of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c.-I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. If they were young phoenixes, indeed, that were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext. But when they are so com

mon

I do not advert to the insolent merit which they assume with their husbands on these occasions. Let them look to that. But why we, who are not their natural-born subjects, should be expected to bring our spices, myrrh, and incense, -our tribute and homage of admiration,-I do not

see.

Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the young children" so says the excellent office in our Prayer-book appointed for the churching of women. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them:" so say I; but then don't let him discharge his quiver upon us that are weaponless; let them be arrows, but not to gall and stick us. I have generally observed that these arrows are double-headed: they have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the other. As for instance, where you come into a house which is full of children, if you happen to take no notice of them (you are thinking of something else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses), you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of children. On the other hand, if you find them more than usually engaging, -if you are taken with their pretty manners, and set about in earnest to romp and play with them, some pretext or other is sure to be found for sending them out of the room: they are too noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not like children. With one or other

of these forks the arrow is sure to hit you.

I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toying with their brats, if it gives them pain; but I think it unreasonable to be called upon to love them, where I see no occasion,-to love a whole family, perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately,—to love all the pretty dears, because children are so engaging.

I know there is a proverb, "Love me, love my dog;" that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser thing,-any inanimate substance, as a keepsake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where we last parted when my friend went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to love, because I love him, and anything that reminds me of him; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But children have a real character and essential being of themselves: they are amiable or unamiable per se; I must love or hate them as I see cause for either in their qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing to admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to another being, and to be loved or hated accordingly they stand with me upon their own stock, as much as men and women do. O! but you will say, sure it is an attractive age,-there is something in the tender years of infancy that of itself charms us. That is the very reason why I am more nice about them. I know that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them; but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desirable it is that it should be pretty of its kind. One daisy differs not much from another in glory; but a violet should look and smell the daintiest.—I was always rather squeamish in my women and children.

But this is not the worst: one must be admitted into their familiarity, at least, before they can complain of inattention. It implies visits, and some kind of intercourse. But if the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage,-if you did not come in on the wife's side,if you did not sneak into the house in her train, but were an old friend in fast habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on,-look

about you-your tenure is precarious-before a twelvemonth shall roll over your head, you shall find your old friend gradually grow cool and altered towards you, and at last seek opportunities of breaking with you. I have scarce a married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm faith I can rely, whose friendship did not commence after the period of his marriage. With some limitations they can endure that: but that the good man should have dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship in which they were not consulted, though it happened before they knew him,-before they that are now man and wife ever met,-this is intolerable to them. Every long friendship, every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass current in the world. You may guess what luck generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal as I am in these new mintings.

Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult and worm you out of their husband's confidence. Laughing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as if you were a queer kind of fellow that said good things, but an oddity, is one of the ways;-they have a particular kind of stare for the purpose; -till at last the husband, who used to defer to your judgment, and would pass over some excrescences of understanding and manner for the sake of a general vein of observation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in you, begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a humourist, a fellow well enough to have consorted with in his bachelor days, but not quite so proper to be introduced to ladies. This may be called the staring way; and is that which has oftenest been put in practice against me.

Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of irony: that is, where they find you an object of especial regard with their husband, who is not so easily to be shaken from the lasting attachment founded on esteem which he has conceived towards you; by never-qualified exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, till the good man, who understands well enough that it is all done in compliment to him, grows weary of the debt of gratitude which is due to so much candour, and by relaxing a little on his part, and taking down a peg or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to that kindly level of moderate esteem,-that "decent affection and complacent kindness" towards you, where she herself can join in sympathy with him without much stretch and violence to her sincerity.

Another way (for the ways they have to accomplish so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of innocent simplicity, continually to mistake what it was which first made their husband fond of you. If an esteem for something excellent in your moral character was that which riveted the chain which she is to break, upon any imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy in your conversation, she will cry, "I thought, my dear, you described your friend, Mr., as a great wit." If, on the other hand, it was for some supposed charm in your conversation that he first grew to like you, and was content for this to overlook some trifling irregularities in your moral deportment, upon the first notice of any of these she as readily exclaims, "This, my dear, is your good Mr. One good lady whom I took the liberty of expostulating with for not showing me quite so much respect as I thought due to her husband's old friend, had the candour to confess to me that she had often heard Mr. speak of me before marriage, and that she had conceived a great desire to be acquainted with me, but that the sight of me had very much disappointed her expectations; for from her husband's representations of me, she had formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer-like looking man (I use her very words); the very reverse of which proved to be the truth. This was candid; and I had the civility not to ask her in return, how she came to

