Page 371, line 10. "In the flowery spring," etc. From Chapman's Translation of Homer's "Hymn to Pan," 31-33. Page 373, line 15 from foot. Sir Thomas Gresham. It is told of Sir Thomas Gresham (1519 ?-1579), the founder of the Royal Exchange, that as a baby his life was saved by the chirping of a grasshopper, as related here. But cold veracity says not. The legend seems to have had its origin in the grasshopper crest of the Greshams, but it has been found that this crest was worn by an ancestor of Sir Thomas's who lived a hundred years earlier. Page 375. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Lamb wrote this little sketch for William Upcott (1779-1845), the autograph collector and assistant librarian of the London Institution. Upcott permitted John Forster to quote it in the New Monthly Magazine for April, 1835, shortly after Lamb's death. It is here printed from the original MS. in the possession of Mr. B. B. MacGeorge, of Glasgow, contained in a MS. volume entitled Reliques of my Contemporaries. William Upcott." Whether or no Lamb ever caught a swallow flying is not known; but everything else in the autobiography is true. The reference to Mr. Upcott's book may be to the album in which this sketch was written, or to a new edition of the Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors, published in 1816, in which Upcott is supposed to have had a hand. I cannot discover whether a second edition of this work was published. There is none at the British Museum, nor at the London Institution, of which Upcott was librarian. In the first edition, A Biographical Dictionary of the Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland . . . 1816, Lamb figures thus: "LAMB, CHARLES, was born in London, in 1775, and educated at Christ's Hospital. He is at present a clerk in the India House, and has published [a list of six books follows]. . ." "LAMB, MISS, sister of the preceding, has published Mrs. Leicester's School, 12m0, 1808; Poetry for Children, 2 vs., 12mo, 1809." Upcott is not considered to have done more than to collect some of the materials for the Dictionary, which was the work of John Watkins and Frederick Shoberl. Lamb's sense of time was never good: the Elia essays were published in 1823 and the Specimens in 1808, fully four years and nineteen years before the date of this autobiography. The joke about the Works will be found also in the original version of the "Character of the Late Elia." Page 376. SHAKESPEARE'S IMPROVERS. The Spectator, November 22, 1828. Not reprinted by Lamb. This letter was drawn forth by some remarks on the spurious version of "King Lear," which was then being played; or, as The Spectator phrased it, " Shakespeare murdered by Nahum TateCovent Garden aiding and abetting.' See page 383 for another letter to the same paper. See also the essay on Shakespeare's Tragedies," 1810, for a first idea of the indictment now more fully drawn up. 66 Page 376, line 2 of letter. Tate's "King Lear." Nahum Tate (1652-1715), Poet Laureate, was the author, with Nicholas Brady (1659-1726), of the rhymed version of the Psalms which bears their names, 1696, a rival of the version of 1549 by Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins. He also wrote verses and plays, original and doctored. His version of "King Lear "-"The History of King Lear '-was produced in 1681. Therein Cordelia and Edgar are at the outset shown to be in love. After the usual frustrations they are united at the close, and Lear, who does not die, pronounces his blessing over them. Cordelia thus addresses Edgar in the first act: When, Edgar, I permitted your addresses, I was the darling daughter of a king, And therefore study to forget your passions, Tate also rewrote "Richard II." and Webster's "White Devil." Page 376, foot. "Coriolanus." Lamb refers to Tate's play, "The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth," produced in 1682. Aufidius threatens to violate only Virgilia : For soon as I've secur'd my rival's life, All stain'd i' th' husband's blood, I'll force the wife. She stabs herself rather than be dishonoured; and it is Nigridius who mangles, gashes, racks and distorts the little son of Coriolanus. Page 377, line 3. Shadwell. The version of "Timon of Athens," by Thomas Shadwell (1642 ?-1692), Poet Laureate, is "The History of Timon of Athens, the Man Hater," produced at the Dorset Garden Theatre in 1678. Timon's last words are: Timon. charge thee live, Evandra. Thou lov'st me not if thou wilt not obey me; Thou only! Dearest! Kind! Constant thing on earth, Evandra. He's gone! he's gone! would all the world were so. Him in his flight. Timon, I come, stay for me, Dies. Stabs herself. Dies. Evandra was played not only by Mrs. Betterton, but also by Mrs. Bracegirdle. Page 377, foot. "Macbeth." The new version of "Macbeth" was probably by Sir William Davenant (1606-1668). There is an edition as early as 1673. Macduff's chariot is greatly insisted upon. His servant remarks in the same scene: This is the entrance o' th' Heath; and here He order'd me to attend him with the chariot, and a little later, to Macduff's question, "Where are our children? Lady Macduff replies : They are securely sleeping in the chariot. Lady Macbeth's final repentance leads her to address her husband thus: Page 379. You may in peace resign the ill-gain'd crown. resign your kingdom now, SATURDAY NIGHT. The Gem, 1830. Signed " Nepos." Not reprinted by Lamb. This little essay was written to accompany an engraving of Wilkie's picture with the same title. Whether Lamb's grandmother was as he has recorded we cannot know; his reminiscences of her in "Dream Children" and "The Grandam" are very different. That was Mrs. Field; Lamb, I think, never knew a paternal grandmother. The recollection of the fly in the eye seems to have an authentic air. Page 380, line 9. Burking. After Burke and Hare, who suffocated their victims and sold them to the hospitals for dissection. Burke was executed in January, 1829. Page 381. ESTIMATE OF DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS. This criticism was written for Wilson's Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel de Foe, 1830. It will be found on page 636 of the third of Wilson's volumes. Lamb