The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Part 74

Page 429. A CHECK TO HUMAN PRIDE. _London Magazine_, February, 1823. Not signed.

Page 429. REVIEW OF DIBDIN'S "COMIC TALES."

_The New Times_, January 27, 1825.

I have no doubt that Lamb wrote this review, both from internal evidence and from what we know, through the medium of his _Letters_, of his feelings towards the book and its author; and it has been retained in the appendix instead of taking its place in the text proper through an oversight. In a letter to John Bates Dibdin, the author's son, dated January 11, 1825, Lamb writes:

"Pray return my best thanks to your father for his little volume. It is like all of his I have seen, spirited, good humoured, and redolent of the wit and humour of a century ago. He should have lived with Gay and his set. The Chessiad is so clever that I relish'd it in spite of my total ignorance of the game. I have it not before me, but I remember a capital simile of the Charwoman letting in her Watchman husband, which is better than Butler's Lobster turned to Red. Hazard is a grand Character Jove in his Chair."

Butler's simile, in _Hudibras_, runs:--

The sun had long since in the lap Of Thetis taken out his nap, And, like a lobster boiled, the morn From black to red began to turn.

Charles Dibdin the younger (1768-1853) was the author of a number of plays and songs and also of a _History of the London Theatres_, 1826.

The full t.i.tle of the _Comic Tales_ was _Comic Tales and Lyrical Fancies; including The Chessiad, a mock-heroic, in five cantos; and The Wreath of Love, in four cantos_, 1825.

The adaptation from Milton in the first sentence is very Elian. See _Paradise Lost_, VII., 21-23.

Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound Within the visible diurnal spheare, Standing on earth, not rapt above the Pole.

Page 430, line 13. _Hoyle ... Phillidor._ Meaning more at home in whist than in chess. From Edmond Hoyle (1672-1769), author of _A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist_, 1742, and Francois Andre Philidor (1726-1795), the composer and an authority upon chess. Lamb was, of course, a great whist player.

Page 430, line 16. _Swift and Gay._ Swift wrote a short but admirably observant city poem, "A Description of the Morning." Gay's _Trivia; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London_, would be the work in Lamb's mind.

Page 430. DOG DAYS.

_Every-Day Book_, July 14, 1825.

This humane letter is considered by Mr. J. A. Rutter, a profound student of Lamb, to be probably Lamb's work, a protest against Hone's remark in the _Every-Day Book_ that dogs would have to be exterminated. There certainly is no difficulty in conceiving it to be from Lamb's pen, although there is no overwhelming internal evidence. Writing to Hone on July 25, 1825, Lamb offers further hints as to the "Dog Days" for the _Every-Day Book_.

Lamb's interest in dogs became more personal after Hood gave him Dash for a companion. In the letter to P. G. Patmore, dated from Enfield, September, 1827, he speaks of mad dogs:--

"All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people, to those who are not used to them. Try him [Dash] with hot water: if he won't lick it up it is a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally, or perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased--for otherwise there is no judging.

You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep _him_ for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time; but that was in Hyder-Ally's time."

Page 431. HOOD'S "PROGRESS OF CANT."

There can be, I think, very little doubt that Lamb was the author of this criticism of Hood's picture "The Progress of Cant" in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for February, 1826. Lamb, we know, praised the detail of the Beadle, reproduced in Hone's _Every-Day Book_, under the t.i.tle "An Appearance of the Season" (see page 360).

Page 432. MR. EPHRAIM WAGSTAFF.

In _The Table Book_, 1827, beginning on column 185, Vol. II., is this humorous story which there is some reason to believe is by Lamb. The late Mr. d.y.k.es Campbell had no doubt whatever, the proof residing not only in internal evidence but in the rhymed story of "d.i.c.k Strype,"

which we may safely a.s.sume Lamb to have written. The subject of the two stories, prose and verse, is the same, and the style of Ephraim Wagstaff is not unlike that of Juke Judkins. "d.i.c.k Strype" is printed in Vol. IV.

of this edition.

Page 435. REVIEW OF MOXON'S SONNETS.

_The Athenaeum_, April 13, 1833. Not signed.

Edward Moxon (1801-1858), the publisher, and Lamb's protege and adopted son-in-law, was himself a poet in a modest way. His first book, _The Prospect_, 1826, he dedicated to Samuel Rogers, another patron; _Christmas_ followed in 1829, dedicated to Lamb; and in 1830 his first collection of Sonnets was issued. In the second series, 1835, are some touching lines on Lamb.

I have no proof that _The Athenaeum_ review is by Lamb, but I believe it to be so. Attention was first drawn to it by Mr. J. A. Rutter in _Notes and Queries_, December 22, 1900, who remarked upon the phrase "integrity above his avocation" as being perhaps the only instance that exists of unconscious humour on the part of Charles Lamb.

Page 435, line 12. _Humphrey Mosely._ Humphrey Moseley (d. 1661), the bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard and publisher of the first collected edition of Milton, 1645, and also of Waller, Crashaw, Donne, Vaughan. He prefixed to the Milton the words: "It is the love I have to our own language that hath made me diligent to collect and set forth such pieces, both in prose and verse, as may renew the wonted honour and esteem of our English tongue."

Page 435, line 20. _What we hope E. M. will be in his._ Moxon n.o.bly fulfilled the wish. He published Tennyson's first book in 1833 and all that followed during his lifetime; he became Wordsworth's publisher in 1835; he published Browning's _Sordello_ and _Bells and Pomegranates_; and he commissioned fine editions of the old dramatists.