Charles Lamb
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HAZLITT.
[_From Hazlitt's "Spirit of the Age." Title, "Elia."_]
Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an antiquarian, as this implies a reflecting
humanity. The film of the past hovers forever before him. He is shy,
sensitive, the reverse of everything coarse, vulgar, obtrusive, and
commonplace. His spirit clothes itself in the garb of elder time;
homelier, but more durable. He is borne along with no pompous paradoxes,
shines in no glittering tinsel of a fashionable phraseology, is neither
fop nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence or froth of new-fangled
opinions. His style runs pure and clear, though it may often take an
underground course, or be conveyed through old-fashioned conduits....
There is a fine tone of chiaro-scuro, a moral perspective in his writings.
He delights to dwell on that which is fresh to the eye of memory; he
yearns after and covets what soothes the frailty of human nature. That
touches him most nearly which is withdrawn to a certain distance, which
verges on the borders of oblivion; that piques and provokes his fancy most
which is hid from a superficial glance. That which, though gone by, is
still remembered, is in his view more genuine, and has given more signs
that it will live, than a thing of yesterday, which may be forgotten to-
morrow. Death has in this sense the spirit of life in it; and the shadowy
has to our author something substantial.
Mr. Lamb has a distaste to new faces, to new books, to new buildings, to
new customs. He is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions of
self-importance, of all adventitious ornaments, of all mechanical
advantages, even to a nervous excess. It is not merely that he does not
rely upon, or ordinarily avail himself of them; he holds them in
abhorrence: he utterly abjures and discards them. He disdains all the
vulgar artifices of authorship, all the cant of criticism and helps of
notoriety.
His affections revert to and settle on the past; but then even this must
have something personal and local in it to interest him deeply and
thoroughly. He pitches his tent in the suburbs of existing manners, and
brings down his account of character to the few straggling remains of the
last generation. No one makes the tour of our southern metropolis, or
describes the manners of the last age, so well as Mr. Lamb,--with so fine,
and yet so formal an air. How admirably he has sketched the former inmates
of the South Sea House; what "fine fretwork he makes of their double and
single entries!"
With what a firm yet subtle pencil he has embodied Mrs. Battle's opinions
on Whist! With what well-disguised humor he introduces us to his
relations, and how freely he serves up his friends!
The streets of London are his fairy-land, teeming with wonder, with life
and interest to his retrospective glance, as it did to the eager eye of
childhood: he has contrived to weave its tritest traditions into a bright
and endless romance.
[_From Hazlitt's "Table Talk,"_ Vol. II.]
Mr. Lamb is the only imitator of old English style I can read with
pleasure; and he is so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his authors,
that the idea of imitation is almost done away. There is an inward
unction, a marrowy vein both in the thought and feeling, an intuition,
deep and lively, of his subject, that carries off any quaintness or
awkwardness arising from an antiquated style and dress. The matter is
completely his own, though the manner is assumed. Perhaps his ideas are
altogether so marked and individual, as to require their point and
pungency to be neutralized by the affectation of a singular but
traditional form of conveyance. Tricked out in the prevailing costume,
they would probably seem more startling and out of the way. The old
English authors, Burton, Fuller, Coryate, Sir Thomas Browne, are a kind of
mediators between us and the more eccentric and whimsical modern,
reconciling us to his peculiarities. I must confess that what I like best
of his papers under the signature of Elia (still I do not presume, amidst
such excellence, to decide what is most excellent) is the account of Mrs.
Battle's "Opinions on Whist," which is also the most free from obsolete
allusions and turns of expression,--
"A well of native English undefiled."
To those acquainted with his admired prototypes, these Essays of the
ingenious and highly gifted author have the same sort of charm and relish
that Erasmus's "Colloquies," or a fine piece of modern Latin, have to the
classical scholar.--"_On Familiar Style_."
[_Hazlitt's "Plain Speaker,"_ Vol. I. p. 62.]
At Lamb's we used to have lively skirmishes at their Thursday evening
parties. I doubt whether the Small Coal-man's musical parties could exceed
them. O for the pen of John Buncle to consecrate a _petit souvenir_ to
their memory! There was Lamb himself, the most delightful, the most
provoking, the most witty and sensible of men. He always made the best pun
and the best remark in the course of the evening. His serious
conversation, like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered
out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half a dozen sentences,
as he does. His jests scald like tears, and he probes a question with a
play upon words. What a keen, laughing, hair-brained vein of homefelt
truth! What choice venom! How often did we cut into the haunch of letters!