never reprinted it. Walter Wilson (1781-1847) had been a bookseller, and a fellowclerk of Lamb's at the India House. Later he entered at the Inner Temple. In addition to his work on De Foe, he wrote The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches in London, Westminster and Southwark, including the Lives of their Ministers, a work in four volumes. Lamb, as his Letters tell us, helped Wilson with advice concerning De Foe. He also seems to have wished the "Ode to the Treadmill " to be included; but it was not. This criticism of the Secondary Novels is usually preceded in the editions of Lamb's works by the following remarks contained in Lamb's letter to Wilson of December 16, 1822, which Wilson printed as page 428 of Vol. III., but they do not rightly form part of the article, which Lamb wrote seven years later, in 1829. I quote from the original MS. in the Bodleian: "In the appearance of truth, in all the incidents and conversations that occur in them, they exceed any works of fiction I am acquainted with. It is perfect illusion. The Author never appears in these self-narratives (for so they ought to be called, or rather Autobiographies) but the Narrator chains us down to an implicit belief in every thing he says. There is all the minute detail of a log-book in it. Dates are painfully pressed upon the memory. Facts are repeated over and over in varying phrases, till you cannot chuse but believe them. It is like reading Evidence given in a Court of Justice. So anxious the storyteller seems that the truth should be clearly comprehended, that when he has told us a matter of fact, or a motive, in a line or two farther down he repeats it, with his favourite figure of speech, 'I say,' so and so-though he had made it abundantly plain before. This is in imitation of the common people's way of speaking, or rather of the way in which they are addressed by a master or mistress, who wishes to impress something upon their memories, and has a wonderful effect upon matter-of-fact readers. Indeed it is to such principally that he writes. His style is elsewhere beautiful, but plain and homely. Robinson Crusoe is delightful to all ranks and classes, but it is easy to see that it is written in phraseology peculiarly adapted to the lower conditions of readers; hence it is an especial favourite with sea-faring men, poor boys, servant-maids, &c. His novels are capital kitchen-reading, while they are worthy from their deep interest to find a shelf in the Libraries of the wealthiest, and the most learned. His passion for matter-of-fact narrative, sometimes betrayed him into a long relation of common incidents which might happen to any man, and have no interest but the intense appearance of truth in them, to recommend them. The whole latter half, or two thirds, of Colonel Jack is of this description. The beginning of Colonel Jack is the most affecting natural picture of a young thief that was ever drawn. His losing the stolen money in the hollow of a tree, and finding it again when in despair, and then being in equal distress at not knowing how to dispose of it, and several similar touches in the early history of the Colonel, evince a deep knowledge of human nature; and, putting out of question the superior romantic interest of the latter, in my mind very much exceed Crusoe. Roxana (1st edition) is the next in Interest, though he left out the best part of it [in] subsequent Editions, from a foolish hyper criticism of his friend Southerne. But Moll Flanders, the account of the Plague, &c. &c. are all of one family, and have the same stamp of character," One point in this 1822 criticism requires notice-that touching the first edition of Roxana. According to a letter from Lamb to Wilson, Lamb considered the curiosity of Roxana's daughter to be the best part of Roxana. But the episode of the daughter does not come into the first edition of the book (1724) at all, and is thought by some critics not to be De Foe's. Mr. Aitken, De Foe's latest editor, doubts the Southerne story altogether. In any case, Lamb was wrong in recommending the first edition for its completeness, for the later ones are fuller. It was upon the episode of Susannah that Godwin based his play, "Faulkener," for which Lamb wrote a prologue in praise of De Foe. Godwin's preface stated that the only edition of Roxana then available-in 1807-in which to find the full story of Roxana's daughter, was that of 1745. Godwin turned the avenging daughter into a son. Writing to Wilson on the publication of his Memoirs of De Foe, Lamb says: "The two papers of mine will puzzle the reader, being so akin. Odd, that never keeping a scrap of my own letters, with some fifteen years' interval I should have nearly said the same things." (According to the dating of the letters the interval was not fifteen years, but seven.) Lamb also remarks, "De Foe was always my darling." For a further criticism of De Foe see "The Good Clerk," page 148 of the present volume, and the notes to the same. In introducing the criticism of the Secondary Novels, Wilson wrote: It may call for some surprise that De Foe should be so little known as a novelist, beyond the range of "Robinson Crusoe." To recall the attention of the public to his other fictions, the present writer is happy to enrich his work with some original remarks upon his secondary novels by his early friend, Charles Lamb, whose competency to form an accurate judgment upon the subject, no one will doubt who is acquainted with his genius. Refer Page 382, foot. Mr. Coleridge has anticipated us ring to Coleridge's remarks, see the Biographia Literaria, Vol. II., chapter iv. Page 383, line 8. An ingenious critic. Lamb himself, in the 1822 criticism quoted above. Page 383. CLARENCE SONGS. The Spectator, July 24, 1830. Concerning Lamb's theory that "Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill" was written upon Prince William, the editor of The Spectator remarks that it had reference to George IV.-a monarch upon whom Lamb himself had done his share of rhyming. Lamb was at Christ's Hospital from 1782-1789. Prince William, who was born in 1765, became a midshipman in 1779. His promotion to lieutenant came in 1785, and to captain in the following year. The |