The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Part 52

Page 104, line 19. _The O.P. differences._ The O.P.--Old Prices--Riots raged in 1809. On September 18 of that year the new Covent Garden Theatre was opened under the management of John Philip Kemble and Charles Kemble, with a revised price list. The opposition to this revision was so determined that "Macbeth," with John Philip Kemble as Macbeth, and Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, was played practically in dumb show, and in the end the theatre was closed again for a while. The battle was waged not only by fists but by pamphlets. After two months'

fighting a compromise was effected.

Page 105, line 17. _Obstinate, in John Bunyan._ At the beginning of the _Pilgrim's Progress_. It was not Obstinate, however, but Christian who put his fingers in his ears. Obstinate pursued and caught him. Lamb made the same mistake again in some verses to Bernard Barton.

A club of hissed authors existed in Paris in the 1870's. Flaubert, Daudet and Zola were members.

Page 107. ON BURIAL SOCIETIES; AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER.

_Reflector_, No. III., 1811. The letter there begins "Sir." Printed again in part, in _The Yellow Dwarf_, January 17, 1818. Reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.

Page 110. _The following short Essay._ "The Character of an Undertaker"

is, of course, Lamb's own. Sable is the undertaker in Sir Richard Steele's "Funeral; or, Grief a la Mode," 1702. Two of his remarks run thus: "There is often nothing more ... deeply Joyful than a Young Widow in her Weeds and Black Train," and "The poor Dead are deliver'd to my Custody ... not to do them Honour, but to satisfy the Vanity or Interest of their Survivors."

Page 112. ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE.

Printed in _The Reflector_, No. IV. (1811), under the t.i.tle "Theatralia, No. I. On Garrick, and Acting; and the Plays of Shakespeare, considered with reference to their fitness for Stage-Representation." Reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.

At the close of the _Reflector_ article Lamb wrote: "I have hitherto confined my observation to the Tragic parts of Shakespeare; in some future Number I propose to extend this inquiry to the Comedies." _The Reflector_ ending with the fourth number, the project was not carried out. From time to time, however, throughout his life, Lamb returned incidentally to Shakespearian criticism, as in several essays in the present volume, and the _Elia_ essay "The Old Actors," with its masterly a.n.a.lysis of the character of Malvolio. David Garrick died in 1779, just before Lamb's fourth birthday. Lamb's father often talked of him.

Page 113, line 6. _"To paint fair Nature," etc._ These lines on Garrick's monument, which have been corrected from the stone, were by Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749-1814), the same author whose _Gleanings_ Lamb described in a letter to Southey in 1798 as "a contemptible book, a wretched a.s.sortment of vapid feelings." Pratt's lines on Garrick were chosen in place of a prose epitaph written by Edmund Burke.

Page 114, line 23. _Mr. K._ John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), who first appeared as Hamlet in London at Drury Lane, September 30, 1783.

Page 114, line 24. _Mrs. S._ Mrs. Siddons, John Philip Kemble's sister (1755-1831). Her regular stage career ended on June 29, 1812, when she played Lady Macbeth. Her first part in London was Portia on December 29, 1775. Lamb admired her greatly. As early as 1794 he wrote, with Coleridge's collaboration, a sonnet on the impression which Mrs. Siddons made upon him.

Page 118, line 4. _Banks and Lillo._ John Banks, a very inferior Restoration melodramatist. George Lillo (1693-1739), the author among other plays of "George Barnwell--The London Merchant; or The History of George Barnwell," 1731 (mentioned a little later), which held the stage for a century. The story, the original of which is to be found in the _Percy Reliques_, tells how George, an apprentice, robs his master and kills his uncle at the instigation of Millwood, an adventuress. Lamb's footnote (page 118) refers to the custom, which was of long endurance, of playing "George Barnwell" in the Christmas and Easter holidays as an object-lesson to apprentices.

Page 121, line 25. _The Hills and the Murphys and the Browns._ Dr. John Hill (1716?-1775), the herbalist, controversialist, and miscellaneous writer, who quarrelled with Garrick. In _The Reflector_ Lamb had written the Hooles. It was changed to Hills afterwards. Hoole would be John Hoole (1727-1803), translator of Ta.s.so and the author of some turgid tragedies, who had been in his time an India House clerk. Arthur Murphy (1727-1805), actor and author, who wrote, in addition to many plays and books, a _Life of Garrick_ (1801). The Rev. John Brown (1715-1766), the author of "Barbarossa" and "Athelstane," in both of which Garrick acted.

Page 122, line 8 from foot. _Mr. C._ G. F. Cooke. See above.

Page 123, line 25. _Glenalvon._ In Home's "Douglas." Lamb wrote an early poem on this tragedy, which seems to have so dominated his youthful imagination that when in 1795-1796 he was for a while in confinement he believed himself at times to be young Norval.

Page 127, line 12. _A ghost by chandelier light_ ... It should perhaps be borne in mind that in 1811, and for many years after, the stage was still lighted by candles, so that the regulation of light, which can be effected with such nicety on the modern stage, was then impossible. This is especially to be remembered with regard to such details as the presentation of the Witches in "Macbeth." It would be simple enough, with our electric switchboard, to frighten a nervous child in that scene to-day.

