Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 written by Various

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XI.--MAY, 1863.--NO. LXVII.

CHARLES LAMB'S UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS.

I.

What Southey says of Cottle's shop is true of the little bookstore in a
certain old town of New England, which I used to frequent years ago, and
where I got my first peep into Chaucer, and Spenser, and Fuller, and Sir
Thomas Browne, and other renowned old authors, from whom I now derive so
much pleasure and solacement. 'Twas a place where sundry lovers of good
books used to meet and descant eloquently and enthusiastically upon the
merits and demerits of their favorite authors. I, then a young man, with
a most praiseworthy desire of reading "books that are books," but with
a most lamentable ignorance of even the names of the principal
English authors, was both a pleased and a benefited listener to the
conversations of these bookish men. Hawthorne says that to hear the
old Inspector (whom he has immortalized in the quaint and genial
introduction to the "Scarlet Letter") expatiate on fish, poultry, and
butcher's-meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing the same for
the table, was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster; and to hear these
literary gourmands talk with such gusto of this writer's delightful
style, or of that one's delicious humor, or t' other's brilliant wit
and merciless satire, gave one a taste and a relish for the authors so
lovingly and heartily commended. Certainly, after hearing the genial,
scholarly, gentlemanly lawyer S---- sweetly discourse on the old English
divines,--or bluff, burly, good-natured, wit-loving Master R----
declaim, in his loud, bold, enthusiastic manner, on the old English
dramatists,--or queer, quaint, golden-hearted Dr. D---- mildly and
modestly, yet most pertinently, express himself about Old Burton and Old
Fuller,--or wise, thoughtful, ingenious Squire M---- ably, if not very
eloquently, hold forth on Shakspeare and Milton, I had (who but a dunce
or dunderhead would not have had?) a "greedy great desire" to look into
the works of

"Such famous men, such worthies of the
earth."

And after listening to the stout, brawny, two-fisted, whole-soled,
big-hearted, large-brained Parson A----, as he talked in his wise and
winsome manner about Charles Lamed and his writings, I could not refrain
from forthwith procuring and reading Elia's famous and immortal essays.
Since then I have been a constant reader of Elia, and a most zealous
admirer of Charles Lamb the author and Charles Lamb the man. Thackeray,
you remember, somewhere mentions a youthful admirer of Dickens, who,
when she is happy, reads "Nicholas Nickleby,"--when she is unhappy,
reads "Nicholas Nickleby,"--when she is in bed, reads "Nicholas
Nickleby,"--when she has nothing to do, reads "Nicholas Nickleby,"--and
when she has finished the book, reads "Nicholas Nickleby": and so do I
read and re-read the essays and letters of Charles Lamb; and the oftener
I read them, the better I like then, the higher I value them. Indeed, I
live upon the essays of Elia, as Hazlitt did upon "Tristram Shandy," as
a sort of food that simulates with my natural disposition.

And yet, despite all my love and admiration of Charles Lamb,--nay,
rather in consequence of it,--I must blame him of what Mr. Barron Field
was please to eulogize him for,--writing so little. Undoubtedly in most
authors suppression in writing would be a virtue. In Lamb it was a
fault. There are a score or two of subjects which he, "no less from
temerity than felicity of his pen," should have written upon,--subjects
on which he had thought and ruminated for years, and which he, and none
but he, could do justice to. He who loved and admired before or since,
such sterling old writers as Burton, Browne, Fuller, and Walton, should
have given us an article on each of those worthies and their inditing.
Chaucer and Spenser, though proud and happy in having had such an
appreciating reader of there writings as Elia was, when denizen of this
earth, would, methinks, have given him a warmer, heartier, gladder
welcome to heaven, if he had done for them what he did for Hogarth and
the old dramatists,--pointed out to the would "with a finger of fire"
the truth and beauty contained in their works. Instead of writing only
two volumes of essays, Elia should have written a dozen. He had read,
heard, thought, and seen enough to furnish matter for twice that number.
He himself confesseth, in a letter written a year or two before his
death, that he felt as if he had a thousand essays swelling within him.
Oh that Elia, like Mr. Spectator, had printed himself out before he
died!

