Selected Prose
Page 49
4. (p. 194) Esto perpetua: ‘may you last forever’.
5. (p. 195) a Tragedy, by Sir Robert Howard: The Vestal Virgin, or the Roman Ladies (1665).
6. (p. 196) a Gresham or a Whittington: Sir Richard Gresham (1485?–1549), Lord Mayor of London. Richard Whittington (died 1423), three times Mayor of London and hero of the nursery tale.
7. (p. 197) washed the Ethiop white: see Jeremiah 13:23.
8. (p. 197) Black Monday: the first schoolday after a vacation.
9. (p. 197) cantle: portion.
10. (p. 197) Lucretian pleasure: a reference to a passage in Lucretius (2, 1) which describes the pleasure we can feel seeing a ship labouring at sea from the safe vantage of the land.
11. (p. 198) cum dignitate: ‘with dignity’.
12. (p. 198) Opus operatum est: ‘the work is finished’.
23. The Convalescent
1. (p. 199) The Convalescent: in March 1825 Lamb retired from East India House, after thirty-three years, with a pension of £450 a year. He was seriously ill during the spring and summer of that year.
2. (p. 199) tergiversation: a pun on the literal meaning of turning one’s back on something.
3. (p. 199) Mare Clausum: a ‘closed sea’, that part of a sea over which a country has sovereign rights.
4. (p. 201) thin douceur: bank-note.
5. (p. 203) terra firma: ‘solid ground’.
6. (p. 203) In Articulo Mortis: ‘at the point of death’.
7. (p. 203) Tityus: a giant killed by Zeus and thrown into Tartarus, where two vultures or snakes devoured his liver. His body covered nine acres.
24. Stage Illusion
1. (p. 204) Jack Bannister’s cowards: John ‘Jack’ Bannister (1760–1836), actor and comedian.
2. (p. 205) Gatty: Henry Gattie (1774–1844), actor famous for playing old people.
3. (p. 205) Mr Emery: John Emery (1777–1822), apparently the ‘best impersonator of countrymen of his day’.
4. (p. 207) Mr Wrench: Benjamin Wrench (1778–1843), a famous comedian.
25. Sanity of True Genius
1. (p. 208) did Nature … sea below: from ‘On the death of Mr William Harvey’ by Abraham Cowley (1618–67).
2. (p. 209) Wither: George Wither (1588–1667). ‘Maddest fits’ is from The Sheperds Hunting, Eclogue 4, 409.
3. (p. 209) Lane’s novels: novels published around 1800 by William Lane (1738–1814) of the Minerva Press, Leadenhall Street. The name became proverbial for bad novels.
4. (p. 210) fantasques: fancies or whims.
5. (p. 210) the cave of Mammon: Spenser’s The Faerie Queene 2, 7. The stanzas referred to are 49 (‘Ambition’), 54 (‘Hesperian Fruit’), 57–60 (‘Tantalus’), 61 (‘Pilate’).
26. Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art
1. (p. 213) Somerset House: in the Strand, where the Royal Academy exhibitions were held from 1780 to 1837.
2. (p. 214) a justly admired neoteric: the word ‘neoteric’ means a modern painter. This is a reference to Turner’s ‘Garden of the Hesperides’ which was exhibited at the British Institution in 1806.
3. (p. 214) custos: ‘guard, custodian’.
4. (p. 214) Hercules aut Diabolus: ‘Hercules of the Devil’.
5. (p. 214) Ab extra: ‘from outside’.
6. (p. 214) Daughters three … golden tree: from Milton’s Comus, ll. 982–3.
7. (p. 215) a modern artist: John Martin (1787–1854).
8. (p. 215) the late King: George IV (1762–1830), Prince Regent 1811–20.
9. (p. 215) Mr Farley: Charles Farley (1771?–1859), manager of the Covent Garden pantomimes.
10. (p. 216) Eliphaz … the servants: see Job 4:13–15.
11. (p. 216) the words of Daniel: see Daniel 5.
12. (p. 218) the swallowing up of Pompeii: by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Systematic excavations of Pompeii began in 1763.
13. (p. 218) Sun … Ajalon: see Joshua 10:12.
14. (p. 218) the great picture at Angerstein’s: the picture is by Sebastian del Piombo (1485–1577). The merchant and philanthropist John Julius Angerstein (1735–1832) donated at his death his collection of pictures, which formed the nucleus of the National Gallery.
