in some ways the most interesting of the whole correspondence, came to light only last year. That Lamb's correspondence should be incomplete is but natural: the wonder rather is that it is so full as we have it; for we are only gradually coming to understand how great a national treasure Lamb is, and how valuable is almost every sentence that he penned. Private owners of Lamb MSS. in this country have been cheer. fully willing that copies should be made; but I regret to say that my request for co-operation printed in the American literary papers met with no response. The view that the temporary owner of an original document of an author so peculiarly the world's friend as Lamb is rather a steward of the property than absolute possessor, seems as yet not to have obtained any great measure of popularity across the Atlantic. Since almost without exception the best MSS. that now come into the market are bought for America, future editions, by conscientious editors, of the correspondence of great Englishmen promise to be arduous enterprises. By the kindness of Mr. Gordon Wordsworth I have been enabled to print for the first time a considerable number of letters from the Lambs to members of the Wordsworth family, and for the first time to give the true text of many that have been printed before. These, with the new Moxon correspondence, which Mr. LockerLampson has kindly allowed me to copy, constitute the finest body of new material in the present edition. But I have also obtained new copies of the many letters to Coleridge that are now in Mrs. Alfred Morrison's possession; of the letters to J. B. Dibdin, by kind permission of Mr. R. W. Dibdin; of the letters preserved at Dr. Williams' Library, several of which are now printed for the first time, by kind permission of the Trustees; of some new letters to Ayrton, by kind permission of the late W. S. Ayrton; and of several notes in the possession of Sir Charles Dilke. Other owners of originals who have kindly allowed copies to be made are Sir Edmund Elton, Mr. H. Yates-Thomson, Mr. A. M. S. Methuen, Mr. B. B. Macgeorge, Mr. Henry Poulton, Mr. R. A. Potts, Mr. R. B. Adam of Buffalo, N.Y., and the Librarian of the Gluck Library. Mr. Gordon Wordsworth has allowed me to make reduced facsimiles of letters in his possession. The reproduction of the very interesting portrait of Milton, opposite page 460, is made by permission of the Lenox Library, New York; and of the Bellows portrait of Shakespeare by permission of Mr. B. B. Macgeorge. The Barton letters and all other letters at the British Museum have been copied afresh, and so have those in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington, at the Bodleian and National Portrait Gallery. But although great care has been taken, I am not prepared, in the face of the fatality that indissolubly associates editors of Lamb with inaccuracy, to guarantee a single line. In printing from the original documents I have sometimes altered the punctuation-but only as little as might be to assist the sense at the first reading. In great part I have left the letters as Lamb wrote them, often retaining his peculiarities of spelling and punctuation, unexpected capitals and still more unexpected small initials. I trust that no one will resent this literalness. Now and then, very reluctantly, I have had to omit a sentence or paragraph on account of a freedom beyond modern taste, while on two or three occasions a reference of a personal character has been deleted as possibly hurtful to the susceptibilities of living people. But the total amount of omissions from the letters available for the present edition does not equal one quite short missive; and a number of round epithets and passages will be discovered in it that other editors, with more courage than I can muster, have suppressed. The letters of which I have no new transcripts are printed in the present edition, by permission of Messrs. Bell & Sons, for the most part from the text of Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, in the Bohn Library edition of the correspondence, in Mary and Charles Lamb, and, by arrangement with Mr. Elkin Mathews, from the same editor's text in The Lambs and Lamb and Hazlitt. Talfourd often omitted, without warning, many names and passages that Mr. Hazlitt has wisely restored: the reason for Talfourd's caution in the thirties and forties having ceased to be operative in our day. Other old letters are reprinted from the Cowden Clarkes' Recollections of Writers, by permission of the late Miss Mary Sabilla Novello; from Fraser's Magazine, by permission of Miss M. Betham Edwards; from the Century Magazine, by permission of Messrs. Scribner; from William Godwin: His Friends and Ac quaintances, by permission of the late Mr. Kegan Paul; from Certain notes to Hone concerning the Garrick Plays, and one to Novello concerning the setting of George Peele's "Paris and Enone" to music, will be found in Vol. IV. of this edition. A letter to Hone about Moxon's hoax is in Vol. V. The frontispiece to this volume is a reproduction from a new photograph of the portrait of Lamb by Henry Meyer, painted when Lamb was fifty-one, in 1826, and now preserved at the India Office, by whose permission it is given here. The portrait which serves as frontispiece to Vol. VII. is a reproduction from the original pencil drawing made by Thomas Wageman for Barron Field about 1825. It is reproduced by permission of Mr. Halsey of New York, in whose possession it remains. At the end of Vol. VII. will be found certain Appendices containing a few letters and passages of letters omitted from the body of the book, and now supplied from various sources, prin- cipally the collections of the late Mr. Dykes Campbell; the text of various poems referred to in the letters; and a number of notes on the earlier volumes of this edition of the Lambs' writings, together with some new material both authentic and conjectural. |