But notwithstanding Lamb's fame and popularity, notwithstanding
all readers of his inimitable essays lament that one who wrote so
delightfully as Elia did should have written so little, their has not
yet be published a complete collection of his writings. The standard
edition of his works, edited by Talfourd, is far from being complete.
Surely the author of "Ion" was unwise in not publishing all of Lamb's
productions. Carlyle said he wanted to know all about Margaret Fuller,
even to the color of her stocking. And the admirers of Elia wanted
to possess every scrap and fragment of his inditing. They cannot let
oblivion have the lease "notelet" or "essaykin" of his. For, however
inferior to his best productions these uncollected articles may be,
they must contain more or less of Lamb's humor, sense, and observation.
Somewhat of his delightful individuality must be stamped upon them. In
brief, they cannot but contain much that would amuse and entertain all
admirers of their author. For myself, I would rather read the poorest of
these uncollected essays of Elia than the best productions of some of
the most popular of modern authors. "The king's chaff is as good as
other people's corn," saith the old proverb. "There is a pleasure
arising from the very bagatelles of men renowned for their knowledge and
genius," says Goldsmith; "and we receive with veneration those pieces,
after they are dead, which would lessen them in our estimation while
living: sensible that we shall enjoy them no more, we treasure up, as
precious relics, every saying and word that has escaped them; but their
writings, of every kind, we deem inestimable."

For years I have been hopefully and patiently waiting for somebody to
collect and publish these scattered and all but forgotten articles of
Lamb's; but at last, seeing no likelihood of its being done at present,
if ever in my day, and fearing that I might else never have an
opportunity of perusing these strangely neglected writings of my
favorite author, I commenced the task of searching out and discovering
them myself for mine own delectation. And after a deal of fruitless and
aimless labor, (for, unlike Johannes Scotus Erigena, in his quest of a
treatise of Aristotle, I had no oracle to consult,) after spending as
many days in turning over the leaves of I know not how many volumes of
old, dusty, musty, fusty periodicals as Mr. Vernon ran miles after a
butterfly, I was amply rewarded for all my pains. For I not only found
all of Lamb's uncollected writings that are spoken of in his "Life and
Letters," but a goodly number of articles from his pen which neither
he nor his biographer has ever alluded to. As I read these (to me)
new essays of Elia, I could not but feel somewhat indignant that such
excellent productions of such an excellent writer should have been
"underkept and down supprest" so long. I was as much ravished with these
new-found essays of Lamb's as good old Nicholas Gerbelius (see Burton's
"Anatomy of Melancholy," Partition II., Section 2, Member 4) was with
a few Greek authors restored to light. If I had had one or two loving,
enthusiastic admirers of Charles Lamb to enjoy with me the delight of
perusing these uncollected Elias, I should have been "all felicity up to
the brim." For with me, as with Michael de Montaigne and Hans Andersen,
there is no pleasure without communication.

And therefore, partly to please myself, and partly to please the
admirers of Charles Lamb, I herewith publish a part of Elia's
uncollected essays and sketches. To ninety-nine hundredths of their
author's readers they will be as good as MSS. And not only will they be
new to most readers, but they will be found to be not wholly unworthy of
him who wrote the immortal dissertation on "Roast Pig." Albeit not to be
compared with Elia's best and most finished productions, these articles
contain some of the best qualities and peculiarities of his genius.
Without doubt, all genuine admirers, all true lovers of the gentle,
genial, delightful Elia, will be mightily pleased with these productions
of his inimitable pen.

Those who were so fortunate as to be personally acquainted with Charles
Lamb are lavish in their praise of his conversational powers. Hazlitt
says that no one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent
things in a half-dozen half-sentences as he did. "He always made the
best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening." Lamb was
undoubtedly "matchless as a fireside companion," inimitable as a
table-talker, "great at the midnight hour." The "wit-combats" at his
Wednesday-evening parties were waged with scarcely inferior skill and
ability to those fought at the old Mermaid tavern between Shakspeare
and Ben Jonson. Hazlitt, in his delightful essay intituled "Persons One
would Wish to have Seen," gives a masterly report of the sayings and
doings at one of these parties. It is to be regretted that he did not
report the conversation at all of these weekly assemblages of wits,
humorists, and good-fellows. He made a capital book out of the
conversation of James Northcote: he could have made a better one out of
the conversation of Charles Lamb. Indeed, Elia himself seems to have
been conscious that many of his deepest, wisest, best thoughts and
ideas, as well as wildest, wittiest, airiest fancies and conceits, were
vented in conversation; and a few months before his death he noted down
for the entertainment of the readers of the London "Athenaeum," a few
specimens of his table-talk. Although these paragraphs of table-talk are
not transcripts of their author's actual conversation, they doubtless
contain the pith and substance of what he had really said in some of his
familiar discourses with friends and acquaintances. They contain none of
his "jests that scald like tears," none of his play upon words, none of
his flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar, but
some of his sweet, serious, beautiful thoughts and fancies.