15. (p. 220) Cornuto: see Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817) ch. 21. A cornuto is a horned man, a cuckold.
16. (p. 220) the solitary but sufficient Three: Shem, Ham and Japhet, who were sufficient to repopulate the earth.
17. (p. 220) a Demiurgus: the creator of the world who, in Gnostic philosophy, is subordinate to the supreme God.
18. (p. 220) Vulcanian Three … Pyracmon: the first two were Cyclopses; Pyracmon worked at Vulcan’s forge under Etna. Mongibello was the Sicilian name for Etna, used by Spenser and Dante.
19. (p. 222) Guzman de Alfarache: published by Mateo Aleman in 1599. An English translation by James Mabbe was published in 1623, entitled The Spanish Rogue.
ESSAYS AND SKETCHES (1821–7)
27. Review of the First Volume of Hazlitt’s Table-Talk, 1821 (unpublished)
1. (p. 228) Captain Steele … Isaac Bickerstaff … Nestor Ironside: Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729), playwright and essayist, editor of the Tatler and co-editor with Addison of the Spectator; Bickerstaff and Ironside were the invented characters through which Steele wrote his essays.
2. (p. 228) Lucubrations: meditations, studies.
3. (p. 229) Vision of Mirza: Addison’s ‘Vision of Mirzah’ was published in the Spectator on 1 September 1711 (see Selections From The Tatler and The Spectator, Penguin, 1982, p. 467).
4. (p. 229) thin consistencies: Paradise Lost 2, 1, 941.
5. (p. 237) too respective eyes: King John I, i, 188.
6. (p. 237) anatomize Regan: King Lear III, vi, 74.
7. (p. 237) familiar faces: a reference to Lamb’s poem ‘The Old Familiar Faces’.
8. (p. 240) without o’erflowing full: from ‘Cooper’s Hill’ by Sir John Denham (1615–69) l. 192.
9. (p. 241) the last infirmity of common minds: from Milton’s ‘Lycidas’ l. 71.
10. (p. 241) look a little … skin taken off: from Swift’s A Tale of a Tub (1704).
28. Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, Esquire
1. (p. 243) an unfriendly office: Lamb’s essay ‘Witches, And Other Night-Fears’ made a reference to Leigh Hunt’s son Thornton: ‘Dear little T. H., who of all children has been brought up with the most scrupulous exclusion of every taint of superstition.’ As Lamb pointed out, Thornton still suffered from night-terrors. Southey took this essay as an opportunity to attack the radical Hunt in an article in the Quarterly Review (January 1823) entitled the ‘Progress of Infidelity’. Southey’s point can be illustrated by the following passage from the article: ‘Unbelievers have not always been honest enough … to express their real feelings; but this we know concerning them, that when they have renounced their birthright of hope, they have not been able to divest themselves of fear.’
2. (p. 243) encomium: panegyric.
3. (p. 243) an exile at Genoa: in 1821, at the invitation of Byron and Shelley, the Hunts moved to Italy. They arrived in 1822 just before Shelley was drowned.
4. (p. 245) a given king in bliss: a reference to Southey’s ‘Vision of Judgement’ (1820) in which, among other things, George III is received into heaven.
5. (p. 245) a noble Lord: Byron, whose ‘Vision of Judgement’ (1821) ridiculing Southey’s poem, begins ‘Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate/His keys were rusty, and the lock was dull’.
6. (p. 246) The Methodists … their founder: Southey’s Life of Wesley was published in 1820.
7. (p. 246) Castle Angelo: a prison in Rome that is Hadrian’s tomb.
8. (p. 247) the article of friendships: the initialled friends are respectively Randal Norris, Thomas Noon Talfourd, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, Henry Francis Cary, Allan Cunningham, Bryan Waller Proctor, Thomas Allsop, James Gillman, William Wordsworth, Thomas Monkhouse, Henry Crabb Robinson, Thomas Clarkson, G
eorge Dyer, Colonel Phillips, William Ayrton; see the Biographical Index.
9. (p. 247) Pantisocracy: see note 7 to Letter 7 (p. 466).
10. (p. 248) the authors of Rimini and of the Table-Talk: Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt.
11. (p. 249) per saltum: ‘with a leap’ (of the imagination).