How we skimmed the cream of criticism! How we picked out the marrow of
authors! Need I go over the names? They were but the old, everlasting set
--Milton and Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addison, Swift and
Gay, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Richardson, Hogarth's prints, Claude's
landscapes, the Cartoons at Hampton Court, and all those things that,
having once been, must ever be. The Scotch Novels had not then been heard
of: so we said nothing about them. In general we were hard upon the
moderns. The author of the "Rambler" was only tolerated in Boswell's Life
of him; and it was as much as any one could do to edge in a word for
Junius. Lamb could not bear _Gil Blas_: this was a fault. I remember the
greatest triumph I ever had was in persuading him, after some years'
difficulty, that Fielding was better than Smollett. On one occasion he was
for making out a list of persons famous in history that one would wish to
see again, at the head of whom were Pontius Pilate, Sir Thomas Browne, and
Dr. Faustus; but we black-balled most of his list! But with what a gusto
would he describe his favorite authors, Donne or Sir Philip Sidney, and
call their most crabbed passages _delicious_! He tried them on his palate,
as epicures taste olives, and his observations had a smack in them, like a
roughness on the tongue. With what discrimination he hinted a defect in
what he admired most,--as in saying the display of the sumptuous banquet,
in "Paradise Regained," was not in true keeping, as the simplest fare was
all that was necessary to tempt the extremity of hunger; and stating that
Adam and Eve in "Paradise Lost" were too much like married people. He has
furnished many a text for Coleridge to preach upon. There was no fuss or
cant about him; nor were his sweets or sours ever diluted with one
particle of affectation.--_"On the Conversation of Authors."_
[_From "Autobiography of Leigh Hunt,"_ pp. 250-253.]
Let me take this opportunity of recording my recollections in general of
my friend Lamb; of all the world's friend, particularly of his oldest
friends, Coleridge and Southey; for I think he never modified or withheld
any opinion (in private or bookwards) except in consideration of what he
thought they might not like.
Charles Lamb had a head worthy of Aristotle, with as fine a heart as ever
beat in human bosom, and limbs very fragile to sustain it. There was a
caricature of him sold in the shops, which pretended to be a likeness.
Procter went into the shop in a passion, and asked the man what he meant
by putting forth such a libel. The man apologized, and said that the
artist meant no offence. There never was a true portrait of Lamb. His
features were strongly yet delicately cut; he had a fine eye as well as
forehead; and no face carried in it greater marks of thought and feeling.
It resembled that of Bacon, with less worldly vigor and more sensibility.
As his frame, so was his genius. It was as fit for thought as could be,
and equally as unfit for action; and this rendered him melancholy,
apprehensive, humorous, and willing to make the best of everything as it
was, both from tenderness of heart and abhorrence of alteration. His
understanding was too great to admit an absurdity; his frame was not
strong enough to deliver it from a fear. His sensibility to strong
contrasts was the foundation of his humor, which was that of a wit at once
melancholy and willing to be pleased.... His puns were admirable, and
often contained as deep things as the wisdom of some who have greater
names; such a man, for instance, as Nicole, the Frenchman, who was a baby
to him. Lamb would have cracked a score of jokes at Nicole, worth his
whole book of sentences; pelted his head with pearls. Nicole would not
have understood him, but Rochefou-cault would, and Pascal too; and some of
our old Englishmen would have understood him still better. He would have
been worthy of hearing Shakespeare read one of his scenes to him, hot from
the brain. Commonplace found a great comforter in him, as long as it was
good-natured; it was to the ill-natured or the dictatorial only that he
was startling. Willing to see society go on as it did, because he
despaired of seeing it otherwise, but not at all agreeing in his interior
with the common notions of crime and punishment, he "_dumfounded_" a long
tirade against vice one evening, by taking the pipe out of his mouth, and
asking the speaker, "Whether he meant to say that a thief was not a good
man?" To a person abusing Voltaire, and indiscreetly opposing his
character to that of Jesus Christ, he said admirably well (though he by no
means overrated Voltaire, nor wanted reverence in the other quarter), that
"Voltaire was a very good Jesus Christ _for the French_." He liked to see
the church-goers continue to go to church, and wrote a tale in his
sister's admirable little book (_Mrs. Leicester's School_) to encourage
