The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume II Part 52

Mr. Irving was the Rev. Edward Irving (1792-1834), whom Lamb knew slightly and came greatly to admire.

Page 302. XIII.--THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME, AND LOVE MY DOG.

_New Monthly Magazine_, February, 1826.

Compare "A Bachelor's Complaint." I cannot identify the particular friend whom Lamb has hidden under asterisks; although his cousin would seem to have some likeness to one of the Bethams mentioned in the essay "Many Friends" (Vol. I.), and in the letter to Landor of October, 1832 (usually dated April), after his visit to the Lambs.

Page 304, line 15. _Honorius dismiss his vapid wife_. Writing to Bernard Barton on March 20, 1826, Lamb says:--"In another thing I talkd of somebody's _insipid wife_, without a correspondent object in my head: and a good lady, a friend's wife, whom I really _love_ (don't startle, I mean in a licit way) has looked shyly on me ever since. The blunders of personal application are numerous. I send out a character every now and then, on purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my friends."

Page 304, line 11 from foot. _Merry, of Delia Cruscan memory_. Robert Merry (1755-1798), an affected versifier who settled in Florence as a young man, and contributed to the _Florence Miscellany_. He became a member of the Delia Cruscan Academy, and on returning to England signed his verses, in _The World_, "Delia Crusca." A reply to his first effusion, "Adieu and Recall to Love," was written by Mrs. Hannah Cowley, author of _The Belle's Stratagem_, and signed "Anna Matilda;"

this correspondence continued; a fas.h.i.+on of sentiment was thus started; and for a while Delia Cruscan poetry was the rage. The princ.i.p.al Delia Cruscan poems were published in the _British Alb.u.m_ in 1789, and the collection was popular until Gifford's _Baviad_ (followed by his _Maeviad_) appeared in 1791, and satirised its conceits so mercilessly that the school collapsed. A meeting with Anna Matilda in the flesh and the discovery that she was twelve years his senior had, however, put an end to Merry's enthusiasm long before Gifford's attack. Merry afterwards threw in his lot with the French Revolution, and died in America. He married, as Lamb says, Elizabeth Brunton, an excellent tragic actress, in 1791. But that was in England. The journey to America came later.

The story of Merry's avoidance of the lady of his first choice is probably true. Carlo Antonio Delpini was a famous pantomimist in his day at Drury Lane, Covent Garden and the Haymarket. He also was stage manager at the Opera for a while, and occasionally arranged entertainments for George IV. at Brighton. He died in 1828.

Page 305. XIV.--THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK.

_New Monthly Magazine_, February, 1826.

Compare "The Superannuated Man," to which this little essay, which, with that following, is one of Lamb's most characteristic and perfect works, serves as a kind of postscript.

Page 308. XV.--THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB.

_New Monthly Magazine_, February, 1826.

Page 309. XVI.--THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE.

_New Monthly Magazine_, September, 1826.

This was the last of the series and Lamb's last contribution to the _New Monthly Magazine_.

APPENDIX

Page 315. ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS, ETC.

See notes to the essays "On Some of the Old Actors," "The Artificial Comedy" and "The Acting of Munden." Two portions of these essays, not reprinted by Lamb, call for comment: the story of the first night of "Antonio," and the account of Charles Mathews' collection of pictures.

Page 328, line 14 from foot. _My friend G.'s "Antonio."_ William G.o.dwin's tragedy, produced on December 13, 1800, at Drury Lane. Lamb had written the epilogue (see Vol. IV.). Compare the letter to Manning of December 16, 1800.

Page 329, line 28. _M. wiped his cheek_. Writing to G.o.dwin after the failure Lamb says: "The breast of Hecuba, where she did suckle Hector, looked not to be more lovely than Marshal's forehead when it spit forth sweat, at Critic-swords contending. I remember two honest lines by Marvel ...

"'Where every Mower's wholesome heat Smells like an Alexander's sweat.'"

And again, to Manning: "His [Marshal's] face was lengthened, and all over perspiration; I never saw such a care-fraught visage; I could have hugged him, I loved him so intensely. 'From every pore of him a perfume fell.'"

Page 329, foot. _R----s the dramatist_. I imagine this to be Frederic Reynolds (1764-1841), author of "The Dramatist" and many other plays.

We know Lamb to have known him later, from a mention in a letter to J.B. Dibdin.

Page 330, foot, _Brutus ... Appius_. Brutus in "Julius Caesar," or possibly in the play called "Brutus," by John Howard Payne, Lamb's friend (produced December 3, 1818), in which Brutus kills his son--a closer parallel. Appius was probably a slip of the pen for Virginius, who in Sheridan Knowles' drama that bears his name kills his daughter to protect her from Appius.

Page 331, line 7. _G. thenceforward_. G.o.dwin did, however, write another play, "Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote the prologue. It was moderately successful.

Page 331, 1st line of essay. _I do not know, etc_. The paragraph beginning with these words is often printed by editors of Lamb as a separate article ent.i.tled "The Old Actors." Charles Mathews'

collection of theatrical portraits is now in the Garrick Club. In his lifetime it occupied the gallery at Ivy Lodge, Highgate (or more properly Kentish Town). A year or so before Mathews' death in 1835, his pictures were exhibited at the Queen's Bazaar in Oxford Street, Lamb's remarks being printed in the catalogue _raisonne_.