by Charles Lamb
3. (p. 91) Fox and Dewesbury: George Fox (1624–91) founded the Society of Friends. William Dewesbury was one of Fox’s first colleagues and a famous preacher.
4. (p. 93) Jocos Risus-que: ‘a laughable joke’.
5. (p. 93) Trophonius: ‘the Feeder’, a Boeotian oracular god. Pausanius, the Greek traveller and geographer, describes in his Guide to Greece the elaborate preliminary ritual after which the inquirer is snatched away underground and given direct revelation.
9. The Old and the New Schoolmaster
1. (p. 95) old Ortelius … Arrowsmith: Abraham Ortellius (1527–98), Dutch geographer and author of Theatrum Orbis Terrae (1570). Aaron Arrowsmith (1750–1823) was a famous contemporary cartographer.
2. (p. 96) My friend M.: Thomas Manning, see Biographical Index (p. 443).
3. (p. 98) the Lilys, and the Linacres: William Lily (1468–1522), English scholar; Thomas Linacre (1460–1524), English humanist and physician.
4. (p. 98) Flori- … Spici-legia: ‘flower-’ and ‘spice-laws’, i.e. folklore.
5. (p. 99) cum multis aliis: ‘along with many other things’.
6. (p. 99) the famous Tractate … Hartlib: Milton’s Tractate on Education, published in 1644.
7. (p. 100) mollia tempora fandi: ‘at the most intimate moments’.
8. (p. 100) the Panorama … the Panopticon: the Panorama was a place in London where a picture of a landscape, or a map, was arranged on the inside of a cylindrical surface (the walls of the room) around the spectator. George Bartley (1782–1858), the comedian, lectured on astronomy and poetry at the Lyceum during Lent; for an orrery see note 8 to ‘On the Tragedies of Shakspeare’ (p. 446). The Panopticon was a telescope.
10. Imperfect Sympathies
1. (p. 104) Imperfect Sympathies: the original title in the London Magazine was ‘Jews, Quakers, Scotchmen, and other Imperfect Sympathies’.
2. (p. 104) the author of the Religio Medici: Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82).
3. (p. 107) John Buncle: the Life of John Buncle, Esq. (part I published in 1756, part II in 1766) was by Thomas Amory (1691?–1788).
4. (p. 107) I have a print … pretensions: the print was the Virgin of the Rocks. Crabb Robinson’s diary tells us that the Scotsman was a friend of Godwin’s called Smith, and records his reply to Lamb’s remark as: ‘Why, Sir, from all I have heard of you as well as from what I have myself seen, I certainly entertain a very high opinion of your abilities, but I confess that I have not formed any opinion concerning your personal pretensions.’
5. (p. 108) Thomson: James Thomson (1700–1748), born in Roxburghshire, author of The Seasons.
6. (p. 108) Rory: Rory was Roderick Random’s schoolboy name in Smollett’s novel of that name (Smollett himself came from a Dumbartonshire family).
7. (p. 108) the story of Hugh of Lincoln: at the age of ten, so the story goes, Hugh was found dead in a Jew’s house, having been scourged and crucified in imitation of the death of Christ. In the general indignation several Jews were hanged.
8. (p. 109) congeeing: bowing.
9. (p. 109) keck: retch.
10. (p. 109) B—: John Braham (1774?–1856), the great tenor.
11. (p. 109) Kemble: John Philip Kemble (1757–1823), the actor.
12. (p. 111) Penn: William Penn (1644–1718), English Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania.
11. Witches, and Other Night-Fears
1. (p. 113) indigent eld: people in the old days.
2. (p. 114) the History of the Bible … never seen: the New History of the Holy Bible from the Beginning of the World to the Establishment of Christianity, by Thomas Stackhouse (1677–1752), was published in 1737. Lamb makes two other references to this picture, once in a draft of his play John Woodvil (1802) and once in his story The Witch Hunt (1808).
3. (p. 117) Dear little T. H.: Thornton Hunt, Leigh Hunt’s eldest son.
4. (p. 119) the noble Dream of this poet: the reference is to ‘A Dream’, a poem in Barry Cornwall’s Dramatic Scenes (1819). Barry Cornwall was the pen-name of Bryan Waller Procter (1787–1874).
5. (p. 119) Ino Leucothea: ‘white goddess’ or ‘runner on the foam’, a sea-goddess identified with Ino, daughter of Cadmus. See Odyssey 5, 333–5.
12. Grace Before Meat
1. (p. 120) manducation: chewing or eating (often used in a theological context, as in communion).
