CONCERNING CHARLES LAMB

PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN [Sidenote: _William Hazlitt_]

... "There is one person," said a shrill, querulous voice, "I would rather see than all these--Don Quixote!"

"Come, come!" said Hunt; "I thought we should have no heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr. Lamb? Are you for eking out your shadowy list with such names as Alexander, Julius Caesar, Tamerlane, or Genghis Khan?"

"Excuse me," said Lamb; "on the subject of characters in active life, plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my own, which I beg leave to reserve."

"No, no! come out with your worthies!"

"What do you think of Guy Fawkes and Judas Iscariot?"

Hunt turned an eye upon him like a wild Indian, but cordial and full of smothered glee. "Your most exquisite reason!" was echoed on all sides; and all thought that Lamb had now fairly entangled himself.

"Why, I cannot but think," retorted he of the wistful countenance, "that Guy Fawkes, that poor, fluttering, annual scarecrow of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give something to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion; but if I say any more, there is that fellow G.o.dwin will make something of it. And as to Judas Iscariot, my reason is different. I would fain see the face of him who, having dipped his hand in the same dish with the Son of Man, could afterwards betray Him. I have no conception of such a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo's very fine one) that gave me the least idea of it."

"You have said enough, Mr. Lamb, to justify your choice."

"Oh! ever right, Menenius--ever right!"

"There is only one person I can ever think of after this," continued Lamb; but without mentioning a name that once put on a semblance of mortality. "If Shakespeare was to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet him; but if that person was to come into it, we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment."

HAYDON'S IMMORTAL NIGHT [Sidenote: _B.R. Haydon_]

On December 28th the immortal dinner came off in my painting-room, with Jerusalem towering up behind us as a background. Wordsworth was in fine cue, and we had a glorious set-to--on Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Virgil. Lamb got exceedingly merry and exquisitely witty; and his fun in the midst of Wordsworth's solemn intonations of oratory was like the sarcasm and wit of the fool in the intervals of Lear's pa.s.sion. He made a speech and voted me absent, and made them drink my health. "Now," said Lamb, "you old lake poet, you rascally poet, why do you call Voltaire dull?" We all defended Wordsworth, and affirmed there was a state of mind when Voltaire would be dull. "Well," said Lamb, "here's Voltaire--the Messiah of the French nation, and a very proper one too."

He then, in a strain of humour beyond description, abused me for putting Newton's head into my picture--"a fellow," said he, "who believed nothing unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle." And then he and Keats agreed he had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours. It was impossible to resist him, and we all drank "Newton's health, and confusion to mathematics."

It was delightful to see the good-humour of Wordsworth in giving in to all our frolics without affectation, and laughing as heartily as the best of us.

By this time other friends joined, amongst them poor Ritchie, who was going to penetrate by Fezzan to Timbuctoo. I introduced him to all as "a gentleman going to Africa." Lamb seemed to take no notice; but all of a sudden he roared out, "Which is the gentleman we are going to lose?" We then drank the victim's health, in which Ritchie joined.

In the morning of this delightful day, a gentleman, a perfect stranger, had called on me. He said he knew my friends, had an enthusiasm for Wordsworth, and begged I would procure him the happiness of an introduction. He told me he was a comptroller of stamps, and often had correspondence with the poet. I thought it a liberty; but still, as he seemed a gentleman, I told him he might come.

When we retired to tea we found the comptroller. Introducing him to Wordsworth, I forgot to say who he was. After a little time the comptroller looked down, looked up and said to Wordsworth, "Don't you think, sir, Milton was a great genius?" Keats looked at me, Wordsworth looked at the comptroller. Lamb, who was dozing by the fire, turned round and said, "Pray, sir, did you say Milton was a great genius?" "No, sir; I asked Mr. Wordsworth if he were not." "Oh," said Lamb, "then you are a silly fellow." "Charles! my dear Charles!" said Wordsworth; but Lamb, perfectly innocent of the confusion he had created, was off again by the fire.

After an awful pause the comptroller said, "Don't you think Newton a great genius?" I could not stand it any longer. Keats put his head into my books. Ritchie squeezed in a laugh. Wordsworth seemed asking himself, "Who is this?" Lamb got up, and, taking a candle, said, "Sir, will you allow me to look at your phrenological development?" He then turned his back on the poor man, and at every question of the comptroller he chaunted:

"Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John, Went to bed with his breeches on."

The man in office, finding Wordsworth did not know who he was, said in a spasmodic and half-chuckling antic.i.p.ation of a.s.sured victory, "I have had the honour of some correspondence with you, Mr. Wordsworth." "With me, sir?" said Wordsworth, "not that I remember." "Don't you, sir? I am a comptroller of stamps." There was a dead silence--the comptroller evidently thinking that was enough. While we were waiting for Wordsworth's reply, Lamb sung out:

"Hey diddle fiddle, The cat and the fiddle."