the rising generation to do so; but to a conscientious deist he had
nothing to object; and if an atheist had found every other door shut
against him, he would assuredly not have found his. I believe he would
have had the world remain precisely as it was, provided it innovated no
further; but this spirit in him was anything but a worldly one, or for his
own interest. He hardly contemplated with patience the new buildings in
the Regent's Park; and, privately speaking, he had a grudge against
_official_ heaven-expounders, or clergymen. He would rather, however, have
been with a crowd that he disliked, than felt himself alone. He said to me
one day, with a face of great solemnity, "What must have been that man's
feelings, who thought himself _the first deist?_" ... He knew how many
false conclusions and pretensions are made by men who profess to be guided
by facts only, as if facts could not be misconceived, or figments taken
for them; and therefore, one day, when somebody was speaking of a person
who valued himself on being a matter-of-fact man, "Now," said he, "I value
myself on being a matter-of-lie man." This did not hinder his being a man
of the greatest veracity, in the ordinary sense of the word; but "truth,"
he said, "was precious, and not to be wasted on everybody." Those who wish
to have a genuine taste of him, and an insight into his modes of life,
should read his essays on _Hogarth_ and _King Lear_, his _Letters_, his
article on the _London Streets_, on _Whist-Playing_, which he loves, and
on _Saying Grace before Meat_, which he thinks a strange moment to select
for being grateful. He said once to a brother whist-player, whose hand was
more clever than clean, and who had enough in him to afford the joke, "M.,
if dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!"
* * * * *
FORSTER.
[_From Mr. John Forsters Contribution to the New Monthly Magazine,_ 1835.
_Title, "Charles Lamb."_]
Charles Lamb's first appearance in literature was by the side of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. He came into his first battle, as he tells us
(literature is a sort of warfare), under cover of that greater Ajax.
We should like to see this remarkable friendship (remarkable in all
respects and in all its circumstances) between two of the most original
geniuses in an age of no common genius, worthily recorded. It would
outvalue, in the view of posterity, many centuries of literary quarrels.
Lamb never fairly recovered the death of Coleridge. He thought of little
else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great
spirit joined his friend's. 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 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 humorous melancholy on the words "_Coleridge is dead_."
Nothing could divert him from that, for the thought of it never left him.
About the same time, we had written to him to request a few lines for the
literary album of a gentleman who entertained a fitting admiration of his
genius. It was the last request we were to make, and the last kindness we
were to receive. He wrote in Mr. ----'s volume, and wrote of Coleridge.
This, we believe, was the last production of his pen. A strange and not
unenviable chance, which saw him at the end of his literary pilgrimage, as
he had been at the beginning,--in that immortal company. We are indebted,
with the reader, to the kindness of our friend for permission to print the
whole of what was written. It would be impertinence to offer a remark on
it. Once read, its noble and affectionate tenderness will be remembered
forever.
"When I heard of the death of Coleridge, it was without grief. It seemed
to me that he long had been on the confines of the next world,--that he
had a hunger for eternity. I grieved then that I could not grieve. But
since, I feel how great a part he was of me. His great and dear spirit
haunts me. I cannot think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or
books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to him. He was the
proof and touchstone of all my cogitations. He was a Grecian (or in the
first form) at Christ's Hospital, where I was deputy Grecian; and the same
subordination and deference to him I have preserved through a life-long
acquaintance. Great in his writings, he was greatest in his conversation.
In him was disproved that old maxim, that we should allow every one his
share of talk. He would talk from morn to dewy eve, nor cease till far
midnight; yet who ever would interrupt him,--who would obstruct that
continuous flow of converse, fetched from Helicon or Zion? He had the tact
of making the unintelligible seem plain. Many who read the abstruser parts
of his "Friend" would complain that his works did not answer to his spoken
wisdom. They were identical. But he had a tone in oral delivery, which
seemed to convey sense to those who were otherwise imperfect recipients.