2. (p. 121) a rarus hospes: ‘an infrequent guest’.
3. (p. 122) Jeshurun: see Isaiah 44.
4. (p. 123) Heliogabalus: see note 6 to ‘Edax On Appetite’ (p. 447).
5. (p. 124) C—: Coleridge.
6. (p. 125) the author of the ‘Rambler’: Samuel Johnson.
7. (p. 125) Dagon: the fish-god worshipped by the Philistines; see Judges 16:23, and Samuel 5.
8. (p. 126) C. V. L.: Charles Valentine le Grice (1773–1858), friend of Lamb and Coleridge, who became a clergyman.
9. (p. 126) Non tunc … locus: that was not the place (for such a thing).
10. (p. 126) good creatures: the Grace Before Meat at Christ’s Hospital in Lamb’s time was: ‘Give us thankful hearts, O Lord God, for the Table which thou has spread for us. Bless thy good Creatures to our use, and us to their service, for Jesus Christ his sake. Amen.’
11. (p. 127) horresco referens: ‘I shudder to think of it’.
13. My First Play
1. (p. 128) Garrick’s Drury: Garrick’s Drury Lane was condemned in 1791, the new theatre being built in 1794.
2. (p. 128) my godfather F.: Francis Fielde (died 1809).
3. (p. 129) orders: tickets.
4. (p. 130) Artaxerxes: an opera by Thomas Arne (1710–78). The date of this performance was probably 1 December 1780. It is not incidental that the reference just before to ‘the maternal lap’ is one of only two references in Lamb’s work to his mother.
5. (p. 130) Harlequin’s Invasion: a pantomime by Garrick (1759).
6. (p. 131) Lun’s Ghost … Rich: Lun’s Ghost was produced on 3 January 1782. Lun was the character which John Rich (1682?–1761), the pantomimist and theatrical manager, played in pantomime.
7. (p. 131) the Way of the World: a play by Congreve.
8. (p. 132) Isabella: Garrick’s version of The Fatal Marriage (1694) by Thomas Southerne (1660–1746).
14. Distant Correspondents
1. (p. 133) B. F.: Barron Field (1786–1846), barrister.
2. (p. 133) parasangs: a Persian measure of length between 3 and 3½ miles.
3. (p. 134) P. … in the Bench: P. is unidentifiable; the Bench is the King’s Bench Prison.
4. (p. 134) Munden: Joseph Shepherd Munden (1758–1832), English comedian and friend of Lamb. Lamb wrote twice on Munden, once in the Examiner (November 1819) and once in the Athenaeum (February 1832). He also wrote a skit-autobiography of him for the London Magazine (February 1825).
5. (p. 135) flam: a lie or trick.
6. (p. 135) the late Lord C.: Thomas Pitt, second Baron Camelford (1775–1804), killed in a duel in Kensington.
7. (p. 136) melior lutus: ‘the better mud’.
8. (p. 136) sol pater: ‘the sun-father’.
9. (p. 137) Do you bleach: Lamb is referring here to the idea that illegitimacy wears out in the third generation, letting a natural son’s descendant resume the ancient coat of arms.
10. (p. 138) Sally W—r: Miss Winter, an acquaintance of Lamb’s.
11. (p. 138) J. W.: James White (1775–1820), a friend of Lamb’s from his school-days.
15. On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century
1. (p. 140) Alsatia: controversial territory between France and Germany. In the seventeenth century the district of Whitefriars, between the Thames and Fleet Street, was known as Alsatia because it afforded sanctuary to debtors and criminals.
2. (p. 141) the Catos of the pit: a reference to the Roman politician Marcus Porcius, renowned for his legal ability and his stern, censorious commitment to traditional morality.
3. (p. 141) The Fainalls … Lady Touchwo
ods: Fainall in Congreve’s Way of the World; Mirabel in Farquhar’s Inconstant; Dorimant in Etheredge’s Man of Mode; Lady Touchstone in Congreve’s Double Dealer.
4. (p. 141) Angelica: in Love for Love.
5. (p. 142) the impertinent Goshen: a happy place of light and abundance; see Exodus 10:23.
6. (p. 142) Sir Simon … Sir Paul Pliant’s children: all these characters are in Wycherley’s Love in a Wood.
7. (p. 144) Carrington Bowles: five members of the Bowles family had the same names. Lamb’s friend probably lived from 1763 to 1830 and was a print seller and publisher.
8. (p. 144) old Teazle King: Thomas King (1730–1805), manager of Drury Lane, was the original Sir Peter Teazle in the first night of The School for Scandal, 8 May 1777.
