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　　TRANSLATIONS

　　Page 66. Translations from Vincent Bourne.

　　Vincent Bourne (1695-1747), the English Latin poet, entered Westminster School on the foundation in 1710, and, on leaving Cambridge, returned to Westminster as a master. He was so indolent a teacher and disciplinarian that Cowper, one of his pupils, says: "He seemed determined, as he was the best, so to be the last, Latin poet of the Westminster line." Bourne's Poemata appeared in 1734. It is mainly owing to Cowper's translations (particularly "The Jackdaw") that he is known, except to Latinists. Lamb first read Bourne in 1815. Writing to Wordsworth in April of that year he says:—"Since I saw you I have had a treat in the reading way which comes not every day. The Latin Poems of V. Bourne which were quite new to me. What a heart that man had, all laid out upon town and scenes, a proper counterpoise to some people's rural extravaganzas. Why I mention him is that your Power of Music reminded me of his poem of the ballad singer in the Seven Dials. Do you remember his epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the A B C, which after all he says he hesitates not to call Newton's Principia? I was lately fatiguing myself with going through a volume of fine words by L'd Thurlow, excellent words, and if the heart could live by words alone, it could desire no better regale, but what an aching vacuum of matter—I don't stick at the madness of it, for that is only a consequence of shutting his eyes and thinking he is in the age of the old Elisabeth poets—from thence I turned to V. Bourne—what a sweet unpretending pretty-mannered matter-ful creature, sucking from every flower, making a flower of every thing—his diction all Latin, and his thoughts all English. Bless him, Latin wasn't good enough for him—why wasn't he content with the language which Gay and Prior wrote in."

　　On the publication of Album Verses, wherein these nine poems from Vincent Bourne were printed, Lamb reviewed the book in Moxon's Englishman's Magazine for September, 1831, under the title "The Latin Poems of Vincent Bourne" (see Vol. I.). There he "ed "The Ballad Singers," and the "Epitaph on an Infant Sleeping"—remarking of Bourne:—"He is 'so Latin,' and yet 'so English' all the while. In diction worthy of the Augustan age, he presents us with no images that are not familiar to his countrymen. His topics are even closelier drawn; they are not so properly English, as Londonish. From the streets, and from the alleys, of his beloved metropolis, he culled his objects, which he has invested with an Hogarthian richness of colouring. No town picture by that artist can go beyond his BALLAD-SINGERS; Gay's TRIVIA alone, in verse, comes up to the life and humour of it."

　　Page 72. Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill.

　　First printed in The New Times, October 24, 1825. The version there given differed considerably from that preserved by Lamb. It had no divisions. At the end of what is now the first strophe qame these lines:—

　　Now, by Saint Hilary,

　　(A Saint I love to swear by,

　　Though I should forfeit thereby

　　Five ill-spared shillings to your well-warm'd seat,

　　Worshipful Justices of Worship-street;

　　Or pay my crown

　　At great Sir Richard's still more awful mandate down:)

　　They raise my gorge—

　　Those Ministers of Ann, or the First George,

　　(Which was it?

　　For history is silent, and my closet—

　　Reading affords no clue;

　　I have the story, Pope, alone from you;)

　　In such a place, &c.

　　Lamb offered the Ode to his friend Walter Wilson, for his work on Defoe, to which Lamb contributed prose criticisms (see Vol. I.), but Wilson did not use it. The letter making this offer, together with the poem, differing very slightly in one or two places, is preserved in the Bodleian.

　　Page 75. Going or Gone.

　　First printed in Hone's Table Book, 1827, signed Elia, under the title "Gone or Going." It was there longer, after stanza 6 coming the following:—

　　Had he mended in right time,

　　He need not in night time,

　　(That black hour, and fright-time,)

　　Till sexton interr'd him,

　　Have groan'd in his coffin,

　　While demons stood scoffing—

　　You'd ha' thought him a-coughing—

　　My own father 注释标题 Who sat up with him. heard him!

　　Could gain so importune,

　　With occasion opportune,

　　That for a poor Fortune,

　　That should have been ours 注释标题 I have this fact from Parental tradition only. ,

　　In soul he should venture

　　To pierce the dim center,

　　Where will-forgers enter Amid the dark Powers?—

　　And in the Table Book the last stanza ended thus:—

　　And flaunting Miss Waller—

　　That soon must befal her,

　　Which makes folks seem taller 注释标题 Death lengthens people to the eye. ,—

　　Though proud, once, as Juno!

