Charles Lamb

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Poor Edward Irving! whom I always deeply respected, and knew intimately
for some years, and who was one of the best and truest men whom it has
been my good fortune to meet in life! He entered London amidst the shouts
of his admirers, and he departed in the midst of contumely; sick, and sad,
and maligned, and misunderstood; going back to his dear native Scotland
only to die. The time has long passed for discussing the truths or errors
of Edward Irving's peculiar creed; but there can be no doubt that he
himself was true and faithful till death, and that he preached only what
he entirely believed. And what can man do more? If he was wrong, his
errors arose from his extreme modesty, his extreme veneration for the
subject to which he raised his thoughts.

In the last year of Edward Irving's life (1834), he was counselled by his
physician to pass the next winter in a milder climate--that "it was the
only safe thing for him." Prevented from ministering in his own church,
where "he had become an embarrassment," he travels into the rural places,
subdued and chastened by his weakness,--to the Wye and the Severn--to the
fine mountains and pleasant places of Wales. Sometimes he thinks himself
better. He quits London (forever) in the early part of September, and on
the 23d of that month he writes to his wife that he is "surely better, for
_his pulse has come to be under 100_." He passes by Cader Idris, and
Snowdon--by Bedgelert to Bangor, "a place of repose;" but gets wet whilst
viewing the Menai Bridge, and had "a fevered night;" yet he is able to
droop on to Liverpool. Thence (the love of his native land drawing him on)
he goes northwards, instead of to the south. He reaches Glasgow, where "he
thinks of organizing a church;" although Dr. Darling "decidedly says that
he cannot humanly live over the winter." Yet he still goes on with his
holy task; he writes "pastoral letters," and preaches, and prays, and
offers kind advice. His friends, from Kirkcaldy and elsewhere, come to see
him, where, "for a few weeks still, he is visible, about Glasgow. In the
sunshine--in a lonely street, his gaunt, gigantic figure rises feebly
against the light." At last he lies down on "the bed from which he is
never to rise;" his mind wanders, and his articulation becomes indistinct;
but he is occasionally understood, and is heard murmuring (in Hebrew)
parts of the 23d Psalm, "The Lord is my Shepherd: He leadeth me beside the
still waters." And thus gradually sinking, at the close of a gloomy Sunday
night in December, he dies.

Mr. Thomas Carlyle, his friend (the friend of his youth), has written an
eloquent epitaph upon him; not partial, for they differed in opinion--but
eloquent, and very touching. I read it over once or twice in every year.
Edward Irving's last words, according to his statement, were, "In life and
in death I am the Lord's." Carlyle then adds, "But for Irving, I had never
known what the communion of man with man means. He was the freest,
brotherliest, bravest human soul mine ever came in contact with; the best
man I have ever (after trial enough) found in this world, or now hope to
find."

So Edward Irving went to the true and brave enthusiasts who have gone
before him. He died on his final Sabbath (7th December, 1834), and left
the world and all its troubles behind him.

[1] The first Essays of Elia were published by Taylor and Hessey under the
title "Elia," in 1823. The second Essays were, together with the "Popular
Fallacies," collected and published under the title of "The Last Essays of
Elia," by Moxon, in 1833.

CHAPTER VII.

_Specimen of Lamb's Humor.--Death of Mr. Norris.--Garrick Plays.--Letters
to Barton.--Opinions on Books.--Breakfast with Mr. N. P. Willis.--Moves to
Enfield.--Caricature of Lamb.--Albums and Acrostics.--Pains of Leisure.--
The Barton Correspondence.--Death of Hazlitt.--Munden's Acting and
Quitting the Stage.--Lamb becomes a Boarder.--Moves to Edmonton.--
Metropolitan Attachments.--Death of Coleridge.--Lamb's Fall and Death.--
Death of Mary Lamb.--POSTSCRIPT._

With the expiration of the "London Magazine," Lamb's literary career
terminated. A few trifling contributions to the "New Monthly," and other
periodicals, are scarcely sufficient to qualify this statement.

It may be convenient, in this place, to specify some of those examples of
humor and of jocose speech for which Charles Lamb in his lifetime was well
known. These (not his best thoughts) can be separated from the rest, and
may attract the notice of the reader, here and there, and relieve the
tameness of a not very eventful narrative.

It is possible to define wit (which, as Mr. Coleridge says, is
"impersonal"), and humor also; but it is not easy to distinguish the humor
of one man from that of all other humorists, so as to bring his special
quality clearly before the apprehension of the reader. Perhaps the best
(if not the most scientific) way might be to produce specimens of each. In
Charles Lamb's case, instances of his humor are to be found in his essays,
in his sayings (already partially reported), and throughout his letters,
where they are very frequent. They are often of the composite order, in
which humor, and wit, and (sometimes) pathos are intermingled. Sometimes
they merely exhibit the character of the man.