Page 129, line 3. _Webb._ Webb was a theatrical robemaker at 98 Chancery Lane.

Page 130. SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER.

_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1812. _Works_, 1818. In _The Reflector_ the signature Y was appended to the introductory paragraphs.

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), the divine and historian. The pa.s.sages selected by Lamb are identified in the notes to my large edition, the references being to _The Holy State_, 1642; _The History of the Worthies of England_, 1662; _A Pisgah-sight of Palestine and the Confines thereof, with the Histories of the Old and New Testaments acted thereon_, 1650; and _The Church History of Britain from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the year MDCXLVIII._, 1655. Lamb's transcriptions are, of course, not exact.

Page 135. _Footnote. Fuller's bird._ Lamb's friend Procter (Barry Cornwall) was also greatly impressed by this legend. His _English Songs_, 1832, contains a poem on the subject.

Page 137. _Footnote. Wickliffe's ashes._ Landor has a pa.s.sage on this subject in his poem "On Swift joining Avon near Rugby." Wordsworth's fine sonnet, in the _Ecclesiastical Sketches_, Part II., may have been suggested by this very quotation in Lamb's essay:--

WICLIFFE

Once more the Church is seized with sudden fear, And at her call is Wicliffe disinhumed; Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed, And flung into the brook that travels near; Forthwith that ancient Voice which streams can hear, Thus speaks (that Voice which walks upon the wind, Though seldom heard by busy human kind)-- "As thou these ashes, little Brook! wilt bear Into the Avon, Avon to the tide Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas, Into main Ocean they, this deed accurst An emblem yields to friends and enemies How the bold Teacher's Doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed."

When printed in _The Reflector_, in 1812, Lamb's footnote continued thus:--

"We are too apt to indemnify ourselves for some characteristic excellence we are kind enough to concede to a great author, by denying him every thing else. Thus Donne and Cowley, by happening to possess more wit and faculty of ill.u.s.tration than other men, are supposed to have been incapable of nature or feeling; they are usually opposed to such writers as Shenstone and Parnel; whereas in the very thickest of their conceits,--in the bewildering maze of their tropes and figures, a warmth of soul and generous feeling s.h.i.+nes through, the 'sum' of which 'forty thousand' of those natural poets, as they are called, 'with all their quant.i.ty, could not make up.'--Without any intention of setting Fuller on a level with Donne or Cowley, I think the injustice which has been done him in the denial that he possesses any other qualities than those of a quaint and conceited writer, is of the same kind as that with which those two great Poets have been treated."

Page 138. EDAX ON APPEt.i.tE.

_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. _Works_, 1818.

Page 138, line 14 from foot. _The best of parents_. Lamb, of course, is not here autobiographical. His father was no clergyman.

Page 139, line 21. _Ventri natus_, _etc_. These nicknames may be roughly translated: _Ventri natus_, glutton-born; _ventri deditus_, gluttony-dedicated; _vesana gula_, greedy gullet; _escarum gurges_, sink of eatables; _dapibus indulgens_, feast-lover; _non dans fraena gulae_, not curbing the gullet; _sectans lautae fercula mensae_, dainty-hunting.

Page 141, line 15. _Mandeville_. Bernard Mandeville (1670?-1733), whose _Fable of the Bees_, 1714, was one of Lamb's favourite books.

Page 145. _Hospita on the Immoderate Indulgence of the Palate_.

_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. _Works_, 1818. In _The Reflector_ this letter followed immediately upon that of Edax (see page 138). In his _Works_ Lamb reversed this order. In _The Reflector_ the following footnote was appended, signed _Ref._:--

To all appearance, the obnoxious visitor of HOSPITA can be no other than my inordinate friend EDAX, whose misfortunes are detailed, ore rotundo, in the preceding article. He will of course see the complaint that is made against him; but it can hardly be any benefit either to himself or his entertainers. The man's appet.i.te is not a bad habit but a disease; and if he had not thought proper to relate his own story, I do not know whether it would have been altogether justifiable to be so amusing upon such a subject.

Page 147, second paragraph. _Mr. Malthus_. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), author of the _Essay on Population_, 1798. He wrote _On the High Price of Provisions_ in 1800.

Page 148. THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER.

_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. Signed L. B., possibly as the first and last letters of Lamb. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Page 153, line 12. _As Solomon says_. Defoe seems to be remembering Proverbs XXII. 7, and possibly Isaiah XXIV. 2.

Sixteen years later, in 1827, William Hone reprinted "The Good Clerk" in his _Table Book_, I., columns 562-567. The first half was given under its own t.i.tle; the second half under this t.i.tle, "Defoeana, No. I., The Tradesman;" followed by a kindred pa.s.sage from _The Fable of the Bees_, to which the following note was appended, signed L.:--

"We have copied the above from Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, Edition 1725. How far, and in what way, the practice between the same parties differs at this day, we respectfully leave to our fair shopping friends, of this present year 1827, to determine."

Page 153. MEMOIR OF ROBERT LLOYD.