Strange that Talfourd neglected to print "Table-Talk" in his edition of
Lamb! He does not even mention it. It is certainly as good, if not
a great deal better than some things of Lamb's which he saw fit to
reprint. But the best way to praise Elia's "Table-Talk" is, as the
"Tatler" says of South's wise and witty discourse on the "Pleasures of
Religious Wisdom," to quote it; and therefore here followeth, without
further comment or introduction,--

"TABLE-TALK. BY THE LATE ELIA.

"It is a desideratum in works that treat _de re culinaria_, that we
have no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed flavors: as to show why
cabbage is reprehensible with roast beef, laudable with bacon; why the
haunch of mutton seeks the alliance of currant-jelly, the shoulder
civilly declineth it; why loin of veal, (a pretty problem,) being itself
unctuous, seeketh the adventitious lubricity of melted butter,--and why
the same part in pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it; why the
French bean sympathizes with the flesh of deer; why salt fish points to
parsnip, brawn makes a dead-set at mustard; why cats prefer valerian to
heart's-ease, old ladies _vice versa_,--though this is rather travelling
out of the road of the dietetics, and may be thought a question more
curious than relevant; why salmon (a strong sapor _per se_) fortifieth
its condition with the mighty lobster-sauce, whose embraces are fatal to
the delicater relish of the turbot; why oysters in death rise up against
the contamination of brown sugar, while they are posthumously amorous
of vinegar; why the sour mango and the sweet jam by turns court and are
accepted by the compilable mutton-hash,--she not yet decidedly declaring
for either. We are as yet but in the empirical stage of cookery. We
feed ignorantly, and want to be able to give a reason of the relish that
is in us; so that, if Nature should furnish us with a new meat, or be
prodigally pleased to restore the phoenix, upon a _given_ flavor, we
might be able to pronounce instantly, on philosophical principles, what
the sauce to it should be,--what the curious adjuncts."

* * * * *

"The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and to
have it found out by accident."

* * * * *

"'T is unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to deny him; and if
you relieve him, it is so much out of your pocket."

* * * * *

"Men marry for fortune, and sometimes to please their fancy; but, much
oftener than is suspected, they consider what the world will say of
it, how such a woman in their friends' eyes will look at the head of a
table. Hence we see so many insipid beauties made wives of, that could
not have struck the particular fancy of any man that had any fancy at
all. These I call _furniture wives_; as men buy _furniture pictures_,
because they suit this or that niche in their dining-parlors.

"Your universally cried-up beauties are the very last choice which a man
of taste would make. What pleases all cannot have that individual charm
which makes this or that countenance engaging to you, and to you
only perhaps, you know not why. What gained the fair Gunnings titled
husbands, who, after all, turned out very sorry wives? Popular repute."

* * * * *

"It is a sore trial, when a daughter shall marry against her father's
approbation. A little hard-heartedness, and aversion to a reconcilement,
is almost pardonable. After all, Will Dockwray's way is, perhaps, the
wisest. His best-loved daughter made a most imprudent match,--in fact,
eloped with the last man in the world that her father would have wished
her to marry. All the world said that he would never speak to her again.
For months she durst not write to him, much less come near him. But, in
a casual rencounter, he met her in the streets of Ware,--Ware, that will
long remember the mild virtues of William Dockwray, Esq. What said the
parent to his disobedient child, whose knees faltered under her at the
sight of him? 'Ha, Sukey, is it you?' with that benevolent aspect with
which he paced the streets of Ware, venerated as an angel,--'come and
dine with us on Sunday'; then turning away, and again turning back, as
if he had forgotten something, he added,--'and, Sukey, do you hear?
bring your husband with you.' This was all the reproof she ever heard
from him. Need it be added that the match turned out better for Susan
than the world expected?"

* * * * *

"'We read the "Paradise Lost" as a task,' says Dr. Johnson. Nay, rather
as a celestial recreation, of which the dullard mind is not at all hours
alike recipient. 'Nobody ever wished it longer';--nor the moon rounder,
he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of
it which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or
diminished from it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the
stature of the Medicean Venus? Do we wish her taller?"

