The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume III Part 51

"_Our love to all_.

"I had almost forgot, My part of the Preface begins in the middle of a sentence, in last but one page, after a colon, thus:--

":--_which if they be happily so done_, &c. (see page 2, line 7 from foot).

The former part hath a more feminine turn and does hold me up something as an instructor to young ladies: but upon my modesty's honour I wrote it not.

"G.o.dwin told my Sister that the Baby chose the subjects: a fact in taste."

This letter not only tells us how the preface was written--the first part, I take it, by William G.o.dwin--but what Lamb himself thought of the pictures; which I reproduce in the large edition. It is customary to attribute the designs to Mulready and the engraving to William Blake.

I have set up the _Tales_ from the second edition, 1809, because it embodies certain corrections and was probably the last edition in which the Lambs took any interest. The changes of word are few. I note the more important; Page 5, line 1, "recollection" was "remembrance"

in the first edition; page 10, line 27, "voracious" was "ugly" in the first edition; page 15, line 21, "vessel" was "churn"; page 42, line 30, "continued" was in the first edition "remained"; page 108, foot, "But she being a woman" had run in the first edition, "But she being a bad ambitious woman." I leave other minute differences to the Bibliographer.

The second edition was issued in two forms: one similar to the first edition and one with only frontispiece, a portrait of Shakespear, and the following foreword from the pen, I imagine, of Mr. G.o.dwin:--

ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT TO THE SECOND EDITION

The Proprietors of this work willingly pay obedience to the voice of the public. It has been the general sentiment, that the style in which these Tales are written, is not so precisely adapted for the amus.e.m.e.nt of mere children, as for an acceptable and improving present to young ladies advancing to the state of womanhood.

They therefore now offer to the public an edition prepared with suitable elegance. In the former impression they gave twenty prints, ill.u.s.trative of the twenty tales which compose these volumes, for they knew that it was a grievous thing and a disappointment to a child, to find some tales without the recommendation of a print, which the others possessed. The prints were therefore made from spirited designs, but did not pretend to high finis.h.i.+ng in the execution. To this edition they have annexed merely a beautiful head of our immortal Dramatist, from a much admired painting by Zoust.--They are satisfied that every reader of taste will thank them for not suppressing the former Preface, though not exactly applicable on the present occasion.

N.B.--A few copies have been worked off on the plan of the former impression, for the use of those who rather coincide in the original conception of the writer, than in the opinion above stated.

Lamb, we may be sure, had no hand in this manifesto, but whatever protest he may have made was unsuccessful. It reappears in the third edition, while the preface there has the general alteration of the first person singular to the first person plural: "our young readers"

for "my young readers," and so forth. But this was probably G.o.dwinian work.

The G.o.dwins also issued some or all of the _Tales_ separately at sixpence each (the two ordinary volumes cost eight s.h.i.+llings) with three plates to each, of a different design from those in the two-volume edition. These little books are exceedingly rare, but copies have been discovered both plain and coloured. The plates are attributed to Blake.

The Lambs' _Tales from Shakespear_ were not, Mr. Bertram Dobell has pointed out, the first experiment of the kind. In 1783 was published in Paris _Contes Moraux, Amusans et Instructifs, a l'usage de la Jeunesse tires des Tragedies de Shakespear_. Par M. Perrin. The Lambs did not, however, borrow anything from M. Perrin, even if they were aware of his work. The _Tales_ are peculiarly their own.

The _Tales from Shakespear_ are, and probably will continue to be, the most widely distributed of all the Lambs' work. In England it may be that _Elia_ has had as many readers; but abroad the _Tales from Shakespear_ easily lead. In the British Museum catalogue I find translations in French, German, Swedish, Spanish, and Polish. (No complete translation of _Elia_ into any language is known, not even in French, although a selection of the essays will be found at the end of Depret's monograph, _De L'Humeur Litteraire en Angleterre_, 1877.) In England almost every Christmas brings a new edition of the _Tales_ and often an imitation.