He was my fifty years old friend without a dissension. Never saw I his
likeness, nor probably the world can see again. I seem to love the house
he died at more passionately than when he lived. I love the faithful
Gilmans more than while they exercised their virtues towards him living.
What was his mansion is consecrated to me a chapel.
"CHAS. LAMB.
"EDMONTON, November 21, 1834."
Within five weeks of this date Charles Lamb died. A slight accident
brought on an attack of erysipelas, which proved fatal; his system was not
strong enough for resistance. It is some consolation to add, that, during
his illness, which lasted four days, he suffered no pain, and that his
faculties remained with him to the last. A few words spoken by him the day
before he died showed with what quiet collectedness he was prepared to
meet death.
As an Essayist, Charles Lamb will be remembered, in years to come, with
Rabelais and Montaigne, with Sir Thomas Browne, with Steele, and with
Addison. He unites many of the finest characteristics of these several
writers. He has wisdom and wit of the highest order, exquisite humor, a
genuine and cordial vein of pleasantry, and the most heart-touching
pathos. In the largest acceptation of the word he is a humanist. No one of
the great family of authors past or present has shown in matters the most
important or the most trivial so delicate and extreme a sense of all that
is human. It is the prevalence of this characteristic in his writings
which has subjected him to occasional charges of want of imagination.
This, however, is but half-criticism; for the matter of reproach may in
fact be said to be his triumph. It was with a deep relish of Mr. Lamb's
faculty that a friend of his once said, "He makes the majesties of
imagination seem familiar." It is precisely thus with his own imagination.
It eludes the observation of the ordinary reader in the modesty of its
truth, in its social and familiar air. His fancy as an Essayist is
distinguished by singular delicacy and tenderness; and even his conceits
will generally be found to be, as those of his favorite Fuller often are,
steeped in human feeling and passion. The fondness he entertained for
Fuller, for the author of the "Anatomy of Melancholy," and for other
writers of that class, was a pure matter of temperament. His thoughts were
always his own. Even when his words seem cast in the very mould of others,
the perfect originality of his thinking is felt and acknowledged; we may
add, in its superior wisdom, manliness, and unaffected sweetness. Every
sentence in those Essays may be proved to be crammed full of thinking. The
two volumes will be multiplied, we have no doubt, in the course of a few
years, into as many hundreds; for they contain a stock of matter which
must be ever suggestive to more active minds, and will surely revisit the
world in new shapes--an everlasting succession and variety of ideas. The
past to him was not mere dry antiquity; it involved a most extensive and
touching association of feelings and thoughts, reminding him of what we
have been and may be, and seeming to afford a surer ground for resting on
than the things which are here to-day and may be gone to-morrow. We know
of no inquisition more curious, no speculation more lofty, than may be
found in the Essays of Charles Lamb. We know no place where conventional
absurdities receive so little quarter; where stale evasions are so plainly
exposed; where the barriers between names and things are at times so
completely flung down. And how, indeed, could it be otherwise? For it is
truth that plays upon his writings like a genial and divine atmosphere. No
need for them to prove what they would be at by any formal or logical
analysis; no need for him to tell the world that this institution is wrong
and that doctrine right; the world may gather from those writings their
surest guide to judgment in these and all other cases--a general and
honest appreciation of the humane and true.
Mr. Lamb's personal appearance was remarkable. It quite realized the
expectations of those who think that an author and a wit should have a
distinct air, a separate costume, a particular cloth, something positive
and singular about him. Such unquestionably had Mr. Lamb. Once he rejoiced
in snuff-color, but latterly his costume was inveterately black--with
gaiters which seemed longing for something more substantial to close in.
His legs were remarkably slight; so indeed was his whole body, which was
of short stature, but surmounted by a head of amazing fineness. His face
was deeply marked and full of noble lines--traces of sensibility,
imagination, suffering, and much thought. His wit was in his eye,
luminous, quick, and restless. The smile that played about his mouth was
ever cordial and good-humored; and the most cordial and delightful of its
smiles were those with which he accompanied his affectionate talk with his
sister, or his jokes against her.
* * * * *
TALFOURD.
[_From Talfourd's "Memorials of C. Lamb,"_ pp. 337-8, 342-3.]