pitch upon a standard of personal accomplishments for her husband's friends which differed so much from his own; for my friend's dimensions at near as possibly approximate to mine; he standing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have the advantage of him by about half an inch; and he no more than myself exhibiting any indications of a martial character in his air or countenance. These are some of the mortifications which I have encountered in the absurd attempt to visit at their houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain endeavour: I shall therefore just glance at the very common impropriety of which married ladies are guilty,-of treating us as if we were their husbands, and vice versa. I mean, when they use us with familiarity, and their husbands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my usual time of supping, while she was fretting because Mr. did not come home till the oysters were all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the impoliteness of touching one in his absence. This was reversing the point of good manners: for ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater. Had Testacea kept the oysters back for me, and withstood her husband's importunities to go to supper, she would have acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I know no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to their husbands, beyond the point of a modest behaviour and decorum: therefore I must protest against the vicarious gluttony of Cerasia, who at her own table sent away a dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great good will, to her husband at the other end of the table, and recommended a plate of less extraordinary gooseberries to my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither can I excuse the wanton affront of

But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance by Roman denominations. Let them amend and change their manners, or I promise to record the full-length English of their names to the terror of all such desperate offenders in future.

On the Acting of Munden.

(The London Magazine, October, 1822.)

[This was originally printed as a portion of the concluding instalment of Elia's three contributions to the London Magazine, under the general heading of "The Old Actors.' Appended to it in this Popular Centenary Edition is a paper which is unmistakably Charles Lamb's, but which has never, until now, been identified as his, one in which he celebrated, upon the very morrow of Joseph Shepherd Munden's Farewell, the disappearance from the stage of that inimitable comedian. This reclaimed theatrical notice from the pen of Elia will be found in every way worthy of being placed thus in direct juxtaposition with what is, beyond all doubt, one of the choicest effusions of the Master Essayist. As completing these tributes to his favourite actor, Charles Lamb's obituary notice of Munden is immediately afterwards given from the pages of the Athenæum.] NOT many nights ago I had come home from seeing this extraordinary performer in Cockletop; and when I retired to my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by me, in a manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I tried to divest myself of it, by conjuring up the most opposite associations. I resolved to be

serious.

I raised up the gravest topics of life; private misery, public calamity. All would not do.

-There the antic sate
Mocking our state-

his queer visnomy-his bewildering costume-all the strange things which he had raked together-his serpentine rod, swagging about in his pocket-Cleopatra's tear, and the rest of his relics-O'Keefe's wild farce, and his wilder commentary-till the passion of laughter, like grief in excess, relieved itself by its own weight, inviting the sleep which in the first instance it had driven away. But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I fall into slumbers, than the same image, only more perplexing, assailed me in the shape of dreams. Not one Munden, but five hundred, were dancing before me, like the faces which, whether you will or no, come when you have been taking opium-all the strange combinations, which this strangest of all strange mortals ever shot his proper countenance into, from the day he came commissioned to dry up the tears of the town for the loss of the now almost forgotten Edwin. O for the power of the pencil to have fixed them when I awoke! A season or two since there was exhibited a Hogarth gallery. I do not see why there should not be a Munden gallery. In richness and variety the latter would not fall far short of the former.

There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one (but what a one it is!) of Liston; but Munden has none that you can properly pin down, and call his. When you think he has exhausted his battery of looks, in unaccountable warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He is not one, but legion. Not so much a comedian, as a company. If his name could be multiplied like his countenance, it might fill a play-bill. He, and he alone, literally makes faces: applied to any other person, the phrase is a mere figure, denoting certain modifications of the human countenance. Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as easily. I should not be surprised to see him some day put out the head of a river horse; or come forth a pewit, or lapwing, some feathered metamorphosis.