Although Mary Lamb was the true author of the book, as of _Mrs.

Leicester's School_ and of _Poetry for Children_, her share being much greater than her brother's in all of these, she was not until many years later a.s.sociated publicly with any of them. The _Tales_ were attributed to Charles Lamb, presumably against his wish, as we see from a sentence in the letter to Wordsworth quoted above, and the other two books had no name attached to them at all. Why Mary Lamb preserved such strict anonymity we do not now know; but it was probably from a natural shrinking from any kind of publicity after the unhappy publicity which she had once gained by her misfortune.

Page 240. THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.

Lamb must have been as busy in the years 1806-1808 as in any of his life; for he then not only had his India House work, but wrote his share of the _Tales from Shakespear_, _Mrs. Leicester's School_ and _Poetry for Children_, wrote all of _The Adventures of Ulysses_, and finally prepared his _Dramatic Specimens_. Moreover in 1806 he had the hara.s.sment of the alterations and impending production of "Mr. H."

On February 26, 1808, he tells Manning that he has just finished _The Adventures of Ulysses_ and the _Specimens_, describing _The Adventures of Ulysses_ as "intended to be an introduction to the reading of Telemachus! it is done out of the Odyssey, not from the Greek. I would not mislead you: nor yet from Pope's Odyssey, but from an older translation of one Chapman. The 'Shakspeare Tales' suggested the doing it." Many years after Lamb wrote to Barton (August 10, 1827): "Did you ever read my 'Adventures of Ulysses,' founded on Chapman's old translation of it? for children or _men_. Ch. is divine, and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity."

Chapman's _Homer_ was the folio which Leigh Hunt tells us he once saw Lamb kiss.

Writing to Coleridge on October 23, 1802, Lamb says:--

"I have just finished Chapman's Homer. Did you ever read it?--it has most the continuous power of interesting you all along, like a rapid original, of any; and in the uncommon excellence of the more finished parts goes beyond Fairfax or any of 'em. The metre is fourteen syllables, and capable of all sweetness and grandeur.

Cowper's ponderous blank verse detains you every step with some heavy Miltonism; Chapman gallops off with you his own free pace....

"I will tell you more about Chapman and his peculiarities in my next. I am much interested in him."

A brief correspondence which pa.s.sed between G.o.dwin and Lamb just before the publication of _The Adventures of Ulysses_ may be given here.

WILLIAM G.o.dWIN TO CHARLES LAMB

Skinner Street, _March_ 10, 1808.

Dear Lamb,--I address you with all humility, because I know you to be _tenax propositi_. Hear me, I entreat you, with patience.

It is strange with what different feelings an author and a bookseller looks at the same ma.n.u.script. I know this by experience: I was an author, I am a bookseller. The author thinks what will conduce to his honour: the bookseller what will cause his commodities to sell.

You, or some other wise man, I have heard to say, It is children that read children's books, when they are read, but it is parents that choose them. The critical thought of the tradesman put itself therefore into the place of the parent, and what the parent will condemn.

We live in squeamish days. Amid the beauties of your ma.n.u.script, of which no man can think more highly than I do, what will the squeamish say to such expressions as these,--'devoured their limbs, yet warm and trembling, lapping the blood,' page 10. Or to the giant's vomit, page 14; or to the minute and shocking description of the extinguis.h.i.+ng the giant's eye in the page following. You, I daresay, have no formed plan of excluding the female s.e.x from among your readers, and I, as a bookseller, must consider that if you have you exclude one half of the human species.

Nothing is more easy than to modify these things if you please, and nothing, I think, is more indispensable.

Give me, as soon as possible, your thoughts on the matter.

I should also like a preface. Half our customers know not Homer, or know him only as you or I know the lost authors of antiquity.