He once said of himself that his biography "would go into an epigram." His
sayings require greater space. Some of those which have been circulated
are apocryphal. The following are taken chiefly from his letters, and from
my own recollections.

In his exultation on being released from his thirty-four years of labor at
the India House, he says, "Had I a little son, I would christen him
'Nothing to do'" (This is in the "Superannuated Man.")

Speaking of Don Quixote, he calls him "the errant Star of Knighthood, made
more tender by eclipse."

On being asked by a schoolmistress for some sign indicative of her
calling, he recommended "The Murder of the Innocents."

I once said something in his presence which I thought possessed smartness.
He commended me with a stammer: "Very well, my dear boy, very well; Ben
(taking a pinch of snuff), Ben Jonson has said worse things than that-and
b-b-better." [1]

His young chimney-sweepers, "from their little pulpits (the tops of
chimneys) in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a lesson of
patience to mankind."

His saying to Martin Burney has been often repeated--"O Martin, if dirt
were trumps, what a hand you would hold!"

To Coleridge: "Bless you, old sophist, who next to human nature taught me
all the corruption I was capable of knowing."

To Mr. Gilman, a surgeon ("query Kill-man?"), he writes, "Coleridge is
very bad, but he wonderfully picks up, and his face, when he repeats his
verses, hath its ancient glory--an archangel a little damaged."

To Wordsworth (who was superfluously solemn) he writes, "Some d-d people
have come in, and I must finish abruptly. By d--d, I only mean deuced."

The second son of George the Second, it was said, had a very cold and
ungenial manner. Lamb stammered out in his defence that "this was very
natural in the Duke of Cu-Cum-ber-land."

To Bernard Barton, of a person of repute: "There must be something in him.
Such great names imply greatness. Which of us has seen Michael Angelo's
things? yet which of us disbelieves his greatness?"

To Mrs. H., of a person eccentric: "Why does not his guardian angel look
to him? He deserves one--may be he has tired him out."

"Charles," said Coleridge to Lamb, "I think you have heard me preach?" "I
n--n--never heard you do anything else," replied Lamb.

One evening Coleridge had consumed the whole time in talking of some
"regenerated" orthodoxy. Leigh Hunt, who was one of the listeners, on
leaving the house, expressed his surprise at the prodigality and intensity
of Coleridge's religious expressions. Lamb tranquillized him by "Ne-ne-
never mind what Coleridge says; he's full of fun."

There were, &c., &c., "and at the top of all, Hunger (eldest, strongest of
the Passions), predominant, breaking down the stony fences of shame."

The Bank, the India House, and other rich traders look insultingly on the
old deserted South Sea House, as on "their poor neighbor out of business."

To a Frenchman, setting up Voltaire's character in opposition to that of
Christ, Lamb asserted that "Voltaire was a very good Jesus Christ--_for
the French._"

Of a Scotchman: "His understanding is always at its meridian. Between the
affirmative and the negative there is no border land with him. You cannot
hover with him on the confines of truth."

On a book of Coleridge's nephew he writes, "I confess he has more of the
Sterne about him than the Sternhold. But he saddens into excellent sense
before the conclusion."

As to a monument being erected for Clarkson, in his lifetime, he opposes
it, and argues, "Goodness blows no trumpet, nor desires to have it blown.
We should be modest for a modest man."

"M. B. is on the top scale of my friendship's ladder, which an angel or
two is still climbing; and some, alas! descending."

A fine sonnet of his (The Gipsy's Malison) being refused publication, he
exclaimed, "Hang the age! I will write for Antiquity."

Once, whilst waiting in the Highgate stage, a woman came to the door, and
inquired in a stern voice, "Are you quite full inside?" "Yes, ma'am," said
Charles, in meek reply, "quite; that plateful of Mrs. Gilman's pudding has
quite filled us."

Mrs. K., after expressing her love for her young children, added,
tenderly, "And how do _you_ like babies, Mr. Lamb?" His answer, immediate,
almost precipitate, was "Boi-boi-boiled, ma'am."

Hood, tempting Lamb to dine with him, said, "We have a hare." "And many
friends?" inquired Lamb.

It being suggested that he would not sit down to a meal with the Italian
witnesses at the Queen's trial, Lamb rejected the imputation, asserting
that he would sit with anything except a hen or a tailor.

