Charles Lamb: A Memoir

ld.-Caricature of Lamb.-Albums and Acrostics.-Pains of Leisure.- The Barton Correspondence.-Death of Hazlitt.-Munden's Acting and Quitting the Stag

terminated. A few trifling contributions to the "New Monthly," and

Charles Lamb in his lifetime was well known. These (not his best thoughts) can be separated from the rest, and

e 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 partia

s require greater space. Some of those which have been circulated are apocryphal.

labor at the India House, he says, "Had I a little son, I would

him "the errant Star of Knightho

ome sign indicative of her calling, he r

ommended me with a stammer: "Very well, my dear boy, very well; Ben (taking a p

s (the tops of chimneys) in the nipping air of a Dece

often repeated-"O Martin, if dirt wer

who next to human nature taught me all

is very bad, but he wonderfully picks up, and his face, when he repe

writes, "Some d-d people have come in, and I m

cold and ungenial manner. Lamb stammered out in his defence

in him. Such great names imply greatness. Which of us has seen Mi

es not his guardian angel look to him? He

k you have heard me preach?" "I n-n-never

s one of the listeners, on leaving the house, expressed his surprise at the prodigality and intensity of Colerid

nger (eldest, strongest of the Passions), predom

look insultingly on the old deserted South Sea H

opposition to that of Christ, Lamb asserted that "V

etween the affirmative and the negative there is no border land

has more of the Sterne about him than the Sternhold. Bu

he opposes it, and argues, "Goodness blows no trumpet, nor d

ip's ladder, which an angel or two is sti

being refused publication, he exclaimed,

ed in a stern voice, "Are you quite full inside?" "Yes, ma'am," said Charles, in

ed, tenderly, "And how do you like babies, Mr. Lamb?" His answ

him, said, "We have a hare." "A

alian witnesses at the Queen's trial, Lamb rejected the imputation,

s and verbal jokes, Lamb said, t

e, it was remarked as curious that they were not in any way rela

, wearied Lamb by the length of her praises.

d Lamb; "I don't; but d

ht, he said, to have double punishmen

him a dull poem on a ro

d: it has neither th

large sum with a lawyer's brief,

tingly, that he is retained in a cause in the King's Bench.

re. It fills the mind; it is as perfect as a sonnet; better

lt to divest a good saying of the facts surrounding it without impoverishing the saying itself. Lamb's

ms 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 M

icers 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

xtracts 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 himse

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. Ke

eference of old writers, is almost always sound. When he is writing to Mr. Walter

e, "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 affectiona

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 wi

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

as living at Colebrook Cottage; and the breakfast took place probably in Mr.

se 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 gen

. [Mary

te with pe

e those gra

which I n

s the al

en invent

elling grac

iction. I

I did re

.'s tongue d

. [Sara

raise a f

l a fanc

visionar

shadows t

tes witho

ove withou

ut a reas

with unkn

cret, thoug

your bos

gazine," Lamb was prevailed upon to allow some short

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

ou" (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

or 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 litera

wn 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 L

sister was more frequent. The hopelessness of it-if hope indeed ever existed-was more palpable, more depressing. His own spring of mind was fast losing its power of rebound. He felt the decay of the active principle, and now confined his efforts to morsels of criticism, to verses for albums, and small contributions to periodicals, which (excepting only the "Popular Fallacies") it has not been thought important enough to reprint. To the editor of the "Athenaeum," indeed, he laments sincerely over the death of Munden. This was in February, 1832, and was a matter that touched his affections. "He was not an actor

conceived to be quite possible,-to be true. The sceptical idiots of the play pretend to give him a phial nearly full of water. He is assured that this contains Cleopatra's tear. Well; who can disprove it? Munden evidently recognized it. "What a large tear!" he exclaimed, Then they place in his hands a druidical harp, which to vulgar eyes might resemble a modern gridiron. He touches the chords gently; "pipes to the spirit ditties of no tone;" and you imagine Aeolian strains. At last William Tell's cap is produced. The people who affect to cheat him, apparently cut the rim from a modern hat, and place the skull-cap in his hands; and then begins the almost finest piece of acting that I ever witnessed. Munden accepts the accredited cap of Tell with confusion and reverence. He places it slowly and solemnly on his head, growing taller in the act of cr