12. (p. 250) an ill-judged subject: Hunt’s Story of Rimini was scathingly reviewed in Blackwood (November 1817) under the heading ‘The Cockney School of Poetry’, the review stressing that the poem seemed to be ‘about’ incest.
13. (p. 251) the Political Justice: William Godwin’s Inquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793).
14. (p. 251) C.: Coleridge.
15. (p. 253) Mr Belsham’s Lectures: Thomas Belsham (1750–1829) had been a Professor of Divinity at the Dissenting Academy at Daventry. He then became a Unitarian minister, succeeding Joseph Priestly in Hackney in 1794.
29. Readers Against the Grain
1. (p. 257) the arrack: a strong fermented palm juice used to make punch.
2. (p. 258) trap-ball: an old bat-and-ball game.
3. (p. 259) that Apocryphal dragon: a reference to Daniel 7.
4. (p. 259) Longmans … Cadell: contemporary publishers.
30. A Vision of Horns
1. (p. 263) cockades: rosettes, worn as a badge in the hat.
2. (p. 265) wittols: men who know of their wives’ infidelity and accept it.
3. (p. 265) dehonestate: dishonour or disparage.
31. The Illustrious Defunct
1. (p. 266) the object … moribund: the last State Lottery in England was held on 18 October 1826.
2. (p. 267) epicedium: a funeral ode.
3. (p. 267) multis … occidit: ‘it killed with kindness’.
4. (p. 267) Alnaschar: a beggar who inherited a hundred pieces of silver and invested them in a basket of glassware. Dreaming of future riches, he imagined he had married the daughter of the chief Vizier and in the dream he spurned her with his foot and so actually kicked over the basket, smashing all the glass (see ‘The Barber’s Fifth Brother’ in The Arabian Nights).
5. (p. 267) the blue-coat boy: a boy from Christ’s Hospital drew the tickets from the wheels in Coopers’ Hall.
6. (p. 268) the Alchemist: play by Ben Jonson.
7. (p. 269) an Ignis fatuus: a will-o’-the wisp.
8. (p. 270) Crede … habes: ‘you get what you believe’.
9. (p. 271) crim-cons: criminal conversations.
32. Many Friends
1. (p. 273) dear Variorum: various readers. The ‘Lepus’ papers, as they were known, appeared in the New Times during 1825 in a series called ‘Variorum’.
2. (p. 273) Tædet … formarum: ‘I find these everyday things wearisome’.
3. (p. 274) Seven Sleepers: the heroes of a legend translated from the Syriac by Gregory of Tours, AD 250/251. Seven Christian youths, fleeing from persecution by the Emperor Decius, took refuge in a cave. The cave was walled up with the intention of starving them to death but they fell into a miraculous sleep, waking up many years after the persecution.
4. (p. 275) Lepus: ‘the hare’.
33. Dog Days
1. (p. 276) The Every-Day Book: the Every-Day Book appeared serially in 1825 and 1826, edited by William Hone (1780–1842), who eventually dedicated it to Lamb.
34. A Character
1. (p. 278) Egomet: ‘I myself’, an emphatic Latin form of ego.
2. (p. 278) Jack-Ketchery: Jack Ketch was a famous hangman.
3. (p. 279) nimium vicini: ‘far too near’. An allusion to Virgil’s Eclogues 9, 28: ‘Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae’ – ‘Mantua, alas, too near to ill-starred Cremona’ (therefore sharing the fate of Cremona which had rebelled against Augustus and so been confiscated).
4. (p. 279) his fane of Diana: his temple of Diana.
5. (p. 279) a Pagod: an idol or image of a deity in the East.
35. Charles Lamb’s Autobiography
1. (p. 280) Lamb’s Autobiography: this was written by Lamb in the Autograph Book of William Upcott (1779–1845), who was an assistant librarian at the London Institution. The piece was intended for a proposed second edition of the Biographical Dictionary, but was eventually used by John Forster for an article in the New Monthly Magazine in 1853, after Lamb’s death.
2. (p. 280) teste suâ manu: ‘with your hand as a witness’, on oath.
3. (p. 280) Leadenhall Street: where East India House was.
LETTERS
1. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1. (p. 285) May: William May was the landlord of the Salutation and Cat in Newgate Street where Coleridge and Lamb used to meet from 1794 to 5; on this occasion, Coleridge seems to have left unable to pay his bill.
