Chapter 6

I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it happens, but I have always found that this composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-sweeper--whether the oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged practitioners; or whether Nature, sensible that she had mingled too much of bitter wood in the lot of these raw victims, caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive; but so it is, that no possible taste or odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. Being penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals--cats--when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian. There is something more in these sympathies than philosophy can inculcate.

In this essay also we have an example--one of how many!--of Lamb's happiness in hitting upon an illustration, even though it be of the ludicrous; mentioning the wonderful white of the sweep-boy's teeth he adds, "It is, as when

'A sable cloud Turns forth her silver lining on the night.'"

"A Dissertation upon Roast Pig" is perhaps the most widely known of all the essays of Elia. Its delightful drollery, its very revelling in the daintiness of sucking-pig, its wonderfully rich literary presentation, its deliberate acceptance of wild improbability as historic basis, all unite to give it special place in the regard of readers. The theme is of course familiar. It is that of a small Chinese boy playing with fire who burnt down his father's flimsy hut so that a whole litter of piglings was roasted in the conflagration. The boy touched one of the incinerated little ones to feel if it were alive; burnt his fingers and applied them to his mouth. His father returned and did the same, and thus roast sucking-pig became a new dish. Lamb plays with his subject with an inimitable mock earnestness.

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto.

The subject Charles Lamb professed to take from a Chinese manuscript of his friend Manning's, and there have not been wanting critics who have sought for literary germs from which this essay might have sprung. Such will find in the seventeenth-century "Letters writ by a Turkish Spy" the origin of roasted meat referred to the days of sacrifice when one of the priests touching a burning beast hurt his fingers and applied them to his mouth--with precisely the same sequel which followed on Bo-bo's escapade.

"A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People" is a delicate--perhaps partly ironical--description of a bachelor's objections to his married friends flaunting their happiness in his face. In the last three of the essays we have Lamb as critic of the stage--partly, as in the Dramatic Specimens, of its literature, "On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century;" and partly on its actors, "On some of the Old Actors" and "On the Acting of Munden." Here again we have proofs of his instinctive critical power, his finely perfected method of expressing his appreciation of men and books.

The "Last Essays of Elia," published the year before Lamb's death, open with a "Character of the late Elia"--an admirable piece of self-portraiture in which Lamb hit off with great felicity some of his own characteristics, physical and intellectual. In the first of the essays, "Blakesmoor in H----shire," the author let his memory and fancy play about the old house, lately razed, in which his grandmother Field had held sway as housekeeper, in which as child he had passed many happy holidays. Its tapestries, its haunted room, its "tattered and diminished 'Scutcheon," its Justice Hall, its "costly fruit garden, with its sun-baked southern wall," its "noble Marble Hall, with its Mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Cæsars--stately busts in marble--ranged round," each of these recalled by memory suggests some deep thought or some pleasant turn. The opening passage at once sets the note of the whole, and may be taken as a representation of Lamb's contemplative mood:

I do not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better passion than envy; and contemplations on the great and good, whom we fancy in succession to have been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions, incompatible with the bustle of modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish present aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, attends us between entering an empty and a crowded church. In the latter it is chance but some present human frailty--an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory--or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory on that of the preacher--puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness? go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country church: think of the piety that has kneeled there--the congregations, old and young, that have found consolation there--the meek pastor, the docile parishioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee.

"Poor Relations" is a beautiful example of humour--provoking to smiles while touching to tears--with a wonderful introductory piling up of definitions: "A Poor Relation--is the most irrelevant thing in nature,--a piece of impertinent correspondency,--a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity,--an unwelcome remembrancer," and so on. "This theme of poor relations is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations that it is difficult to keep the account distinct without blending." The essay includes three or four admirable examples of Elia's felicity in drawing typical characters with just that touch of oddity that makes them live as individuals. The theatre which we have seen always made its triple appeal to Lamb--from the study, from the front, and from the boards--inspired the next three essays, "Stage Illusions," "To the Shade of Elliston," and "Ellistoniana." The first is an example of subtle criticism showing how it is that we get enjoyment out of unlovely attributes on the stage, thanks to the "exquisite art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us," that things are not altogether what they seem to be. In the two essays on Elliston we have at once an eloquent tribute to a stage-magnate of his day and a fine character portrait.