parts of the house (boxes or pit), Munden obtained places for his two visitors in the orchestra, close to the stage. He saw them carefully ushered in, and well posted; then acted with his usual vigor, and no doubt enjoyed the plaudits wrung from a thousand hands. Afterwards, in the interval between the comedy and the farce, he was seen to appear cautiously, diffidently, at the low door o

pressing down his strength and buoyancy; his spirit no longer possessed its old power of rebound. Even the care of housekeeping (not very onerous, one would suppose) troubled Charles and his sister so much, that they determined to abandon it. This occurred in 1829. Then they became boarders and lodgers, with an old person (T. W.), who was their next-door neighbor at Enfield; and of him Lamb has given an elaborate description. T. W., his new landlord or housekeeper, he says, is seventy years old; "he has something, under a competenc

ll enough when he is amongst his books, by the fire and with candle-light; but day and the green fields return and restore his natural antipathies; then he says, "In a calenture I plunge into St. Giles's." So Lamb and his sister leave their comfortable little house, and subside into the rooms of the Humpback. Their chairs, and tables, and beds also retreat; all except the ancient bookcase,

the "pastoral eglantine," with great delight. But that was another thing: that was an object in its proper place: that was a piece of art. Long ago he had admitted that the mountains of Cumberland were grand objects "to look at;" but (as he said) "the houses in streets were the places to live in." I imagine that

lay ill for months; but his faculties seem to have survived his bodily decay. He died on the 25th July, 1834; yet on the 5th of that month he was able to discourse with his nephew on Dryden and Barrow, on Lord Brook, and Fielding, and Richardson, without any apparent diminution of judgment. Even on the 10th (a fortnight only before his death) there was no symptom of speedy d

found glimpses of Wordsworth and Southey, of Rogers and Hood, of Cary (with whom his intimacy increases); especially may be noted Miss Is

frequent. Apparently the bodily strength, never great, but sufficient to move him pleasantly throughout life, seemed to flag a little. Yet he walks as usual. He and his sister "scramble through the Inferno:" (as he says to Gary), "Mary's chief pride in it was, that she should some day brag of it to you." Then he and Mary became very poorly. He writes, "We have had a sick child, sleeping, or not sleeping, next to me, with a pasteboard partition between, who killed my sleep. My bedfellows are Cough and Cramp: we sleep three in a bed. Don't come yet to this house of pest and ag

s as usual. One day he stumbled against a stone, and fell. His face was slightly wounded; but no fatal (or even alarming) consequence was foreboded. Erysipelas, however, followed the wound, and his strength (never robust) was not sufficient to enable him to combat successfully that inflammatory and exhausting disease. He suffered no pain (I believe); and when the presence of a clergyman

Enfield, to which place he never returned as to a

ton Asylum, to allay a little nervous irritation. If it were necessary to confirm this assertion, which is known to me from personal observation and other incontrovertible evidence, I would adduce ten of his published letters (

e into Eternity. But now came the true Eternity; the old Eternity,-without change or limit; in which all men surrender their leisure, as well as their labor; when their sensations and infirmities (sometimes harassing enough) cease and are at rest. No more anxiety for the debtor; no more toil f

, was awarded a calm and easy death. No man, it is my belief, was ever loved or lamented more sincere

constant labor, the moderate sum of two thousand pounds. No more. That was the sum, I believe, which was eventually shared amongst his legatees. His other riches were gathered togethe

ll directed to be applied towards the maintenance and comfort of his sister; and, subject

der the care of an experienced nurse. There was a twilight of consciousness in her,-scarcely more,-at times; so that perhaps the mercy of God saved her from full knowledge of her great loss. Charles, who had given up all his days for her protection and benefit,-who had fought the great battle of life so nobly,-left

mas Moore's autobiography. I suppose I must have repe

ather Longlegs won't say his prayers," adding, violently, "Throw him down stairs!"-He consoles Mr. Crabbe Robinson, suffering under tedious rheumatism, by writing, "Your doctor seems to keep you under the long cure."-To Wordsworth, in order to explain that his friend A was in good health, he writes, "A is well; he is proof against weather, ingratitude, meat underdone, and every weapon of fate." The story of Lamb replying to some one, who insisted very strenuously on some uninteresting circumstances being "a matter of fact," by saying that he was "a matter of lie" man, is like Leigh Hunt, who, in opposing the frequent confession

load upon his own shoulder, and managed to carry it to Islington, the place of destination. Finding that the purchaser of the grocery was a female, he went with the urchin before her, and expressed a hope that she would intercede with the poor boy's master, in order to prevent his being overweighted in future. "Sir," said the dame, after the manner of Tisiphone, f