Except to the few who were acquainted with the tragical occurrences of
Lamb's early life, some of his peculiarities seemed strange,--to be
forgiven, indeed, to the excellences of his nature and the delicacy of his
genius,--but still, in themselves, as much to be wondered at as deplored.
The sweetness of his character, breathed through his writings, was felt
even by strangers; but its heroic aspect was unguessed even by many of his
friends. Let them now consider it, and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice
can show anything in human action and endurance more lovely than its self-
devotion exhibits! It was not merely that he saw through the ensanguined
cloud of misfortune which had fallen upon his family, the unstained
excellence of his sister, whose madness had caused it; that he was ready
to take her to his own home with reverential affection, and cherish her
through life; that he gave up, for her sake, all meaner and more selfish
love, and all the hopes which youth blends with the passion which disturbs
and ennobles it; not even that he did all this cheerfully, and without
pluming himself upon his brotherly nobleness as a virtue, or seeking to
repay himself (as some uneasy martyrs do) by small instalments of long
repining,--but that he carried the spirit of the hour in which he first
knew and took his course, to his last. So far from thinking that his
sacrifice of youth and love to his sister gave him a license to follow his
own caprice at the expense of her feelings, even in the lightest matters,
he always wrote and spoke of her as his wiser self, his generous
benefactress, of whose protecting care he was scarcely worthy. How his pen
almost grew wanton in her praise, even when she was a prisoner in the
Asylum after the fatal attack of lunacy, his letters of the time to
Coleridge show; but that might have been a mere temporary exaltation--the
attendant fervor of a great exigency and a great resolution. It was not
so.
Nervous, tremulous, as he seemed--so light of frame that he looked only
fit for the most placid fortune--when the dismal emergencies which
checkered his life arose, he acted with as much promptitude and vigor as
if he had never penned a stanza nor taken a glass too much, or was strung
with herculean sinews. None of those temptations, in which misery is the
most potent, to hazard a lavish expenditure for an enjoyment to be secured
against fate and fortune, ever tempted him to exceed his income, when
scantiest, by a shilling. He had always a reserve for poor Mary's periods
of seclusion, and something in hand besides for a friend in need; and on
his retirement from the India House, he had amassed, by annual savings, a
sufficient sum (invested, after the prudent and classical taste of Lord
Stowell, in "the elegant simplicity of the Three per Cents.") to secure
comfort to Miss Lamb, when his pension should cease with him, even if the
India Company, his great employers, had not acted nobly by the memory of
their inspired clerk--as they did--and gave her the annuity to which a
wife would have been entitled--but of which he could not feel assured.
Living among literary men, some less distinguished and less discreet than
those whom we have mentioned, he was constantly importuned to relieve
distresses which an improvident speculation in literature produces, and
which the recklessness attendant on the empty vanity of self-exaggerated
talent renders desperate and merciless--and to the importunities of such
hopeless petitioners he gave too largely--though he used sometimes to
express a painful sense that he was diminishing his own store without
conferring any real benefit. "Heaven," he used to say, "does not owe me
sixpence for all I have given, or lent (as they call it) to such
importunity; I only gave it because I could not bear to refuse it; and I
have done good by my weakness."
* * * * *
[_B. W. P. "Athenaeum," January 24, 1835_.]
I was acquainted with Mr. Lamb for about seventeen or eighteen years. I
saw him first (I _think_, for my recollection is here imperfect) at one of
Hazlitt's lectures, or at one of Coleridge's dissertations on Shakespeare,
where the metaphysician sucked oranges and said a hundred wonderful
things. They were all three extraordinary men. Hazlitt had more of the
speculative and philosophical faculty, and more observation
(_circum_spection) than Lamb; whilst Coleridge was more subtle and
ingenious than either. Lamb's qualities were a sincere, generous, and
tender nature, wit (at command), humor, fancy, and--if the creation of
character be a test of imagination, as I apprehend it is--imagination
also. Some of his phantasms--the people of the South Sea House, Mrs.
Battle, the Benchers of the Middle Temple, &c. (all of them ideal), might
be grouped into comedies. His sketches are always (to quote his own eulogy
on Marvell) full of "a witty delicacy," and, if properly brought out and
marshalled, would do honor to the stage.
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