essay "on the poetical works of George Wither. … "
After the quotation from Drayton, with which the printed essay concludes, the manuscript proceeds thus:—
"The whole poem, for the delicacy of the thoughts, and height of the passion, is equal to the best of Spenser's, Daniel's or Drayton's love verses; with the advantage of comprising in a whole all the fine things which lie scatter'd in their works, in sonnets, and smaller addresses—The happy chearful spirit of the author goes with it all the way; that sanguine temperament, which gives to all Wither's lines (in his most loved metre especially, where chiefly he is a Poet) an elasticity, like a dancing measure; it [is] as full of joy, and confidence, and high and happy thoughts, as if it were his own Epithalamium which, like Spenser, he were singing, and not a piece of perambulary, probationary flattery. … "[67]
[67] Lamb subsequently altered the conclusion of this paragraph to: "as if, like Spenser, he were singing his own Epithalamium, and not a strain of probationary courtship."
On page 70 Lamb has proposed a new reading which speaks for itself—"Jove's endeared Ganimed," for the meaningless "endured" of the text before him. Against a couplet now made famous by his enthusiastic citation of it—
"Thoughts too deep to be expressed
And too strong to be suppressed—"
he has written—"Two eminently beautiful lines." Opposite the couplet in which Wither mentions the poets
"whose verse set forth
Rosalind and Stella's worth"
Gutch (as I suppose) has written the names of Lodge and Sidney; under which Lamb has pencilled the words "Qu. Spenser and Sidney;" perhaps the more plausible conjecture, as the date of Lodge's popularity was out, or nearly so, before Wither began to write.
The next verses [The Shepherd's Hunting] are worth transcription on their own account no less than on account of Lamb's annotation.
"It is known what thou canst do,
For it is not long ago
When that Cuddy, thou, and I,
Each the other's skill to try,
At St. Dunstan's charmèd well,
(As some present there can tell)
Sang upon a sudden theme,
Sitting by the crimson stream;
Where if thou didst well or no
Yet remains the song to show."
To the fifth of these verses the following note is appended:—
"The Devil Tavern, Fleet Street, where Child's Place now stands, and where a sign hung in my memory within 18" (substituted for 16) "years, of the Devil and St. Dunstan—Ben Jonson made this a famous place of resort for poets by drawing up a set of Leges Convivales which were engraven in marble on the chimney piece in the room called Apollo. One of Drayton's poems is called The Sacrifice to Apollo; it is addrest to the priests or Wits of Apollo, and is a kind of poetical paraphrase upon the Leges Convivales—This tavern to the very last kept up a room with that name. C. L."—who might have added point and freshness to this brief account by citing the splendid description of a revel held there under the jovial old Master's auspices, given by Careless to Aurelia [Carlesse to Æmilia] in Shakerley Marmion's admirable comedy, A Fine Companion. But it is remarkable