TSC

as my ability permits,

les

precepts and impertinent lessons. Facts themselves should disclose their own virtues. A man who is able to benefit b

arden the heart, wearying the attention, and mortifying the self-love.

simply told, would have emitted spontaneously a luminous atmospher

arrative some benefit may be gleaned, some sympathy may

ok at it

to form the mystery or centre of an antique drama. He had to dwell, all his days, with a person incurably mad. From poverty he passed at once to unpleasant toil and perpetual fear. These were the sole chang

fects; neither did he deal out little apothegms or scraps of wisdom, derived from other minds. But he succeeded;

, are written down simply, and just as they occur, without any special design. Some persons exhibit only their ingenuity, or

ns. To sympathize with Tragedy or Comedy only, argues a limited capacity. The mind

xercise his natural strength, as neither a parasite nor a patron can. It is marvellous how freedom of thought operates; what strength it

cient magnitude to determine his astral elevation-where he is to dwell-between the sun Shakespeare and the twinkling Zoilus. That must

pronounce him to be wrong. It is wise, as well as modest, not to show too much eagern

END

and also a contribution (by himself) to the Athenaeum, made in January, 1835. All the writers were contemporary with Lamb, and were pers

ZL

Spirit of the Age

e 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 w

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; h

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, s

s opinions on Whist! With what well-disguised humor he introduc

terest to his retrospective glance, as it did to the eager eye of childhood: he

's "Table Tal

ter 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,

ative Englis

ghly gifted author have the same sort of charm and relish that Erasmus's "Colloquies,

ain Speaker,"

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 Pila

aphy of Leigh Hu

s friend, particularly of his oldest friends, Coleridge and Southey; for I think he never modified or with

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 fe

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-expounde

*

RS

ution to the New Monthly Magazi

uel Taylor Coleridge. He came into his first battle, as he tells us

ircumstances) between two of the most original geniuses in an age of no common genius, worthi

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

s 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 "

S. L

November

g enough for resistance. It is some consolation to add, that, during his illness, which lasted four days, he suffered no pain, and that his facultie

der 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

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,

*

FOU

emorials of C. Lamb

nguined 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

d 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 wa

*

henaeum," Jan

t 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

rooms from six to a dozen unaffected people, including two or three men of letters. A game at whist and a cold supper, followed by a cheerful glass (glasses!) and "good talk," were the standing dishes upon those occasions. If you came late, you encountered a perfume of the "GREAT PLANT." The pipe, hid in smoke (the violet amongst its leaves),-a squadron of tumblers, fuming with various odors, and a score of quick intelligent glances

the fire springs up a little spare man in black, with a countenance pregnant with expression, deep lines in his forehead, quick, luminous, restless eyes, and a smile as sweet as ever threw sunshine upon the human face. You see that you are welcome. He speaks: "Well, boys, how are you? What's the news with you? What will you take?" You are comfortable in a moment. Reader! it is Charles Lamb who is before you-the crit

ists, &c.,-ranging from the commencement of the Elizabeth period down to the time of Addison and Steele. Besides these, of

ry point and turn of their wit, all the beauty of their characters; loving each for some one distinguishing particular, and despising none. For absolute contempt is a quality of youth and ignorance-a foppery which a wise man rejects, and he rejected it accordingly. If he contemned anything, it was contempt itself. He saw that every one bore some sign or mark (God's gift) for which he ought to be valued by his fe

ship is dissolved. He who went back into dim antiquity, and sought them out, and proclaimed their worth to the world-abandoning the gaudy rhetoric of popular authors for their sake, is now translated into t

*

not simply a tissue of jests or conceits, broad, far-fetched, or elaborate; but it was a combination of humor with pathos-a sweet stream of thought, bubbling and sparkling with witty fancies; such as I do not remember to have elsewhere met with, except in Shakespeare. There is occasionally a mingling of the serious and the comic in "Don Juan," and in other writers; but they differ, after all, materially from Lamb in humor:-whether they are better or worse, is unimportant. His delicate and irritable genius, influenced by his early studies, and fettered by old associations, moved within a limited circle. Yet t

opted in perfect sincerity, and used towards all persons and upon all occasions. He was the same in 1810 as in 1834-when he died. A man cannot go on "