* * * * *

"Amidst the complaints of the wide spread of infidelity among us, it is
consolatory that a sect is sprung up in the heart of the metropolis, and
is daily on the increase, of teachers of that healing doctrine which
Pope upheld, and against which Voltaire directed his envenomed wit. We
mean those practical preachers of Optimism, or the belief that _Whatever
is best_, the cads of omnibuses, who, from their little back pulpits,
not once in three or four hours, as those proclaimers of 'God and His
prophet' in Mussulman countries, but every minute, at the entry or
exit of a brief passenger, are heard, in an almost prophetic tone,
to exclaim, (Wisdom crying out, as it were, in the streets,) 'ALL'S
RIGHT!'"

* * * * *

"Advice is not so commonly thrown away as is imagined. We seek it in
difficulties. But, in common speech, we are apt to confound with it
_admonition:_ as when a friend reminds one that drink is prejudicial to
the health, etc. We do not care to be told of that which we know better
than the good man that admonishes. M---- sent to his friend L----, who
is no water-drinker, a two-penny tract 'Against the Use of Fermented
Liquors.' L---- acknowledged the obligation, as far as to _twopence_.
Penotier's advice was the safest, after all:--

"'I advised him'--

"But I must tell you. The dear, good-meaning, no-thinking creature
had been dumbfounding a company of us with a detail of inextricable
difficulties in which the circumstances of an acquaintance of his were
involved. No clue of light offered itself. He grew more and more misty
as he proceeded. We pitied his friend, and thought,--

"'God help the man so wrapt in error's endless
maze!'

"when, suddenly brightening up his placid countenance, like one that had
found out a riddle, and looked to have the solution admired,--

"'At last,' said he, 'I advised him'--

"Here he paused, and here we were again interminably thrown back. By no
possible guess could any of us aim at the drift of the meaning he was
about to be delivered of.

"'I advised him,' he repeated, 'to have some _advice_ upon the subject.'

"A general approbation followed; and it was unanimously agreed, that,
under all the circumstances of the case, no sounder or more judicious
counsel could have been given."

* * * * *

"A laxity pervades the popular use of words.

"Parson W---- is not quite so continent as Diana, yet prettily
dissembleth his frailty. Is Parson W---- therefore a _hypocrite?_ I
think not. Where the concealment of a vice is less pernicious than the
barefaced publication of it would be, no additional delinquency is
incurred in the secrecy.

"Parson W---- is simply an immoral clergyman. But if Parson W---- were
to be forever haranguing on the opposite virtue,--choosing for his
perpetual text, in preference to all other pulpit-topics, the remarkable
resistance recorded in the 89th of Exodus [Genesis?],--dwelling,
moreover, and dilating upon it,--then Parson W---- might be reasonably
suspected of hypocrisy. But Parson W---- rarely diverteth into such line
of argument, or toucheth it briefly. His ordinary topics are fetched
from 'obedience to the powers that are,'--'submission to the civil
magistrate in all commands that are not absolutely unlawful'; on which
he can delight to expatiate with equal fervor and sincerity.

"Again. To _despise_ a person is properly to _look down_ upon him with
none or the least possible emotion. But when Clementina, who has lately
lost her lover, with bosom heaving, eyes flashing, and her whole frame
in agitation, pronounces with a peculiar emphasis that she '_despises_
the fellow,' depend upon it that he is not quite so despicable in her
eyes as she would have us imagine.

"One more instance. If we must naturalize that portentous phrase, _a
truism_, it were well that we limited the use of it. Every commonplace
or trite observation is not a truism. For example: A good name helps
a man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple truth, however
hackneyed. It has a distinct subject and predicate. But when the thing
predicated is involved in the term of the subject, and so necessarily
involved that by no possible conception they can be separated, then
it becomes a truism; as to say, A good name is a proof of a man's
estimation in the world. We seem to be saying something, when we say
nothing. I was describing to F---- some knavish tricks of a mutual
friend of ours. 'If he did so and so,' was the reply, 'he cannot be an
honest man.' Here was a genuine truism, truth upon truth, inference and
proposition identical,--or rather, a dictionary definition usurping the
place of an inference."

* * * * *

"We are ashamed at sight of a monkey,--somehow as we are shy of poor
relations."

* * * * *

"C---- imagined a Caledonian compartment in Hades, where there should be
fire without sulphur."