"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," might be cited as one of the most characteristic of the essays of Elia. It illustrates the writer's happiest style, and indicates his taste. In its opening passages are words and phrases which have become quotations "familiar in the mouth as household words" to all book-lovers. Lamb takes as his text a remark made by Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh's "Relapse": "To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced products of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own."

An ingenious acquaintance was so much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading altogether, to the great improvement of his originality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.

I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I call a _book_. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such.

In this catalogue of _books which are no books_--_biblia a-biblia_--I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Statutes at Large; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which "no gentleman's library should be without"; the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's "Moral Philosophy." With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these _things in books' clothing_ perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted playbook; then, opening what "seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find--Adam Smith; to view a well-arranged assortment of block-headed Encyclopædias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of Russia, or Morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look himself again in the world. I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils.

He passes on to a consideration of the fitting habiliments of books; the sizes which appealed to him; the where and when to read: "I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral alone and reading 'Candide'!"--"The Old Margate Hoy" gives reminiscences of a visit to the popular resort--with some uncomplimentary asides at Hastings--in the days of the boy, "ill-exchanged for the foppery and freshwater niceness of the modern steampacket," the boy that asked "no aid of magic fumes, and spells, and boiling cauldrons." "The Convalescent" expatiates upon the allowable egoism of the occupant of a sick bed, upon his "regal solitude," and goes on to show "how convalescence shrinks a man back to his primitive state." The essay was inspired by that ill-health which led to Lamb's retirement from the India House in 1825. At the close he indulged his pen in his conversational fondness for a pun:

In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb of sickness, yet far enough removed from the terra firma of established health, your note, dear Editor, reached me, requesting--an article. _In articulo mortis_, thought I; but it is something hard--and the quibble, wretched as it was, relieved me.

In the "Sanity of True Genius" Elia set out to controvert the idea expressed by Dryden in his best remembered line--

"Great wits to madness nearly are allied,"

and does so in a most convincing manner if, with him, we understand by the greatness of wit poetic talent. As he says: "It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakespeare."

The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in the raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to which they have no parallel in their own experience, besides the spurious resemblance of it in dreams and fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and fever to the poet. But the true poet dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his subject but has dominion over it. In the groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his native paths. He ascends the empyrean heaven, and is not intoxicated. He treads the burning marl without dismay; he wins his flight without self-loss through realms of chaos "and old night." Or if, abandoning himself to that severer chaos of a "human mind untuned," he is content awhile to be mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a sort of madness) with Timon; neither is that madness, nor this misanthropy, so unchecked, but that--never letting the reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems to do so--he has his better genius whispering at his ear, with the good servant Kent suggesting saner counsels; or with the honest steward Flavius recommending kindlier resolutions. Where he seems most to recede from humanity, he will be found the truest to it.

"Captain Jackson" is an unforgettable picture of a poor man who would _not_ be poor; his manners made a plated spoon appear as silver sugar-tongs, a homely bench a sofa, and so on. As Elia concludes:

There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them before strangers, may not always be discommendable. Tibbs and Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our admiration than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home; and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of constitutional philosophy, and a mastery over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend Captain Jackson.

With the next essay of this collection, that on "The Superannuated Man," we come to one of the most notable of the series of Elia's transmutations of matters of private experience into precious literature. The paper is as autobiographic as any of his letters: some slight changes--as of the East India House to the name of a city firm--are made, but for the rest it is a record of his retirement with a revelation of the feelings attendant upon the change from having to go daily to an office for thirty-six years to being suddenly free:

For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I could only apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years' confinement. I could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like passing out of Time into Eternity--for it is a sort of Eternity for a man to have all his Time to himself. It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me. And here let me caution persons grown old in active business, not lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, to forego their customary employment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are sufficient; and now that those first giddy raptures have subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessedness of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all holidays, I am as though I had none. If Time hung heavy upon me I could walk it away; but I do not walk all day long, as I used to do in those old transient holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most of them. If Time were troublesome, I could read it away, but I do not read in that violent measure, with which, having no Time my own but candlelight Time, I used to weary out my head and eyesight in bygone winters. I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when the fit seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure; I let it come to me. I am like the man

"---- that's born, and has his years come to him, In some green desert."

