Chapter 7

"Confessions of a Drunkard" and "Popular Fallacies" complete the tale of the "Essays of Elia" that were collected into volume form as such. The first-named essay had been issued originally in 1813. It is an attempt to set forth from a drunkard's point of view the evils of drunkenness, and was first published in a periodical with a purpose over twenty years before its inclusion in the second edition of the "Last Essays of Elia." To accentuate the fact that it was purely a literary performance--an attempt to project himself into the mind of a drunkard willing to allow others to profit by his example--Lamb reprinted it in the "London Magazine" as one of his ordinary contributions. There have not been wanting matter-of-fact people (with whom our Elia has recorded his imperfect sympathy) who have accepted this essay as pure biography; because details tally with the author's life they think the whole must do so. We have but to follow the story of Lamb's life with understanding to realize how wrong is this impression. The closing dozen of essays in brief, grouped under the title of "Popular Fallacies," discuss certain familiar axioms and show them--in the light of fun and fancy--to be wholly fallacious.

Such is the variety of those two volumes which by common consent--by popular appreciation and by critical judgement--have their place as Lamb's most characteristic work. Throughout both series we find delicate unconventionality, the same choice of subjects from among the simplest suggestions of everyday life, lifted by his method of treatment, his manner of looking at and treating things, out of the sphere of every day into that of all days. However simple may be the subject chosen it is always made peculiarly his own.

HIS STYLE

The style is the man. The rule was thus confined within the compass of a brief sentence by a distinguished French naturalist, and if there be examples which form exceptions to that rule, Charles Lamb is certainly not one of them. Markedly individual himself he reveals that individuality in his writings so strongly that there are not wanting critics who consider themselves able to decide from the turn of a phrase or the use of a word whether Lamb did or did not write any particular piece of work which it may have been sought to father on him. In the manner of presentation of his writings we have at once the revelation of catholic literary taste and wide reading combined with the deep seriousness and the almost irresponsible whimsicality of the man himself. The man who was loved by all who knew him in the flesh--so true is it that _le style c'est l'homme_--reveals himself as a man to be loved by those who can only know him through the medium of the written word. Where he has given rein to his fancy or his imagination, he is humorous, whimsical, inventive; where he is dealing with matters of serious fact or criticism he is simple, clear, and to the point. Quotations already given would go to illustrate this, but two further contrasting passages may be added. The first is from "Table Talk," the second from a critical essay on the acting of Shakespeare's tragedies.

It is a desideratum in works that treat _de re culinaria_, that we have no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed flavours; 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 a 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 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 heartsease, 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.

* * * * *

So to see Lear acted--to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters on a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. We want to take him into shelter and relieve him. That is all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever produced on me. But the Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear: they might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension but in intellectual: the explosions of his passions are terrible as a volcano; they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant to be thought on; even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage: while we read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear--we are in his mind, we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms; in the aberrations of his reason, we discover a mighty irregular power of reasoning, immethodized from the ordinary purposes of life, but exerting its powers, as the wind bloweth where it listeth, at will upon the corruptions and abuses of mankind. What have looks or tones to do with that sublime identification of his age with that of the heavens themselves, when in his reproaches to them for conniving at the injustice of his children, he reminds them that "they themselves are old"? What gesture shall we appropriate to this? What has the voice or the eye to do with such things?

From the olden time Of Authorship thy Patent should be dated, And thou with Marvell, Browne, and Burton mated.

Thus did Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, close a sonnet which he addressed to Elia, and there is keen criticism in the few words. With the three writers mentioned Lamb was in rarest sympathy; many are the references to them in his books and in his letters. With Andrew Marvell he shows his kinship in his verse, with the authors of "The Religio Medici" and of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," in diverse ways in his prose. Now fanciful and euphemistic with these, he is, as soon as occasion calls for plainer statement, clear and simple in expression. As one critic has put it, he was so steeped in the literature of the past that it became natural for him to deal with a theme more or less in the manner in which that theme would have been dealt with by that writer in the past most likely to have made it his own. This is perhaps slightly exaggerated, but it has something of truth in it. "For with all his marked individuality of manner there are perhaps few English writers who have written so differently on different themes." Placing special emphasis on his favourites--which besides the three named included Jeremy Taylor, Chapman, and Wither, to say nothing of the whole body of the dramatists of our literary renaissance--it may be said that his wide reading, his loving study, among the authors of our richest literary periods went far towards forming his style, though it must be remembered--it cannot be forgotten with a volume of his essays or letters in hand--that there is always that marked but indescribable "individuality of manner" which pervades the varied whole.

