The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb. Charles Lamb
poem:—
"Now understand,
To Westmoreland,
Which is my heritage, (in a parenthesis, as it were,) I will you bring; And with a ring, By way of marriage, I will you take And lady make As shortly as I can: Thus have ye won An earle's son And not a banish'd man."
Page 403, line 14 from foot. M—— sent to his friend L——. M—— probably stands for Basil Montagu, Lamb's friend, and the editor of the volume in which "Confessions of a Drunkard" appeared. L—— was probably Lamb himself.
Page 403, line 11 from foot. Penotier. The friend disguised under this name has not been identified. Nor has Parson W—— or F—— in a later paragraph. Mr. B. B. MacGeorge tells me that he has a copy of John Woodvil inscribed in Lamb's hand to the Rev. J. Walton (or Watson).
Page 404, line 19. 39th of Exodus. Lamb meant 39th of Genesis—the story of Joseph.
Page 405, line 12. C——. See Allsop's Letters and Conversations of S. T. Coleridge, 1836, Vol. I., page 206, or where Allsop quotes Lamb as saying, "I made that joke first (the Scotch corner in hell, fire without brimstone), though Coleridge somewhat licked it into shape."
Page 405, line 7 from foot. Chapman's Homer. It would have been quite possible for Shakespeare to have read part of Chapman's Homer before he wrote "Troilus and Cressida." That play was probably written in 1603, and seven books of Chapman's Iliad came out in 1598, and the whole edition somewhere about 1609. Mr. Lee thinks that Shakespeare had read Chapman. The whole of the Odyssey was published in 1614. It was from this version that Lamb prepared his Adventures of Ulysses, 1808.
Page 406. The Death of Coleridge.
Not printed by Lamb. These reflections were copied from the album of Mr. Keymer by John Forster, and quoted in the memorial article upon Lamb written by him in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1835, which he then edited. "Lamb never fairly recovered from the death of Coleridge," said Forster.
He thought of little else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great spirit joined his friend. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a sort of mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, "cleanse his bosom of the perilous stuff that weighed" upon it. In a jest, or a few light phrases, he would lay open the last recesses of his heart. So in respect of the death of Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two or three weeks ago, and remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind. He interrupted himself and them almost every instant with some play of affected wonder, or astonishment, or humorous melancholy, on the words, "Coleridge is dead." Nothing could divert him from that, for the thought of it never left him.
It was then that Forster asked Lamb to inscribe something in Mr. Keymer's album: the passage on Coleridge was the result. Keymer was a London bookseller—the same to whom Bernard Barton, after Lamb's death, sent a character sketch of Lamb (see Bernard Barton and His Friends, page 113). Lamb, I might add, was much offended, as he told Mr. Fuller Russell, by a request from The Athenæum, immediately after Coleridge's death, for an article upon him.
Coleridge died in the house of James Gillman, in the Grove, Highgate, July 25, 1834, five months before Lamb's death. On his deathbed Coleridge had written, in pencil, in a copy of his Poetical Works, against the poem "This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison," the words: "Ch. and Mary Lamb—dear to my heart, yea, as it were, my heart. S. T. C. Aet. 63, 1834. 1797–1834—37 years!"
Coleridge's will contained this clause:—
And further, as a relief to my own feelings by the opportunity of mentioning their names, that I request of my executor, that a small plain gold mourning ring, with my hair, may be presented to the following persons, namely: To my close friend and ever-beloved schoolfellow, Charles Lamb—and in the deep and almost life-long affection of which this is the slender record; his equally-beloved sister, Mary Lamb, will know herself to be included …
The names of five other friends followed.
Page 407. Cupid's Revenge.
This paraphrase of Beaumont and Fletcher's play of the same name is placed here on account of the mystery of its date. Probably it belongs to a stage in Lamb's career some years earlier. It was printed first in Harper's Magazine, December, 1858, with the following prefatory note:—
The autograph MS. of this unpublished Tale by Charles Lamb came into our hands in the following manner: Thomas Allsop, Esq., who came to this country a few months since in consequence of his alleged complicity in the attempt made upon the life of Louis Napoleon by Orsini, was for many years an intimate friend and correspondent of Coleridge and Lamb. He is known as the author of the Recollections, etc., of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published nearly a quarter of a century ago. He brought with him in his flight to America a number of manuscripts of his friends. Among these were a volume of "Marginalia" by Coleridge; a series of notes by Lamb, nearly a hundred in all, many of them highly characteristic of the writer; and the tale of "Cupid's Revenge" which appears to have remained unpublished in consequence of the cessation of the magazine for which it was written. These MSS. have all been placed in our hands. In an early number we propose to publish a selection from the letters of Lamb, and the "Marginalia" of Coleridge.
(Editors of Harper's Magazine.)
A large number of the notes from Lamb to Allsop were published, as promised, under the editorship of George William Curtis. Allsop died in 1880.
APPENDIX
Page 425. Scraps of Criticism.
London Magazine, December, 1822. Not signed.
In December, 1822, the editor of the London Magazine inaugurated a new department to be called "The Miscellany"—a place of refuge for small ingenious productions. To ask Lamb's assistance would be the most natural thing in the world, and though no signature is attached, there is, I think, enough internal evidence for us to consider his the contribution to the first instalment which has the sub-title, "Scraps of Criticism."
The first two notes, on Gray, may be taken as companions to that in The Examiner Table-Talk (page 181), on the beard of Gray's Bard. The note on Richard III. is of a part with Lamb's Shakespearian criticisms, and it comes here as a kind of postscript to his examination of Cooke's impersonation (see page 41 and note to the same).
Page 425, second quotation. This passage describing Milton is in Gray's Progress of Poesy, III., 2, and not, as Lamb inadvertently says, in The Bard.
Page 425, foot. Salmasius. Salmasius, Claude de Saumaise (1588–1653), a professor at Leyden who wrote a defence of Charles I. in Latin, 1649, to which Milton replied, 1650, also in Latin. It was while engaged in this work that Milton lost his sight.
Page 426, second paragraph. Howell's Letters. Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ: Familiar Letters, Domestic