　　To annotate this curious tale of old friendships, dating back, as I suppose, in some cases to Lamb's earliest memories, both of London and Hertfordshire, is a task that is probably beyond completion. The day is too distant. But a search in the Widford register and churchyard reveals a little information and oral tradition a little more.

　　Stanza 2. Rich Kitty Wheatley. The Rev. Joseph Whately, vicar of

　　Widford in the latter half of the eighteenth century, married Jane

　　Plumer, sister of William Plumer, of Blakesware, the employer of Mrs.

　　Field, Lamb's grandmother. Archbishop Whately was their son. Kitty

　　Wheatley may have been a relative.

　　Stanza 2. Polly Perkin. On June 1, 1770, according to the Widford register, Samuel Perkins married Mary Lanham. This may have been Polly.

　　Stanza 3. Carter … Lily. The late Mrs. Tween, a daughter of Randal Norris, Lamb's friend, and a resident in Widford, told Canon Ainger that Carter and Lily were servants at Blakesware. Lily had noticeably red cheeks. Lamb would have seen them often when he stayed there as a boy. In Cussan's Hertfordshire is an entertaining account of William Plumer's widow's adhesion to the old custom of taking the air. She rode out always—from Gilston, only a few miles from Widford and Blakesware—in the family chariot, with outriders and postilion (a successor to Lily), and so vast was the equipage that "turn outs" had to be cut in the hedges (visible to this day), like sidings on a single-line railway, to permit others to pass. The Widford register gives John Lilley, died October 18, 1812, aged 85, and Johanna Lilley, died January 1, 1823, aged 90. It also gives Benjamin Carter's marriage, in 1781, but not his death.

　　Stanza 4. Clemitson's widow. Mrs. Tween told Canon Ainger that Clemitson was the farmer of Blakesware farm. I do not find the name in the Widford register. An Elizabeth Clemenson is there.

　　Stanza 4. Good Master Clapton. There are several Claptons in Widford churchyard. Thirty years from 1827, the date of the poem, takes us to 1797: the Clapton whose death occurred nearest that time is John Game Clapton, May 5, 1802.

　　Stanza 5. Tom Dockwra. I cannot find definite information either concerning this Dockwra or the William Dockwray, of Ware, of whom Lamb wrote in his "Table Talk" in The Athenaeum, 1834 (see Vol. I.). There was, however, a Joseph Docwray, of Ware, a Quaker maltster; and the late Mrs. Coe, née Hunt, the daughter of the tenant of the water-mill at Widford in Lamb's day, where Lamb often spent a night, told me that a poor family named Docwray lived in the neighbourhood.

　　Stanza 6. Worral … Dorrell. I find neither Worral nor Dorrell in the Widford archives, but Morrils and Morrells in plenty, and one Horrel. Lamb alludes to old Dorrell again in the Elia essay "New Year's Eve," where he is accused of swindling the family out of money. Particulars of his fraud have perished with him, but I have no doubt it is the same William Dorrell who witnessed John Lamb's will in 1761. In the Table Book this stanza ended thus:—

　　With cuckoldy Worral,

　　And wicked old Dorrel,

　　'Gainst whom I've a quarrel—

　　His end might affright us.

　　Stanzas 8 and 9. Fanny Hutton … Betsy Chambers … Miss Wither …

　　Miss Waller. Fanny Hutton, Betsy Chambers, Miss Wither and Miss Waller

　　elude one altogether. Lamb's schoolmistress, Mrs. Reynolds, was a Miss

　　Chambers.

　　Page 78. NEW POEMS IN LAMB'S POETICAL WORKS, 1836.

　　In 1836 Moxon issued a new edition of Lamb's poems, consisting of those in the Works, 1818, and those in Album Verses—with a few exceptions and several additions—under the embracive title The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb. Whether Moxon himself made up this volume, or whether Mary Lamb or Talfourd assisted, I do not know. The dedication to Coleridge stood at the beginning, and that to Moxon half way through.

　　Page 78. In the Album of Edith S——.

　　First printed in The Athenaeum, March 9, 1833, under the title "Christian Names of Women." Edith S—— was Edith May Southey, the poet's daughter, who married the Rev. John Wood Warter.

