" which was once only, on the 10th of December, 1806, acted, and then withdrawn as a failure. The Tales from Shakespeare" were first published in two little volumes in 1807, and in 1808 appeared Lamb's Specimens of Dramatic Poets contemporary with Shakespeare," warm with evidences of his feeling for the literature of the days of Elizabeth and James. In the same year Mary Lamb published her stories of 'Mrs. Leicester's School," to which her brother Charles contributed three; and they worked together at a little book of "Poetry for Children." " In 1809 Charles Lamb moved to the top story of No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, and in 1810 he contributed Essays, including his papers on Hogarth and on the tragedies of Shakespeare, to a new quarterly magazine called the Reflector, edited by Leigh Hunt, who afterwards became one of Lamb's familiar friends. One of Charles Lamb's papers in the Reflector, suggested by the fate of his farce, was on "Hissing at Theatres," and signed "Semel Damnatus." In 1818 was published by C. and J. Ollier a collection of Charles Lamb's works, which first carried a fair sense of his genius beyond the inner circle of his friends. What his friends found in him is expressed by Hazlitt, when he says that, at their easy social meetings, Lamb " always made the best pun, and ine best remark in the course of the evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing, his best. No one ever stammered out such fine piquant, deep, eloquent things in half-a-dozen sentences as he does. His jests scald like tears; and he probes a question with a play upon words. There was no fuss or cant about him. He has furnished many a text for Coleridge to preach upon." "I think, Charles," said Coleridge once, "you never heard me preach?" "My dear boy," said Lamb, with the stutter that often gave piquancy to his words, "I n-n-never heard you do anything else." He could play with his impediment of speech as well as get his own emphasis out of it. Somebody spoke of a cool action of the Duke of Cumberland. What else," said Lamb, "could you expect from the Duke of Cu-Cumberland?" In 1820 the London Magazine was established, to which Carlyle contributed his Life of Schiller," De Quincey, his " Confessions of an English Opium Eater," Thomas Hood his earliest verse, and Charles Lamb his Essays of Elia." The name of Elia was borrowed from a fellow-clerk in the India House, and the first Essay, "The South Sea House," appeared in August, 1820, the last, "Captain Jackson," in 1824. The first collection of the Essays was published as "Elia" in 1823. The second series, with the "Popular Fallacies," appeared first as a volume in 1833. The ripe fruit of Charles Lamb's mind is in these Essays, begun at the age of forty-five, and finished when he was near fifty. At fifty, in 1825, he was released from service at the India House, with a pension for life of two-thirds o is salary, which had by that time risen to £600 a year. The directors eserved part of his pension as provision for his sister, in case she should survive him, as she da Charles Lamb enjoyed for nine years this carthly rest, and entered into his heavenly rest on the 7th of December, 1834. October, 1885. H. M. 4 Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago [i.e. in 1798] Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Production of Modern Art 206 II The Essays of Elia. FIRST SERIES. Dear Si To J. Taylor, Esq. I should like the enclosed Dedication to be printed, unless you dislike it. I like it. It is in the olden style. But if you object to it, put forth the book as it is. Only pray don't let the Printer mistake the word curt for curst. C. L. DEDICATION. TO THE FRIENDLY AND JUDICIOUS READER. WHO will take these Papers as they were meant ; not understanding every thing perseverely in the absolute and literal sense, but giving fair construction as to an after-dinner conversation; allowing for the rashness and necessary incompleteness of first thoughts; and not remembering, for the purpose of an after taunt, words spoken peradventure after the fourth glass. The Author wishes (what he would will for himself) plenty of good friends to stand by him, good books to solace him, prosperous events to all his honest undertakings, and a candid interpretation to his most hasty words and actions. The other sort (and he hopes many of them will purchase his book too) he greets with the curt invitation of Timon, "Uncover, dogs, and lap:' or he dismisses them with the confident security of the philosopher, "You beat but on the case of Dec. 7, 1822. " "ELIA." POOR ELIA-The real (for I am but a counterfeit) is dead. The fact is, a person of that name, an Italian, was a fellow clerk of mine at the South Sea House thirty (not forty) years ago, when the characters I described there existed, but had left it like myself many years; and I having a brother now there, and doubting how he might relish certain descriptions in it, I clapped down the name of Elia to it, which passed off pretty well, for Elia himself added the function of an author to that of a scrivener like myself. I went the other day (not having seen him for a year) to laugh over with him at my usurpation of his name, and found him, alas! no more than a name, for he died of consumption eleven months ago, and I knew not of it. So the name has fairly devolved to me, I think; and 'tis all he has left me. The South-Sea House. (The London Magazine, August, 1820.) [As originally printed this paper was rather more explicitly entitled, "Recollections of the South-Sea House."] READER, in thy passage from the Bank-where thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself)-to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat northerly,-didst thou never observe a melancholy-looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the left-where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters, and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out-a desolation something like Balclutha's.* This was once a house of trade,- -a centre of busy interests. The throng of merchants was here-the quick pulse of gain-and here some forms of business are still kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately porticoes; imposing staircases; offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces - deserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; the still more sacred interiors of court and committee-rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door-keepers-directors seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend), at long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands long since dry;-the oaken wainscots hung with pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of Queen Anne, and the two first monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty ;-huge charts, which subsequent discoveries have antiquated; -dusty maps of Mexico, dim as dreams,-and soundings of the Bay of Panama !-The long passages hung with buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, whose substance might defy any, short of the last conflagration -with vast ranges of cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces of eight once lay, an "unsunned heap," for Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart withal,-long since dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the breaking of that famous BUBBLE. Such is the SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. At least, such it was forty years ago, when I knew it,- -a magnificent relic! What alterations may have been made in it since, I have had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take for granted, has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the face of the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this time stagnates upon it. The moths, that were then battening upon its obsolete ledgers and day-books, have rested from their depredations, but other light generations have succeeded, inaking fine fretwork among their single and double entries. Layers of dust have accumulated (a superfotation of dirt!) upon the old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, save by some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign; or, with less hallowed curiosity, seeking * I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate.-OSSIAN. |