* * * * *

"Absurd images are sometimes irresistible. I will mention two. An
elephant in a coach-office gravely coming to have his trunk booked;--a
mermaid over a fish-kettle cooking her own tail."

* * * * *

"It is the praise of Shakspeare, with reference to the playwriters, his
contemporaries, that he has so few revolting characters. Yet be has one
that is singularly mean and disagreeable,--the King in 'Hamlet.' Neither
has he characters of insignificance, unless the phantom that stalks over
the stage as Julius Caesar, in the play of that name, may be accounted
one. Neither has he envious characters, excepting the short part of
Don John, in 'Much Ado about Nothing.' Neither has he unentertaining
characters, if we except Parolles, and the little that there is of the
Clown, in 'All's Well that Ends Well.'"

* * * * *

"It would settle the dispute as to whether Shakspeare intended Othello
for a jealous character, to consider how differently we are affected
towards him, and for Leontes in the 'Winter's Tale.' Leontes _is_ that
character. Othello's fault was simply credulity."

* * * * *

"Is it possible that Shakspeare should never have read Homer, in
Chapman's version at least? If he had read it, could he mean to
_travesty_ it in the parts of those big boobies, Ajax and Achilles?
Ulysses, Nestor, and Agamemnon are true to their parts in the 'Iliad
'; they are gentlemen at least. Thersites, though unamusing, is fairly
deducible from it. Troilus and Cressida are a fine graft upon it. But
those two big bulks"--

* * * * *

Disraeli wrote a book on the Quarrels of Authors. Somebody should write
one on the Friendships of Literary Men. If such a work is ever written,
Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge will be honorably mentioned
therein. For among all the friendships celebrated in tale or history
there is none more admirable than that which existed between these two
eminent men. The "golden thread that tied their hearts together" was
never broken. Their friendship was never "chipt or diminished"; but the
longer they lived, the stronger it grew. Death could not destroy it.

Lamb, after Coleridge's death, as if weary of "this green earth," as if
not caring if "sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer
holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats
and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and
fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony
itself," went out with life, willingly sought "Lavinian shores."

"Lamb," as Mr. John Foster says, in his beautiful tribute to his memory,
"never fairly recovered the death of Coleridge. He thought of little
else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great
spirit joined his friend. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a
sort of mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, 'cleanse his
bosom of the perilous stuff that weighed' upon it. In a jest, or a few
light phrases, he would lay open the last recesses of his heart. So in
respect of the death of Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two
or three weeks ago and remarked the constant turning and reference of
his mind. He interrupted-himself and them almost every instant with some
play of affected wonder, or astonishment, or humorous melancholy, on the
words, '_Coleridge is dead_.' Nothing could divert him from that, for
the thought of it never left him. About the same time, we had written
to him to request a few lines for the literary album of a gentleman who
entertained a fitting admiration of his genius. It was the last request
we were destined to make, the last kindness we were allowed to receive.
He wrote in Mr. Keymer's volume,--and wrote of Coleridge."

And this is what he said of his friend: it would be, as Mr. Foster says,
impertinence to offer one remark on it:--

"When I heard of the death of Coleridge, it was without grief. It seemed
to me that he long had been on the confines of the next world,--that he
had a hunger for eternity. I grieved then that I could not grieve. But
since, I feel how great a part he was of me. His great and dear spirit
haunts me. I cannot think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or
books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to him. He was the
proof and touchstone of all my cogitations. He was a Grecian (or in the
first form) at Christ's Hospital, where I was Deputy-Grecian; and the
same subordination and deference to him I have preserved through a
life-long acquaintance. Great in his writings, he was greatest in his
conversation. In him was disproved that old maxim, that we should allow
every one his share of talk. He would talk from morn to dewy eve, nor
cease till far midnight; yet who ever would interrupt him? who would
obstruct that continuous flow of converse, fetched from Helicon or Zion?
He had the tact of making the unintelligible seem plain. Many who read
the abstruser parts of his 'Friend' would complain that his works did
not answer to his spoken wisdom. They were identical. But he had a
tone in oral delivery which seemed to convey sense to those who were
otherwise imperfect recipients. He was my fifty-years-old friend without
a dissension. Never saw I his likeness, nor probably the world can see
again. I seem to love the house he died at more passionately than when
he lived. I love the faithful Gilmans more than while they exercised
their virtues towards him living. What was his mansion is consecrated to
me a chapel.

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