one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and withall an ungentle and swainish breast. "Milton-Apology for Smectymn[u]us."

Why is this quoted?" demands the too inquisitive Nott; "I see little similarity." "It was quoted for those who can see," rejoins Lamb, with three thick strokes of his contemptuous pencil under the luckless Doctor's poor personal pronoun; on which this special note of indignation is added beneath.

“I. I. I. I. I. in Capitals!

for shame, write your Ego thus
little i with a dot

stupid Nott!"

At the opening of the second we find the notes on Abuses stript and whipt which in their revised condition as part of the essay on Wither are familiar to all lovers of English letters. They begin with the second paragraph of that essay, in which sundry slight and delicate touches of improvement have fortified or simplified the original form of expression.

After the sentence which describes the vehemence of Wither's love for goodness and hatred of baseness, the manuscript proceeds thus: "His moral feeling is work'd up into a sort of passion, something as Milton describes himself at a like early age, that night and day he laboured to attain to a certain idea which he had of perfection." Another cancelled passage is one which originally followed on the reflection that "perhaps his premature defiance often exposed him" (altered in the published essay to "sometimes made him obnoxious") "to censures, which he would otherwise have slipped by." The manuscript continues: "But in this he is as faulty as some of the primitive Christians are described to have been, who were ever ready to outrun the executioner. .

"

This not immoderate satire on clerical ambition seems to have ruffled the spiritual plumage of Dr. Nott, who brands it as a very dull essay indeed.' To whom, in place of exculpation or apology, Lamb returns this question by way of answer :-"Why double-dull it with thy dull commentary? have you nothing to cry out but 'very dull,' 'a little better,' 'this has some spirit,' 'this is prosaic,' foh!

"If the sun of Wither withdraw a while, Clamour not for joy, Owl, it will out again, and blear thy envious Eyes!

"

"

The commentary on Wither's Motto' will be remembered by all students of the most exquisite critical essays in any language. They will not be surprised to learn that neither the style nor the matter of it found any favour in the judicial eye of Nott. There is some tautology in this, and some of the sentences are harsh-These repetitions are very awkward; but the whole sentence is obscure and far-fetched in sentiment; such is the fashion in which this unlucky particle of a pedant has bescribbled the margin of Lamb's beautiful manuscript. But those for whom alone I write will share my pleasure in reading the original paragraph as it came fresh from the spontaneous hand of the writer, not as yet adapted or accommodated by any process of revision to the of the general reader.

"Wither's Motto.

eye

"The poem which Wither calls his Motto is a continued self-eulogy"

(originally written "self-eulogium ") "of two thousand lines: yet one reads it to the end without feeling any distaste, or being hardly conscious of having listen'd so long to a man praising himself. There are none of the cold particles of vanity in it; no hardness or self-ends" (altered to "no want of feeling, no selfishness;" but restored in the published text), "which are the qualities that make Egotism hateful-The writer's mind was continually glowing with images of virtue, and a noble scorn of vice: what it felt, it honestly believed it possessed, and as honestly avowed it; yet so little is this consciousness mixed up with any alloy of selfishness, that the writer seems to be praising qualities in another person rather than in himself; or, to speak more properly, we feel that it was indifferent to him, where he found the virtues; but that being best acquainted with himself, he chose to celebrate himself as their best known receptacle. We feel that he would give to goodness its praise, wherever found; that it is not a quality which he loves for his own low self which possesses it; but himself that he respects for the qualities which he imagines he finds in himself. With these feelings, and without them, it is impossible to read it, it is as beautiful a piece of self-confession as the Religio Medici of Browne.

It will lose othing also if we contrast it " (or, as previously written, "It may be worth while also to contrast it ")" with the Confessions of Rousseau. "("How is Rousseau analogous?" queries the interrogatory Nott on whom Lamb retorts-" analogous?!! why, this note was written to show the difference not the analogy between them. C. L.") "In every page of the latter we are disgusted with the vanity, which brings forth faults, and begs us to take them (or at least the acknowledgment of them) for virtue. But in Wither we listen to a downright confession of unambiguous virtues; and love the heart which has the confidence to pour itself out." Here, at a later period, Lamb has written--"C. L. thus far." On the phrase "confession of unambiguous virtues" Dr. Nott has obliged us with the remark-"this seems an odd association:" and has received this answer :- "It was meant to be an odd one, to puzzle a certain sort of people. C. L."-whose words should be borne in mind by every reader of his essays or letters who may chance to take exception to some passing turn of speech intended, or at least not wholly undesigned, to give occasion for that same "certain sort of people" to stumble or to trip.