9. (p. 145) crim-con: criminal conversation.
10. (p. 145) amphisbænas: a legendary serpent with a head at each end.
11. (p. 145) this manager’s comedy: Sheridan was manager of Drury Lane when The School for Scandal was first produced.
16. Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading
1. (p. 147) the Relapse: a play by Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726).
2. (p. 147) Shaftesbury … Jonathan Wild: Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671–1713), third Earl of Shaftesbury and author of Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711); Jonathan Wild the Great (1743), a novel by Fielding.
3. (p. 148) Adam Smith: (1723–90), political economist and author of The Wealth of Nations (1776).
4. (p. 148) Anglicanas or Metropolitanas: the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana began appearing in 1817, giving ‘sciences and systematic arts entire and in their natural sequence’; Coleridge contributed to it. Anglicana is an invention of Lamb’s and probably an allusion to the Britannica, first published 1768–71.
5. (p. 148) Paracelsus … Raymund Lully: Theophrastus Von Hohenheim (1493–1541), German-Swiss physician and theosophist, author of several medical and mystical treatises. Ramon Lull (c. 1235–1315) was a Catalan author, mystic, Franciscan missionary and martyr, with a reputation of being an alchemist. In his diary, Crabb Robinson notes that Lamb had ‘the finest collection of shabby books’ he had seen: ‘Such a number of first-rate works in very bad condition is, I think, nowhere to be found’.
6. (p. 148) Russia backs: book-spines made of Russian leather.
7. (p. 149) by his Duchess: Margaret Cavendish, first Duchess of Newcastle, prolific author.
8. (p. 149) The wretched Malone: Edmond Malone (1741–1812), a scholar and critic, whose edition of Shakespeare was published in 1790. The bust was actually painted white, not whitewashed, in 1793.
9. (p. 151) pro bono publico: ‘for the general good’.
10. (p. 151) Nando’s: a contraction for Ferdinando’s, a coffee-house in Fleet Street.
11. (p. 151) Poor Tobin: James Webbe Tobin (1767–1814), a friend of Coleridge, Lamb and Godwin.
12. (p. 151) Cythera: Aphrodite’s sacred Greek island.
13. (p. 152) a volume of Lardner: Nathaniel Lardner (1684–1768), Unitarian theologian.
14. (p. 152) Martin B—: Martin Burney.
15. (p. 152) a quaint poetess of our day: Mary Lamb.
17. Confessions of a Drunkard
1. (p. 154) This paper has troubled some of the more devoted ‘lovers of Elia’ and was risky for Lamb to publish: clerks could easily lose their jobs if it was known that they drank excessively, as Lamb clearly did intermittently. Its publishing history is of interest in the light of this. It was first printed, with a number of editorial changes, in the Philanthropist (No. IX, 1813); reprinted in Basil Montagu’s book Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors in 1814, and then again published as an essay of Elia in the London Magazine for August 1822. Lamb apparently reprinted it for two reasons; for the first and only time in his life he was abroad, in France, and could not supply a new essay. Also, a reviewer in the Quarterly had written that he was convinced the ‘Confessions’, as published in Montagu, were genuine confessions of Lamb’s. So Lamb added the following note to the full text of the essay published in the London Magazine:
We have been induced, in the first instance, to re-print a Thing, which he [Elia] put forth in a friend’s volume some years since, entitled the Confessions of a Drunkard, seeing that Messieurs the Quarterly Reviewers have chosen to embellish their last dry pages with fruitful quotations therefrom; adding, from their peculiar brains, the gratuitous affirmation, that they have reason to believe that the describer (in his delineations of a drunkard forsooth!) partly sate for his own picture. The truth is, that our friend had been reading among the Essays of a contemporary, who has perversely been confounded with him, a paper in which Edax (or the Great Eater) humorously complaineth of an inordinate appetite; and it struck him, that a better paper – of deeper interest, and wider usefulness – might be made out of the imagined experiences of a Great Drinker. Accordingly he set to work, and with that mock fervor, and counterfeit earnestness, with which he is too apt to over-realise his descriptions, has given us – a frightful picture indeed – but no more resembling the man Elia, than the fictitious Edax may be supposed to identify itself with Mr L., its author. It is indeed a compound extracted out of his long observations of the effect of drinking upon all the world about him; and this accumulated mass of misery he hath centered (as the custom is with judicious essayists) in a single figure. We deny not that a portion of his own experiences may have passed into the picture (as who, that is not a washy fellow, but must at some times have felt the after-operation of a too generous cup?) – but then how heightened! how exaggerated! – how little within the sense of the Review, where a part, in their slanderous usage, must be understood to stand for the whole! – but it is useless to expostulate with this Quarterly slime, brood of Nilus, watery heads with hearts of jelly, spawned under the sign of Aquarius, incapable of Bacchus, and therefore cold, washy, spiteful, bloodless. – Elia shall string them up one day, and show their colours – or rather how colourless and vapid the whole fry – when he putteth forth his long promised, but unaccountably hitherto delayed, Confessions of a Water-drinker.