"My dear Charles!" said Wordsworth--

"Diddle, diddle dumpling, my son John"--

chaunted Lamb, and then, rising, exclaimed, "Do let me have another look at that gentleman's organs." Keats and I hurried Lamb into the painting-room, shut the door, and gave way to inextinguishable laughter.

Monkhouse followed and tried to get Lamb away. We went back, but the comptroller was irreconcilable. We soothed and smiled and asked him to supper. He stayed, though his dignity was sorely affected. However, being a good-natured man, we parted all in good-humour, and no ill effects followed.

All the while, until Monkhouse succeeded, we could hear Lamb struggling in the painting-room and calling at intervals, "Who is that fellow?

Allow me to see his organs once more."

It was indeed an immortal evening. Wordsworth's fine intonation as he quoted Milton and Virgil, Keats's eager, inspired look, Lamb's quaint sparkle of lambent humour, so speeded the stream of conversation that in my life I never pa.s.sed a more delightful time. All our fun was within bounds. Not a word pa.s.sed that an apostle might not have listened to. It was a night worthy of the Elizabethan age.

"SIXPENNY JOKES"

[Sidenote: _Charles Lamb_]

There is no _virtue_ like _necessity_, says the proverb. If that be true, what a quant.i.ty of _virtue_ there must be among the lower orders of people in this country!

A _bench_ of Justices certainly gives us an idea of something _wooden_.

Shakespeare, in his Seven Ages, represents a Justice as made up with saws.

Locke compares the mind of a new-born infant to a sheet of white paper not yet written on. It must be confessed that, whoever wrote upon Mr.

A----n's mind has left _large margins._

TO HIS BROTHER [Sidenote: _Keats_]

The thought of your little girl puts me in mind of a thing I heard Mr.

Lamb say. A child in arms was pa.s.sing by his chair towards the mother in the nurse's arms. Lamb took hold of the long-clothes, saying, "Where, G.o.d bless me, where does it leave off?"

LAMB'S TASK [Sidenote: _Charles Lamb_]

In those days every morning paper, as an essential retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke--and it was thought pretty high too--was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases. The chat of the day, scandal, but, above all, _dress_, furnished the material. The length of no paragraph was to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they must be poignant.

A fashion of _flesh_-, or rather _pink_-coloured hose for the ladies, luckily coming in at this juncture, when we were on our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S----'s paper, established our reputation in that line. We were p.r.o.nounced a "capital hand." Oh the conceits which we varied upon _red_ in all its prismatic differences! from the trite and obvious flower of Cytherea to the flaming costume of the lady that has her sitting upon "many waters." Then there was the collateral topic of ankles. What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something "not quite proper," while, like a skilful posture-maker, balancing betwixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviation is destruction; hovering in the confines of light and darkness, or where "both seem either"; a hazy uncertain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the play, still putting off his expectant auditory with "Whoop, do me no harm, good man!" But, above all, that conceit arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our midriff to remember, where, allusively to the flight of Astrae--_ultima Coelestum terras reliquit_--we p.r.o.nounced--in reference to the stockings still--that _Modesty taking her final leave of Mortals, her last blush was visible in her ascent to the Heavens by the tract of the glowing instep._ This might be called the crowning conceit; and was esteemed tolerable writing in those days.

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, pa.s.ses away; as did the transient mode which had so favoured us. The ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks began to rea.s.sume their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg to stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none, methought, so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more than single meanings.

Somebody has said that, to swallow six cross-buns daily consecutively for a fortnight would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder execution. "Man goeth forth to his work until the evening"--from a reasonable hour in the morning, we presume it was meant. Now, as our main occupation took us up from eight till five every day in the City; and as our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with anything rather than business, it follows that the only time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes--our supplementary livelihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese--was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time; that is, no time in which a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that time, of an hour, or an hour and a half's duration, in which a man whose occasions call him up so preposterously has to wait for his breakfast.

Oh those headaches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-past five in summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above four hours in bed--(for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we antic.i.p.ated the lark ofttimes in her rising--we liked a parting up at midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate times, and to have our friends about us--we were not constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold washy, bloodless--we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken our degrees at Mount Ague--we were right toping Capulets, jolly companions, we and they),--but to have to get up, as we said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refreshing Bohea in the distance--to be necessitated to rouse ourselves at the detestable rap of an hag of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her announcement that it was "time to rise"; and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string them up at our chamber-door, to be a terror to all such unreasonable rest-breakers in future--

"Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the "descending" of the over-night, balmy the first sinking of the heavy head upon the pillow; but to get up, as he goes on to say--

Revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras

--and to get up, moreover, to make jokes with malice prepended--there was the "labour," there the "work."