I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry-in Old Dorntondiffuse a glow of sentiment which has made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat like that of one man; when he has come in aid of the pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of a people. I have seen some faint approaches to this sort of excellence in other players. But in the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange to tell, had no followers. The school of Munden began, and must end with himself. Can any man wonder, like him? can any man see ghosts, like him? or fight with his own shadow—“ SESSA "—as he does in that strangely-neglected thing, the Cobbler of Preston-where his alterations from the Cobbler to the Magnifico, and from the Magnifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some Arabian Night were being acted before him. Who like him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a preternatural interest over the commonest daily-life objects? A table, or a joint stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair. It invested with constellatory importance. You could not speak of it with more deference, if it were mounted into the firmament. A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and ennobles what it touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand and primal as the seething-pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the commonplace materials of life, like primeval man with the sun and stars about him.

MUNDEN'S FAREWELL.

(The London Magazine, July, 1824.)

[Talfourd mentions, in regard to this farewell performance, that so densely crowded was the house, that Elia and his sister had to be accommodated with seats in the orchestra, adding that. during the course of the evening, his attention was called by Miss Kelly, from their upper box to ar incident then taking place. unobserved by the rest of the house, in that snug corner of the orchestra -Munden at the little flap door handing in a pot of porter. Lamb quaffing it to the dregs with a relish-the comedian looking on with inexpressible gusto, while the humorist was draining his tankard! Half a century afterwards, the editor of this Popular Centenary Edition has it from the lips of Miss Kelly (now, in the October of 1875, just entering the eightySixth year of her age) that she bears the incident still vividly in her remembrance. her impression being that that extra pot of porter was sent round by herself. Upon this occasion Mary Lamb, in the midst of her brother's grief for the loss of ar. old favourite, convulsed him with laughter by her punning exclamation, Sic transit gloria Munden!"]

THE regular playgoers ought to put on mourning, for the king of broad comedy is dead to the drama !-Alas!-Munden is no more !-give sorrow vent. He may yet walk the town, pace the pavement in a seeming existence-eat, drink, and nod to his friends in all the affectation of life-but Munden, -the Munden!-Munden, who with the bunch of countenances, the bouquet of faces, is gone for ever from the lamps, and, as far as comedy is concerned, is as dead as Garrick! When an actor retires (we will put the suicide as mildly as possible) how many worthy persons perish with him!- With Munden,-Sir Peter Teazle must experience a shock-Sir Robert Bramble gives up the ghost -Crack ceases to breathe. Without Munden what becomes of Dozey? Where shall we seek Jemmy Jumps? Nipperkin and a thousand of such admirable fooleries fall to nothing, and the departure therefore of such an actor as Munden is a dramatic calamity. On the night that this inestimable humourist took farewell of the public, he also took his benefit:-a benefit in which the public assuredly did not participate. The play was Coleman's Poor Gentleman, with Tom Dibdin's farce of Past Ten o'Clock. Reader, we all know Munden in Sir Robert Bramble, and Old Tobacco complexioned Dozey;-we all have seen the old hearty baronet in his light sky-blue coat and genteel cocked hat; and we have all seen the weather-beaten old pensioner, Dear Old Dozey, tacking about the stage in that intense blue sea livery-drunk as heart could wish, and right valorous in memory. On this night Munden seemed like the Gladiator "to rally life's whole energies to die," and as we were present at this great display of his powers, and as this will be the last opportunity that will ever be afforded us to speak of this admirable performer, we shall "consecrate," as Old John Buncle says, "a paragraph to him."

The house was full,-full!-pshaw! that's an empty word!-The house. was stuffed, crammed with people-crammed from the swing door of the pit to the back seat in the banished one shilling. A quart of audience may be said (vintner-like, may it be said) to have been squeezed into a pint of theatre. Every hearty play-going Londoner, who remembered Munden years agone, mustered up his courage and his money for this benefit-and middle-aged people were therefore by no means scarce. The comedy chosen for the occasion, is one that travels a long way without a guard;-it is not until the third or fourth act, we think, that Sir Robert Bramble appears on the stage. When he entered, his reception was earnest,-noisy,-outrageous, -waving of hats and handkerchiefs, -deafening shouts,-clamorous beating of sticks,-all the various ways in which the heart is accustomed to manifest its joy were had recourse to on this occasion. Mrs. Bamfield worked away with a sixpenny fan till she scudded only under bare poles. Mr. Whittington wore out the ferule