2. (p. 154) Dehortations: dissuasions.
3. (p. 157) Tartarus: an abyss in Homer, as far below Hades as earth is below heaven.
4. (p. 158) Piscatoribus Sacrum: the special room belonging to Piscator.
5. (p. 158) a Sybaritic effeminacy: a Sybarite was an inhabitant of Sybaris, a Greek city in Ancient Italy famed for its luxury.
18. A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig
1. (p. 163) my friend M.: Thomas Manning; see Biographical Index (p. 443).
2. (p. 166) mundus edibilis … princeps obsoniorum: ‘the edible world’ … ‘the best of those things usually eaten with bread’.
3. (p. 166) amor immunditiæ: ‘Love of filth’.
4. (p. 166) præludium: ‘Prelude’.
5. (p. 167) sapors: tastes or savours.
6. (p. 169) intenerating: tenderizing.
7. (p. 169) St Omer’s: a French Jesuit college, which of course Lamb never attended.
19. A Bachelor’s Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People
1. (p. 172) usufruct: ‘Use, enjoyment, or profitable possession (of something)’ – O.E.D. This is the first recorded usage.
20. A Character of the Late Elia
1. (p. 178) A character … Elia: this is the original essay, published in the London Magazine, that was cut to serve as the Preface to the Last Essays of Elia.
2. (p. 178) his friends T. and H.: the publishers Taylor and Hessey.
3. (p. 178) P—r … Allan C—: see note 8 to the Letter of Elia to Robert Southey (p. 461).
4. (p. 178) manes: ‘Soul of the dead’.
5. (p. 178) a Tale of Lyddalcross: Cunningham contributed six stories of a proposed series for the London Magazine called Twelve Tales of Lyddalcross. They were published between January and June 1822.
6. (p. 180) a statist: a statesman.
7. (p. 181) The toga virilis: the man’s toga.
&
nbsp; 21. The Old Margate Hoy
1. (p. 183) thou old Margate Hoy: this famous old boat was replaced in 1815 by a steam-boat, the Thames, the first proper steam-boat used on the river. The poet Cowper, in a letter of July 1779 to the Revd William Unwin, wrote that ‘The [Margate] hoy went to London every week, loaded with mackerel and herrings, and returned loaded with company.’
2. (p. 183) parching up Scamander: see Iliad 20, 21. The river Scamander rose to destroy Achilles, but Hephaestus, the fire-god, was sent by Zeus to turn back the waters with fire.
3. (p. 184) additaments: a legal term meaning additions.
4. (p. 185) Genius Loci: ‘genius of the place’.
5. (p. 186) the Reculvers: two western towers of the church of Reculver, near Herne Bay – important landmarks.
6. (p. 187) the mighty Plate, or Orellana: the rivers Plate and Amazon. Also an allusion to Thomson’s Seasons, ‘Summer’, ll. 840, 843. The following quotation is from the same poem, ll. 1002–3.
7. (p. 188) Juan Fernandez: Robinson Crusoe’s island.
8. (p. 188) Is this the mighty ocean …: v. 129 from ‘Gebir’ (1798), by Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864).
9. (p. 189) Amphitrites: Amphitrite, wife of Poseidon.
10. (p. 189) Meschek: see Psalm 120:5.
22. The Superannuated Man
1. (p. 191) Sera … Libertas: ‘freedom that turned and looked on me, albeit late,’ from Virgil, Eclogues 1, 27.
2. (p. 191) A Clerk I was …: not actually by the farce writer John O’Keefe (1747–1833), but from Inkle and Yarico (1787) by George Colman the younger (1762–1836).
3. (p. 193) This noble benefit: see note 1 to ‘The Convalescent’ (below). On the day of Lamb’s retirement the Court of Directors drew up this minute: ‘Resolved that the resignation of Mr Charles Lamb, of the Accountant General’s office, on account of certified ill-health, be accepted, and it appearing that he has served the Company faithfully for thirty-three years, and is now in receipt of an income of £730 per annum, he be allowed a pension of £450 … to commence from this day.’