So far Mr. Swinburne. After his death the Wither was sold to America by Mr. Watts-Dunton and is now in the library of Mr. John A. Spoor of Chicago. Mr. Swinburne's description was supplemented by the American bibliophile Mr. Luther S. Livingston in the New York Evening Post, April 30, 1910.

Gutch, it seems, was sufficiently interested in Wither to undertake a really representative edition, the editorship of which was entrusted to Nott. The work was issued in 1820, without either date or publisher's name. There is a copy in the British Museum which is in four volumes, the fourth incomplete. On the fly-leaf is written: "This selection of the Poems of Wither was printed by Gutch, of Bristol, about twenty years since, and was edited by Dr. Nott. The work remained unfinished, and was sold for wastepaper; a few copies only were preserved. 1839."

Mr. Livingston says that there is another copy of this work, in New York. " 'It is in four volumes, with the title, 'Selections from the Juvenilia and Other Poems of George Wither, with a prefatory Essay by John Matthew Gutch, F.S.A., and His Life, by Robert Aris Wilmott, Esq., Vol. I. [etc.] Typ. Felix Farley: Bristol.' In addition, the first volume has another title-page, Poems by George Wither, in four volumes. Vol. I. London: 1839.' On

the verso of this is the following Preface :

"These Poems were many years ago edited and printed at Bristol by Mr. Gutch: Proof sheets being submitted to Dr. Nott, and the celebrated Charles Lamb, who wrote some very pithy comments on the Notes of the Doctor, which have not been printed. The work was never completed, and the whole impression was consigned to the 'Tomb of the Capulets' and supposed to be effectually destroyed. Now, however, by the resuscitating powers of sundry Bristol Book Chapmen, 'Monsieur Tonson's come again!' etc.

Signed' J. R. S.' and dated 'London, 1839'."

Gutch himself prepared a life of Wither, but it was not printed in this edition and is still unpublished. The amusing feature of the edition is that Nott, sometimes with slight and deteriorating changes, and sometimes without alteration, uses, in addition to his own comments, many of Lamb's notes also as his own; which, if 1820 is really the date, is the more curious, since a comparison with Lamb's essay in the Works, 1818, would expose the conveyance. Probably the edition was in type some time before it was issued. We know at any rate that it was prepared before 1818, because Lamb had his notes back again in time to use them in writing his essay published early in that year, and finished probably some time earlier. If Lamb ever saw Nott's edition-which is more than probable-it is a pity that in his correspondence is preserved no letter containing his opinion on the matter.

Nott, for example, lifted the whole of the passage in praise of "Fair Virtue or the Mistress of Philarete," beginning "There is a singular beauty," and ending with "probationary courtship," as described above by Mr. Swinburne, and signed it "Editor." He also annexed the reminiscence of the Devil Tavern, making it "within the memory of the Editor," and adapted the criticisms beginning "Wither's prison notes (fifth paragraph of the present essay) and "Wither's motto (first paragraph) to his own uses. As a specimen of Nott's treatment of his predecessor's notes we may take that on long lines, which stands as a note at the end of the essay. This is Nott's version:

If thy verse do bravely tower. A long line is a line we are long in repeating. Mark the time which it takes to repeat these lines properly! What slow movements could Alexandrines express more than these? "As she makes wing, she gets power." One makes a foot of every syllable. Wither was certainly a perfect master of this species of verse.

There is, however, enough genuine un-negatived Lamb (as he would say) remaining to make this edition of Wither a very desirable possession of all collectors of Lamb.

What is even more surprising than Lamb's silence on the subject- which may easily be accounted for by the incomplete state of his correspondence-is the silence of Gutch himself. In 1847, when he told the story of Wither, he made no reference whatever to any use of Lamb's notes beyond Lamb's own, nor even mentioned the fact that a fuller edition of Wither was published by himself, although he refers his readers to two other editions, one earlier and one later, and remarks on the poet's growing popularity. He quotes, however, a long passage from Lamb's 1818 essay, remarking that it was based upon the notes made in the original copy of Wither.