2. (p. 285) Allen: Robert Allen (1772–1805) was a contemporary of Coleridge and Lamb’s at Christ’s Hospital, and was training to be a surgeon at the Westminster Hospital. He first introduced Coleridge to Southey.
3. (p. 285) your Watchman: between March and May of 1796 Coleridge published, at eight-day intervals, ten issues of a miscellany called The Watchman.
4. (p. 285) Le Grice: Charles Valentine Le Grice (1773–1858) was another contemporary of Coleridge and Lamb’s at Christ’s Hospital. One of the few documents referring to Lamb’s period of ‘madness’ is a rough draft by Valentine Le Grice:
I am not certain as to dates, but I think about the year 1795, poor Lamb suffered a temporary derangement of his intellects, and confinement under medical care was necessary. I remember it from this circumstance. I received a very long letter from Lamb – very well written – the main purpose of which was to advise me to [?read] Hartley on Man, one expression in it I perfectly remember. ‘Hartley appears to me to have had as clear an insight into all the [secrets] of the human mind as I have into the items of a Ledger – as an Accountant has – a good counting-Housical Simile you’ll say, and appropos from a clerk in the India House’. The very next day I received a letter from his mother to say that the supposed [letter] that I among other friends had received [had been written in a state of madness] – that she was sorry to say that a temporary confinement was necessary, and that she desired that I would make no reply to it.
5. (p. 286) White … Vortigern: James White (1775–1820) was a friend and exact contemporary of Lamb’s at Christ’s Hospital. He was the author (probably helped by Lamb) of Original Letters, &c. of Sir John Falstaff and His Friends (1796). William Henry Ireland’s pseudo-Shakespearian Vortigern and Rowena had been unsuccessfully produced at Drury Lane in April 1796.
6. (p. 287) your conciones ad populum: Coleridge’s Conciones ad Populum; or Addresses to the People had been published in Bristol in November 1795.
3. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1. (p. 290) Sam Le Grice: younger brother of Charles (see note 4, Letter 1, above), also at Christ’s Hospital with Coleridge and Lamb.
2. (p. 291) £130 or £120 a year: Lamb’s salary throughout his life was as follows: for the first three years at the East India House, beginning 5 April 1792, he received no official wages, but an annual gratuity of £30. After this probationary period he was given £30 for 1795–6, raised to £70 in 1796; this could be increased by extra work, and he received a small holiday grant. In 1797 his income was £80, in 1799 £90, and from then until 1814 it rose by £10 every second year.
3. (p. 291) a necessarian: the doctrine that the will is not free but subject to causes beyond it.
4. (p. 292) Sara: Sara Fricker (died 1845) was Southey’s sister-in-law and married Coleridge in 1795.
5. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1. (p. 295) little one: David Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849), first child of the Coleridges, was born on 19 September.
6. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1. (p. 296) a caput mortuum, not a cor vivens: a ‘dead head’, not a ‘living heart’.
2. (p. 296) Thy Watchman’s … verses: at Easter the bellman, or watchman, would leave verses at the houses on his beat as a reminder of his importanc
e.
3. (p. 296) Rowland … Olivers: trading a Rowland for an Oliver is exchanging one extravagance for another.
4. (p. 298) Hannah More: (1745–1833), a prolix dramatist, novelist, and religious writer.
5. (p. 299) Nature and Art: a romance by Mrs Inchbald (1753–1821), published in 1796.
7. To Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1. (p. 299) that second strophe: the criticism in the first paragraph is of Coleridge’s ‘Ode on the Departing Year’.
2. (p. 299) a dull gambogium: gamboge is a yellow gum-resin.
3. (p. 300) did the wand of Merlin wave: from Coleridge’s version of Lamb’s sonnet ‘Was it some sweet device of Faery’.
4. (p. 300) Mr Merlin: John Joseph Merlin (1735–1803) was a conjurer, and a watch, clock, engine and musical instrument maker, who came to London in 1760.
5. (p. 300) inter se: ‘between themselves’.
6. (p. 300) quoad famam: ‘with respect to reputation’.
7. (p. 301) Susquehanah scheme: Coleridge, Southey and Timothy Allen devised a scheme, in 1794, to found a kind of utopian society called a pantisocracy, on land owned by the theologian and scientist Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) on the banks of the Susquehanah, in Pennsylvania in the United States.