Of a man too prodigal of lampoons and verbal jokes, Lamb said,
threateningly, "I'll Lamb-pun him."

On two Prussians of the same name being accused of the same crime, it was
remarked as curious that they were not in any way related to each other.
"A mistake," said he; "they are cozens german."

An old lady, fond of her dissenting minister, wearied Lamb by the length
of her praises. "I speak, because I _know_ him well," said she.

"Well, I don't;" replied Lamb; "I don't; but d--n him, at a 'venture.'"

The Scotch, whom he did not like, ought, he said, to have double
punishment; and to have fire without brimstone.

Southey, in 1799, showed him a dull poem on a rose. Lamb's criticism was,
"Your rose is insipid: it has neither thorns nor sweetness."

A person sending an unnecessarily large sum with a lawyer's brief, Lamb
said "it was 'a fee simple.'"

Mr. H. C. Robinson, just called to the bar, tells him, exultingly, that he
is retained in a cause in the King's Bench. "Ah" (said Lamb), "the great
first cause, least understood."

Of a pun, Lamb says it is a "noble thing _per se_. It is entire. It fills
the mind; it is as perfect as a sonnet; better. It limps ashamed, in the
train and retinue of humor." [2]

Lamb's puns, as far as I recollect, were not frequent; and, except in the
case of a pun, it is difficult to divest a good saying of the facts
surrounding it without impoverishing the saying itself. Lamb's humor is
generally imbedded in the surrounding sense, and cannot often be
disentangled without injury.

I have said that the proprietorship of the "London Magazine," in the year
1821, became vested in Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, under whom it became a
social centre for the meeting of many literary men. The publication,
however, seems to have interfered with the ordinary calling of the
booksellers; and the sale was not therefore (I suppose) sufficiently
important to remunerate them for the disturbance of their general trade.
At all events, it was sold to Mr. Henry Southern, the editor of "The
Retrospective Review," at the expiration of 1825, after having been in
existence during five entire years. In Mr. Southern's hands, under a
different system of management, it speedily ceased.

In 1826 (January) Charles Lamb suffered great grief from the loss of a
very old friend, Mr. Norris. It may be remembered that he was one of the
two persons who went to comfort Lamb when his mother so suddenly died. Mr.
Norris had been one of the officers of the Inner Temple or Christ's
Hospital, and had been intimate with the Lambs for many years; and
Charles, when young, used always to spend his Christmases with him. "He
was my friend and my father's friend," Lamb writes, "all the life I can
remember. I seem to have made foolish friendships ever since. Old as I am,
in his eyes I was still the child he first knew me. To the last he called
me 'Charley.' I have none to call me Charley now. He was the last link
that bound me to the Temple."

It was after his death that Lamb once more resorted to the British Museum,
which he had been in the habit of frequenting formerly, when his first
"Dramatic Specimens" were published. Now he went there to make other
extracts from the old plays. These were entitled "The Garrick Plays," and
were bestowed upon Mr. Hone, who was poor, and were by him published in
his "Every Day Book." Subsequently they were collected by Charles himself,
and formed a supplement to the earlier "Specimens." Lamb's labors in this
task were by no means trivial. "I am now going through a course of
reading" (of old plays), he writes; "I have two thousand to go through."

Lamb's correspondence with his Quaker friend, Bernard Barton ("the busy
B," as Hood called him), whose knowledge of the English drama was confined
to Shakespeare and Miss Baillie, went on constantly. His letters to this
gentleman comprised a variety of subjects, on most of which Charles offers
him good advice. Sometimes they are less personal, as where he tells him
that "six hundred have been sold of Hood's book, while Sion's songs do not
disperse so quickly;" and where he enters (very ably) into the defects and
merits of Martin's pictures, Belshazzar and Joshua, and ventures an
opinion as to what Art should and should not be. He is strenuous in
advising him not to forsake the Bank (where he is a clerk), and throw
himself on what the chance of employ by booksellers would afford. "Throw
yourself, rather, from the steep Tarpeian rock, headlong upon the iron
spikes. Keep to your bank, and your bank will keep you. Trust not to the
Public," he says. Then, referring to his own previous complaints of
official toil, he adds, "I retract all my fond complaints. Look on them as
lovers' quarrels. I was but half in earnest. Welcome, dead timber of a
desk that gives me life. A little grumbling is wholesome for the spleen;
but in my inner heart I do approve and embrace this our close but
unharassing way of life."