Hazlitt, touching upon the characteristics of Charles Lamb, in the essay in which he--not very felicitously--brackets Elia and Geoffrey Crayon in the "Spirit of the Age," says:

He is borne along with no pompous paradoxes, shines in no glittering tinsel of a fashionable phraseology; is neither fop nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence or froth of new-fangled opinions. His style runs pure and clear, though it may often take an underground course, or be conveyed through old-fashioned conduit pipes. Mr. Lamb does not court popularity, nor strut in gaudy plumes, but shrinks from every kind of ostentatious and obvious pretension into the retirement of his own mind.

That mind was, as has been said, stored with a wealth from among the best of English literature, and when Lamb expressed himself it was always in pure literary fashion. He was a bookman writing for those who love things of the mind which can only be passed from generation to generation by means of books. In this we may recognize the reason--wholly unconscious to the writer--for the allusiveness of his style: it is often that subtle allusiveness which takes for granted as much knowledge in the reader as in the writer of the thing or passage to which allusion is made. In the sixteenth century such allusiveness was generally fruit of an extensive knowledge of the ancient classics; but though the references differ, the manner is much the same in Charles Lamb as in Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne.

Less confident critics than those mentioned at the beginning of this section may yet readily recognize the general individuality of the style in which Elia revealed himself through the medium of his pen. To his lifelong habit of browsing among old books, his especial fondness for the writers of the sixteenth century, he owed no small part of the richness of his vocabulary, which enabled him frequently to use with fine effect happy old words in place of current makeshifts. In one of his early letters to Coleridge where he mentions having just finished reading Chapman's Homer, Lamb, seizing upon a phrase in that translation, says with gusto, "what _endless egression of phrases_ the dog commands." The word arrided him (to employ another, the use of which he recovered for us), and he could not forbear making a note of it. He had, indeed, something of an instinctive genius for finding words that had passed more or less into desuetude, and a happy way of re-introducing them to enrich the plainer prose of his day. He did it naturally, even as though inevitably, and without any such air of coxcombical affectation as would have destroyed the flavour of the whole. Lamb was so thoroughly imbued with the thought and modes of expression of the rich Elizabethan and Stuart periods that his use of obsolescent words was probably more often than not quite unconscious.

The egotism of Elia's style in addressing his readers has been said to be founded on that of Sir Thomas Browne, and in a measure there can be little doubt that it was so--but only in a measure, for it is something the same egotism as that of Montaigne, is, indeed, the natural attitude of the familiar essayist who must be egotistic, not from self-consciousness but from the lack of it. In putting his opinions and experiences in the first person, we feel that Lamb did so almost unconsciously, because it was for him the easiest way of expressing himself. It was not, in fact, egotism at all in the commonly accepted sense of meaning, too frequent or self-laudatory use of the personal pronoun.

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS

Those books with an asterisk against their date were only in part the work of Charles Lamb.

*1796. Poems on Various Subjects, by S. T. Coleridge (included four sonnets signed C. L., described in the preface as by "Mr. Charles Lamb of the India House").

*1796. Poems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer, by her grandson, Charles Lloyd (included "The Grandame," by Lamb).

*1797. Poems by S. T. Coleridge, second edition, to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd.

*1798. Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb.

1798. A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret (afterwards simply entitled "Rosamund Gray").

1802. John Woodvil, a Tragedy; with Fragments of Burton.

1805. The King and Queen of Hearts: Showing how notably the Queen made her Tarts and how scurvily the Knave stole them away with other particulars belonging thereunto.

*1807. Tales from Shakespear, designed for the use of young Persons. 2 vols. (By Charles and Mary Lamb, though only the name of the former appeared on the original title-page.)