　　Page 78. To Dora W——.

　　Dora, i.e., Dorothy Wordsworth, the poet's daughter, who married Edward Quillinan, and thus became stepmother of Rotha Q—— of the next sonnet.

　　Page 79. In the Album of Rotha Q——.

　　Rotha Quillinan, younger daughter of Edward Quillinan (1791-1851), Wordsworth's friend and, afterwards, son-in-law. His first wife, a daughter of Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, was burned to death in 1822 under the most distressing circumstances. Rotha Quillinan, who was Wordsworth's god-daughter, was so called from the Rotha which flows through Rydal, close to Quillinan's house.

　　Page 80. To T. Stothard, Esq.

　　First printed in The Athenaeum, December 21, 1833. In a letter to Rogers in December, 1833, Lamb alludes to his sonnet to the poet (see page 100), adding that for fear it might not altogether please Stothard he has "ventured at an antagonist copy of verses, in The Athenaeum, to him, in which he is as every thing, and you [Rogers] as nothing." Thomas Stothard (1755-1834) was at that time seventy-eight. He had long been the friend of Rogers, having helped in the decoration of his house in 1803 and illustrated the Pleasures of Memory as far back as 1793. Lamb's sonnet refers particularly to the edition of Rogers' Poems that is dated 1834, which Stothard and Turner embellished. Stothard illustrated very many of the standard novels for Harrison's Novelists' Magazine towards the end of the eighteenth century, among these being Richardson's, Fielding's, Smollett's and Sterne's. In Robert Paltock's Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, 1751, a flying people are described, among whom the males were "Glums" and the females "Gawries."—Titian lived to be ninety-nine.

　　Page 80. To a Friend on His Marriage.

　　First printed in The Athenaeum, December 7, 1833. The friend was Edward Moxon, whose marriage to Emma Isola, Lamb's adopted daughter, was solemnised on July 30, 1833. Lamb mentions more than once the absence of any dowry with Miss Isola. His own wedding present to them was the portrait of Milton which his brother, John Lamb, had left to him.

　　Page 81. The Self-Enchanted.

　　First printed in The Athenaeum, January 7, 1832.

　　Page 82. To Louisa M—-, whom I used to call "Monkey."

　　First printed in Hone's Year Book for December 30, 1831, under the title "The Change." (See the verses "The Ape," on page 89, and note, the forerunner of the present poem, addressed also to Louisa Martin.)

　　Page 82. Cheap Gifts: a Sonnet.

　　First printed in The Athenaeum, February 15, 1834.

　　Page 83. Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers. Lamb was very fond of these lines, which he sent to more than one of his friends. The text varies in some of the copies, but I have not thought it necessary to indicate the differences. Its inspiration was attributed by him both to William Ayrton (1777-1858), the musical critic, and to Vincent Novello (1781-1861), the organist, composer and close friend of Lamb. In a letter to Sarah Hazlitt in 1830 Lamb copies the poem, remarking—"Having read Hawkins and Burney recently, I was enabled to talk [to Ayrton] of Names, and show more knowledge than he had suspected I possessed; and in the end he begg'd me to shape my thoughts upon paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him."

　　So Lamb wrote to Mrs. Hazlitt. But to Ayrton, when he sent the verses, he said:—"[Novello] desiring me to give him my real opinion respecting the distinct grades of excellence in all the eminent Composers of the Italian, German and English schools, I have done it, rather to oblige him than from any overweening opinion I have of my own judgment in that science."

　　Both these statements are manifestations of what Lamb called his "matter-of-lie" disposition. To Mrs. Hazlitt he thought that Ayrton's name would be more important; to Ayrton, Novello's.

　　The verses, whatever their origin, were written by Lamb in Novello's

　　Album, with this postscript, signed by Mary Lamb, added:—

　　The reason why my brother's so severe,

　　Vincentio, is—my brother has no ear;

　　And Caradori, his mellifluous throat

　　Might stretch in vain to make him learn a note.

　　Of common tunes he knows not anything,

　　Nor "Rule Britannia" from "God save the King."

　　He rail at Handel! He the gamut quiz!

　　I'd lay my life he knows not what it is.

　　His spite at music is a pretty whim—

　　He loves not it, because it loves not him.

　　M. LAMB. The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4