Lamb's opinions on books, as well as on conduct, making some deduction for
his preference of old writers, is almost always sound. When he is writing
to Mr. Walter Wilson, who is editing De Foe, he says of the famous author
of "Robinson Crusoe,"--

"In appearance of _truth_ his works exceed any works of fiction that I am
acquainted with. It is perfect illusion. It is like reading evidence in a
court of justice. There is all the minute detail of a log-book in it.
Facts are repeated in varying phrases till you cannot choose but believe
them." His liking for books (rather than his criticism on them) is shown
frequently in his letters. "O! to forget Fielding, Steele, &c., and to
read 'em _new_," he says. Of De Foe, "His style is everywhere beautiful,
but plain and homely." Again, he speaks of "Fielding, Smollett, Sterne,--
great Nature's stereotypes." "Milton," he says, "almost requires a solemn
service of music to be played before you enter upon him." Of Shenstone he
speaks as "the dear author of the Schoolmistress;" and so on from time to
time, as occasion prompts, of Bunyan, Isaac Walton, and Jeremy Taylor, and
Fuller, and Sir Philip Sidney, and others, in affectionate terms. These
always relate to English authors. Lamb, although a good Latinist, had not
much of that which ordinarily passes under the name of Learning. He had
little knowledge of languages, living or dead. Of French, German, Italian,
&c., he knew nothing; and in Greek his acquirements were very moderate.
These children of the tongues were never adopted by him; but in his own
Saxon English he was a competent scholar, a lover, nice, discriminative,
and critical.

The most graphic account of Lamb at a somewhat later period of his life
appears in Mr. N. P. Willis's "Pencillings by the Way." He had been
invited by a gentleman in the Temple, Mr. R---- (Robinson?), to meet
Charles Lamb and his sister at breakfast. The Lambs lived at that time "a
little way out of London, and were not quite punctual. At last they enter
--"the gentleman in black small-clothes and gaiters, short and very slight
in person, his head set on his shoulders with a thoughtful forward bent,
his hair just sprinkled with gray, a beautiful deep-set eye, an aquiline
nose, and a very indescribable mouth. Whether it expressed most humor or
feeling, good nature or a kind of whimsical peevishness, or twenty other
things which passed over it by turns, I cannot in the least be certain."

This is Mr. Willis's excellent picture of Lamb at that period. The guest
places a large arm-chair for Mary Lamb; Charles pulls it away, saying
gravely, "Mary, don't take it; it looks as if you were going to have a
tooth drawn." Miss Lamb was at that time very hard of hearing, and Charles
took advantage of her temporary deafness to impute various improbabilities
to her, which, however, were so obvious as to render any denial or
explanation unnecessary. Willis told Charles that he had bought a copy of
the "Elia" in America, in order to give to a friend. "What did you give
for it?" asked Lamb. "About seven and sixpence." "Permit me to pay you
that," said Lamb, counting out the money with earnestness on the table; "I
never yet wrote anything that could sell. I am the publisher's ruin. My
last poem won't sell,--not a copy. Have you seen it?" No; Willis had not.
"It's only eighteenpence, and I'll give you sixpence towards it," said
Lamb; and he described where Willis would find it, "sticking up in a shop
window in the Strand." Lamb ate nothing, but inquired anxiously for some
potted fish, which Mr. R---- used to procure for him. There was none in
the house; he therefore asked to see the cover of the pot which had
contained it; he thought it would do him good. It was brought, and on it
was a picture of the fish. Lamb kissed it, and then left the table, and
began to wander about the room, with an uncertain step, &c.

This visit must have taken place, I suppose, at or after the time when
Lamb was living at Colebrook Cottage; and the breakfast took place
probably in Mr. Henry Crabbe Robinson's chambers in the Temple, where I
first met Wordsworth.

In the year 1827 Lamb moved into a small house at Enfield, a "gamboge-
colored house," he calls it, where I and other friends went to dine with
him; but it was too far from London, except for rare visits.--It was
rather before that time that a very clever caricature of him had been
designed and engraved ("scratched on copper," as the artist termed it) by
Mr. Brook Pulham. It is still extant; and although somewhat ludicrous and
hyperbolical in the countenance and outline, it certainly renders a
likeness of Charles Lamb. The nose is monstrous, and the limbs are dwarfed
and attenuated. Lamb himself, in a letter to Bernard Barton (10th August,
1827), adverts to it in these terms: "'Tis a little sixpenny thing--too
like by half--in which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid
flattery." Charles's hatred for annuals and albums was continually
breaking out: "I die of albophobia." "I detest to appear in an annual," he
writes; "I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the dandy plates."
"Coleridge is too deep," again he says, "among the prophets, the gentleman
annuals." "If I take the wings of the morning, and fly to the uttermost
parts of the earth, there will albums be." To Southey he writes about this
time, "I have gone lately into the acrostic line. I find genius declines
with me; but I get clever." The reader readily appreciates the distinction
which the humorist thus cleverly (more than cleverly) makes. In proof of
his subdued quality, however, under the acrostical tyranny, I quote two
little unpublished specimens addressed to the Misses Locke, whom he had
never seen.