*1807 or 1808. Mrs. Leicester's School, or the History of several young Ladies related by themselves (by Charles and Mary Lamb).

1808. The Adventures of Ulysses.

1808. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the Time of Shakespeare.

*1809. Poetry for Children. Entirely original. By the author of "Mrs. Leicester's School."

1811. Prince Dorus; or Flattery put out of Countenance. A Poetical Version of an Ancient Tale.

[1811. Beauty and the Beast; or a Rough Outside with Gentle Heart. A Poetical Version of an Ancient Tale; credited to Lamb by some authorities but on inconclusive evidence.]

1818. The Works of Charles Lamb. In 2 vols.

1823. Elia. Essays which have appeared under that title in the "London Magazine" (now known as "Essays of Elia"):

The South-Sea House. Oxford in the Vacation. Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years ago. The Two Races of Men. New Year's Eve. Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist. A Chapter on Ears. All Fools' Day. A Quakers' Meeting. The Old and the New Schoolmaster. Valentine's Day. Imperfect Sympathies. Witches and other Night Fears. My Relations. Mackery End in Hertfordshire. Modern Gallantry. The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. Grace before Meat. My First Play. Dream-Children: a Reverie. Distant Correspondents. The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers. A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis. A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People. On some of the Old Actors. On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century. On the Acting of Munden.

1830. Album Verses, with a few others.

1831. Satan in Search of a Wife.

1833. The Last Essays of Elia.

Preface. Blakesmoor in H----shire. Poor Relations. Stage Illusion. To the Shade of Elliston. Ellistoniana. Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading. The Old Margate Hoy. The Convalescent. Sanity of True Genius. Captain Jackson. The Superannuated Man. The Genteel Style in Writing. Barbara S----. The Tombs in the Abbey. Amicus Redivivus. Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney. Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago. Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art. Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age. The Wedding. The Child Angel. Old China. Confessions of a Drunkard. Popular Fallacies.

II. POSTHUMOUS WORKS AND COLLECTED EDITIONS

1837. Poetical Works of Charles Lamb.

1837. Letters of Charles Lamb, with a Sketch of his Life, by Thomas Noon Talfourd. 2 vols.

1848. The Final Memorials of Charles Lamb. By T. N. Talfourd.

1865. Eliana. Collected by J. E. Babson.

1875. Works. Centenary edition, with Memoir by Charles Kent.

1876. Life, Letters and Writings of Lamb. Edited by Percy Fitzgerald.

1883-8. Lamb's Works and Correspondence. Edited by Alfred Ainger. 12 vols.

1886. Letters of Charles Lamb (being Talfourd's two works in one with additions). Edited by W. Carew Hazlitt. Bohn's Standard Library.

1893. Bon Mots of Charles Lamb, etc. Edited by Walter Jerrold.

1903-4. The Works of Charles Lamb. Edited by William Macdonald. 12 vols.

1903-5. The Works of Charles Lamb. Edited by E. V. Lucas. 7 vols.

1904. Letters of Charles Lamb. Edited by Alfred Ainger. New edition. 2 vols. Eversley Series.

III. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM

See entries under 1837 and 1848, etc., in preceding section.

1866. Charles Lamb: a Memoir. By Barry Cornwall.

1866. Lamb, his Friends, Haunts, Books. By Percy Fitzgerald.

1882. Charles Lamb. By Alfred Ainger in the English Men of Letters Series (revised and enlarged edition, 1888).

1891. In the Footprints of Lamb. By B. E. Martin.

1897. The Lambs: New Particulars. By W. C. Hazlitt.

1898. Charles Lamb and the Lloyds. Edited by E. V. Lucas.

1900. Lamb and Hazlitt: Further Letters and Records, hitherto Unpublished. Edited by W. C. Hazlitt.

1903. Sidelights on Charles Lamb. By Bertram Dobell.

1905. Life of Charles Lamb. By E. V. Lucas. 2 vols.

The above list does not include separate editions of the "Essays" and other works; most of Lamb's writings are obtainable to-day in cheap and convenient forms.