Gutch was wrong in stating that it was through him that Lamb became acquainted with Wither. It was only to Philarete that Gutch introduced him. Lamb was first drawn to Wither by Coleridge, as he admits in the letter of July 1, 1796. In 1798 he wrote to Southey on the subject: "Quarles is a wittier writer, but Wither lays more hold of the heart. . . . I always love Wither

the extract from Shepherd's Hunting places him in a starry height far above Quarles."

This note is already so long that I hesitate to add to it by quoting from Wither the passages referred to by Lamb. They are, moreover, easily identifiable.

George Wither, or Withers, was born in 1588. His Abuses Stript and Whipt was published in 1613; his Shepherd's Hunting, written in part while its author was in the Marshalsea prison for his plain speaking in Abuses, was published in 1615; Wither's Motto in 1621, and Fair Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete, in 1622, but it may have been composed long before. Wither died in 1667. His light remained under a bushel for many years. The Percy Reliques, 1765, began the revival of Wither's fame; George Ellis's Specimens, 1805, continued it; and then came Lamb, and Gutch, and Southey, and it was assured.

Page 211, line 10. No Shaftesbury, no Villiers, no Wharton. Referring to the victims of Dryden and Pope's satires-the first Earl of Shaftesbury in Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel," "Albion and Albanius" and "The Medal; " Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, in "Absalom and Achitophel" and in Pope's third "Moral Essay;" Philip, Duke of Wharton in Pope's "Epistle to Sir Richard Temple."

Page 211, line 23. Where Faithful is arraigned. Faithful was accused of railing also upon Lord Desire of Vain Glory, my old Lord Lechery and Sir Having Greedy.

Page 215. FIVE DRAMATIC CRITICISMS.
None of these were reprinted by Lamb.

During the year 1819 Leigh Hunt's Examiner gave Lamb his first encouragement to indulge in those raptures upon comedians which no one has expressed so well as he. The notices that follow preceded his Elia essays on the" Old Actors” by some three years, although, as is pointed out in the notes to that work, the essay on the "Acting of Munden" first saw the light in The Examiner of November 7 and 8, 1819, as one of the present series. The central figure, however, of the five pieces here collected together is Miss Kelly, Lamb's friend and favourite actress of his middle and later life, whom he began to praise in 1813 (see "The New Acting," page 177), and in praising whom he never tired.

Lamb's sweet allusion to Miss Kelly's "divine plain face" is well known. It may be interesting to add Oxberry's description: "Her face is round and pleasing, though not handsome; her eyes are light blue; her forehead is peculiarly low... her smile is peculiarly beautiful and may be said to completely sun her countenance."

In The Examiner for December 20, 1818, after Leigh Hunt's criticism of Kenney's comedy "A Word for the Ladies" is the following paragraph. Leigh Hunt's criticism is signed this is not, nor is it joined to the article. There is, I think, good reason to believe it to be Lamb's :

"It was not without a feeling of pain, that we observed Miss KELLY among the spectators on the first night of the new comedy. What does she do before the curtain ? She should have been on the stage. With such youth, such talents,—

Those powers of pleasing, with that will to please,

it is too much that she should be forgotten, discarded, laid aside like an old fashion. It really is not yet the season for her ' ' among the wastes of time to go.' Is it Mr. STephen Kemble, or the Sub-Committee; or what heavy body is it, which interposes itself between us and this light of the stage?"

With these Eulogies of Miss Kelly is associated one of the most interesting days in Lamb's life, as the note on page 487 tells.

Page 215. I.-Mrs. Gould (Miss Burrell) in "DON GIOVANNI IN LONDON."

The Examiner, November 22, 1818. Signed †.

This criticism we know to be Lamb's upon Talfourd's testimony. He writes:

Miss Burrell, a lady of more limited powers, but with a frank and noble style, was discovered by Lamb on one of the visits which he paid, on the invitation of his old friend Elliston, to the Olympic, where the lady performed the hero of that happy parody of Moncrieff's, "Giovanni in London." To her Lamb devoted a little article, which he sent to The Examiner [a portion of the article is quoted]. Miss Burrell soon married a person named Gold, and disappeared from the stage.