To M. L. [Mary Locke.]

Must I write with pen unwilling,
And describe those graces killing,
Rightly, which I never saw?
Yes--it is the album's law.

Let me then invention strain,
On your excelling grace to feign.
Cold is fiction. I believe it
Kindly as I did receive it;
Even as I. F.'s tongue did weave it.

To S. L. [Sarah Locke.]

Shall I praise a face unseen,
And extol a fancied mien,
Rave on visionary charm,
And from shadows take alarm?
Hatred hates without a cause,

Love may love without applause,
Or, without a reason given,
Charmed be with unknown heaven.
Keep the secret, though unmocked,
Ever in your bosom Locked.

After the transfer to Mr. Southern of the "London Magazine," Lamb was
prevailed upon to allow some short papers to be published in the "New
Monthly Magazine."

They were entitled "Popular Fallacies," and were subsequently published
conjointly with the "Elia Essays." He also sent brief contributions to the
"Athenaeum" and the "Englishman," and wrote some election squibs for
Serjeant Wilde, during his then contest for "Newark." But his animal
spirits were not so elastic as formerly, when his time was divided between
official work and companionable leisure; the latter acting as a wholesome
relief to his mind when wearied by labor.

On this subject hear him speaking to Bernard Barton, to whom, as to
others, he had formerly complained of his harassing duties at the India
House, and of his delightful prospect of leisure. Now he writes, "Deadly
long are the days, with but half an hour's candle-light and no fire-light.
The streets, the shops remain, but old friends are gone." "I assure you"
(he goes on) "_no_ work is worse than overwork. The mind preys on itself--
the most unwholesome food. I have ceased to care almost for anybody." To
remedy this tedium, he tries visiting; for the houses of his old friends
were always open to him, and he had a welcome everywhere. But this
visiting will not revive him. His spirits descended to zero--below it. He
is convinced that happiness is not to be found abroad. It is better to go
"to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in my corner." Again he
says, "Home, I have none. Never did the waters of heaven pour down on a
forlornes head. What I can do, and overdo, is to walk. I am a sanguinary
murderer of time. But the snake is vital. Your forlorn--C. L."

These are his meditations in 1829, four years only after he had rushed
abroad, full of exaltation and delight, from the prison of a "work-a-day"
life, into the happy gardens of boundless leisure. Time, which was once
his friend, had become his enemy. His letters, which were always full of
goodness, generally full of cheerful humor, sink into discontent. "I have
killed an hour or two with this poor scrawl," he writes. It is unnecessary
to inflict upon the reader all the points of the obvious moral that
obtrudes itself at this period of Charles Lamb's history. It is clear that
the Otiosa Eternitas was pressing upon his days, and he did not know how
to find relief. Although a good Latin scholar,--indeed, fond of writing
letters in Latin,--he did not at this period resort to classical
literature. I heard him indeed once (and once only) quote the well-known
Latin verse from the Georgics, "O Fortunatos," &c., but generally he
showed himself careless about Greeks and Romans; and when (as Mr. Moxon
states) "a traveller brought him some acorns from an ilex that grew over
the tomb of Virgil, he valued them so little that he threw them at the
hackney coachmen as they passed by his window."

I have been much impressed by Lamb's letters to Bernard Barton, which are
numerous, and which, taken altogether, are equal to any which he has
written. The letters to Coleridge do not exhibit so much care or thought;
nor those to Wordsworth or Manning, nor to any others of his intellectual
equals. These correspondents could think and speculate for themselves, and
they were accordingly left to their own resources. "The Volsces have much
corn." But Bernard Barton was in a different condition; he was poor. His
education had been inferior, his range of reading and thinking had been
very confined, his knowledge of the English drama being limited to
Shakespeare and Miss Baillie. He seems, however, to have been an amiable
man, desirous of cultivating the power, such as it was, which he
possessed; and Lamb therefore lavished upon him--the poor Quaker clerk of
a Suffolk banker--all that his wants or ambition required; excellent
worldly counsel, sound thoughts upon literature and art, critical advice
on his own verses, letters which in their actual value surpass the wealth
of many more celebrated collections. Lamb's correspondence with Barton,
whom he had first known in 1822, continued until his death.

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