What can be more proper than to mention one or two of those obvious recommendations of his works, which must lead every human creature to desire a nearer acquaintance.--Believe me, ever faithfully yours,

W. G.o.dWIN.

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM G.o.dWIN

_March_ 11, 1808.

Dear G.o.dwin,--The giant's vomit was perfectly nauseous, and I am glad you pointed it out. I have removed the objection. To the other pa.s.sages I can find no other objection but what you may bring to numberless pa.s.sages besides, such as of Scylla s.n.a.t.c.hing up the six men, etc.,--that is to say, they are lively images of _shocking_ things. If you want a book, which is not occasionally to _shock_, you should not have thought of a tale which was so full of anthropophagi and wonders. I cannot alter these things without enervating the Book, and I will not alter them if the penalty should be that you and all the London booksellers should refuse it. But speaking as author to author, I must say that I think _the terrible_ in those two pa.s.sages seems to me so much to preponderate over the nauseous, as to make them rather fine than disgusting. Who is to read them, I don't know: who is it that reads Tales of Terror and Mysteries of Udolpho? Such things sell.

I only say that I will not consent to alter such pa.s.sages, which I know to be some of the best in the book. As an author I say to you, an author, Touch not my work. As to a bookseller I say, Take the work such as it is, or refuse it. You are as free to refuse it as when we first talked of it. As to a friend I say, Don't plague yourself and me with nonsensical objections. I a.s.sure you I will not alter one more word.

As the reader will see, Lamb made only the one alteration; nor did he add a preface recommending the works of Homer.

I have set up _The Adventures of Ulysses_ from the second edition, 1819, because it probably contains Lamb's final revision of the text.

The punctuation differs considerably from that of the first edition, but there are, I think, only four changes of words. On page 251, line 34, "and" was inserted before "snout"; on page 257, line g, "does"

was subst.i.tuted for "do"; on page 266, line 7 from foot, "over" was subst.i.tuted for "above"; and on page 276, line 5 from foot, "it" was inserted after "keep."

The suggestion has been made that, since Lamb states in the preface that this work was designed as a supplement to _The Adventures of Telemachus_, he was also the author of one of the versions of Fenelon's popular tale. But this, I think, has no foundation in fact.

We know from Lamb's letter to G.o.dwin that the impulse to write _The Adventures of Ulysses_ came from G.o.dwin, and it was natural that he, a bookseller, should wish to a.s.sociate this new venture with a volume so well known and so acceptable as the _Telemachus_. Now and then in the story Lamb deliberately refers to Fenelon's work, as when in the fourth chapter he says:--

"It were useless to describe over again what has been so well told already; or to relate those soft arts of courts.h.i.+p which the G.o.ddess used to detain Ulysses; the same in kind which she afterwards practised upon his less wary son, whom Minerva, in the shape of Mentor, hardly preserved from her snares when they came to the Delightful Island together in search of the scarce departed Ulysses."

This is drawn not from Chapman or Homer, but from the Archbishop of Cambrai. Lamb introduced it in accordance with the first sentence of his preface.

Lamb adapted Chapman very freely. For the material in Chapter I. we must go to Chapman, Books IX. and X.; for Chapter II., to Books X.

and XL; for Chapter III., to Book XII.; for Chapter IV., to the early books; for Chapters V., VI. and VII., to Chapman, Books V.-IX. and XIII.; for Chapter VIII., to Books XIII. and XIV.; and for Chapter IX.

to the end, to Chapman, Book XVI. and onwards. It must be agreed that Lamb performed a difficult task with great skill and success, especially when we consider his want of interest, frequently admitted, in stories. But the pleasure of adding dignity and sweetness to the character of Ulysses seems to have been very considerable as he worked (or so I imagine), and he made practically a new thing, a very persuasive blend of ancient and modern. The book has not been so popular as the _Tales from Shakespear_, but it has, I think, finer literary merits and may perhaps be read by older intellects with more satisfaction.