"The Genteel Style in Writing" is a delightful enforcement of the "ordinary criticism" that "my Lord Shaftesbury, and Sir William Temple, are models of the genteel style in writing," though Elia prefers to differentiate them as "the lordly and the gentlemanly." The essay is, for the most part, a plea, with illustrations, for a consideration of Sir William Temple as an easy and engaging writer. "Barbara S----" is a slight anecdote expanded into a sympathetic little story of a child-actress who, instead of her half-guinea salary, being once handed a guinea in error, virtuously took it back and received the moiety.

"The Tombs in the Abbey" is an indignant protest--in the form of a letter to Southey--against the closing of Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral, except during service times, to all but those who could afford to pay for admission; it closes with a touch of humour where Elia suggests that the Abbey had been closed because the statue of Major André had been disfigured, and adds: "The mischief was done about the time that you were a scholar there. Do you know anything about the unfortunate relic?" Then, in "Amicus Redivivus," we have an accident to a friend, George Dyer, who had walked absent-mindedly into the New River opposite Lamb's very door, made to supply matter for treatment in Elia's pleasantest vein.

"Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney" gives a dozen of Sidney's sonnets with appreciatory comment. "Newspapers Thirty Years Ago" is particularly interesting for its reminiscences of the days when Lamb wrote half a dozen daily jests for "The Morning Post" at sixpence per jest, and for its sketches of Daniel Stuart and Fenwick, two diversely typical journalists of a century since. "Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art" is a criticism of the prevailing taste in art matters, inspired by Martin's "Belshazzar's Feast," and contrasts the modern methods of painting as--a Dryad, "a beautiful naked figure recumbent under wide-stretched oaks" (a figure that with a different background would do just as well as a Naiad), with the older method illustrated by Julio Romano's dryad, in which was "an approximation of two natures." "Rejoicings Upon the New Year's Coming of Age" is a graceful, sparkling piece of humorous fancy:

I should have told you, that cards of invitation had been issued. The carriers were the _Hours_; twelve little, merry whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire to see, that went all round, and found out the persons invited well enough, with the exception of _Easter Day_, _Shrove Tuesday_, and a few such _Moveables_, who had lately shifted their quarters.

Well, they all met at last, foul _Days_, fine _Days_, all sorts of _Days_, and a rare din they made of it. There was nothing but, Hail! fellow _Day_,--well met--brother _Day_--sister _Day_,--only _Lady Day_ kept a little on the aloof, and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet some said _Twelfth Day_ cut her out and out, for she came in a tiffany suit, all white and gold, like a queen on a frost-cake--all royal, glittering, and _Epiphanous_. The rest came--some in green, some in white--but old _Lent and his family_ were not yet out of mourning. Rainy _Days_ came in, dripping; and sun-shiny _Days_ helped them to change their stockings. _Wedding Day_ was there in his marriage finery, a little the worse for wear. _Pay Day_ came late, as he always does; and _Doomsday_ sent word--he might be expected.

"The Wedding" describes such a ceremony at which Elia had assisted, and illustrates at once his sympathy with the young people and with their parents--"is there not something untender, to say no more of it, in the hurry which a beloved child is in to tear herself from the paternal stock and commit herself to strange graftings." "The Child Angel" is a beautiful poetic apologue in the form of a dream.

In "Old China," one of the most attractive of this varied series, Elia is ready with reminiscences of the days when the purchase of the books, pictures, or old china that they loved, meant a real sacrifice, and the things purchased were therefore the more deeply prized.

Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbare--and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late--and when the old bookseller, with some grumbling, opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures--and when you lugged it home wishing it were twice as cumbersome--and when you presented it to me; and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (_collating_ you called it)--and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak--was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity, with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit--your old corbeau--for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen--or sixteen shillings, was it?--a great affair we thought it then--which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now.

When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, which we christened the "Lady Blanch"; when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money,--and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture--was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do but walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you?