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　　ALBUM VERSES AND ACROSTICS

　　Page 104. What is an Album?

　　These lines were probably written for Emma Isola's Album, which must not be confounded with her Extract Book. The Album was the volume for which Lamb, in his letters, occasionally solicited contributions. It was sold some years ago to Mr. Quaritch, and is now, I believe, in a private collection, although in a mutilated state, several of the poems having been cut out. These particular lines of Lamb's were probably written by him also in other albums, for John Mathew Gutch, his old school-fellow, discovered them on the fly-leaf of a copy of John Woodvil, and sent them to Notes and Queries, Oct. 11, 1856. In that version the twenty-first line ran:—

　　There you have, Madelina, an album complete.

　　Lamb "ed from the lines in his review of his Album Verses, under the title "The Latin Poems of Vincent Bourne," in the Englishman's Magazine (see Vol. I.). Two versions of the lines are copied by Lamb into one of his Commonplace Books.

　　Line 6. Sweet L.E.L.'s. L.E.L. was, of course, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, afterwards Mrs. Maclean (1802-1838), famous as an Album-and Annual-poetess. Lamb, if an entry in P.G. Patmore's diary is correct, did not admire her, or indeed any female author. He said, "If she belonged to me I would lock her up and feed her on bread and water till she left off writing poetry."

　　Page 105. The First Leaf of Spring.

　　Printed in The Athenaeum, January 10, 1846, contributed probably by Thomas Westwood. In a note prefacing the three poems which he was sending, this correspondent stated that "The First Leaf of Spring" had been printed before, but very obscurely. I have not discovered where.

　　Page 105. To Mrs. F—— on Her Return from Gibraltar.

　　This would probably be Mrs. Jane Field, née Carncroft, the wife of

　　Lamb's friend, Barron Field, who inspired the Elia essay on "Distant

　　Correspondents." Field held the Chief Justiceship of Gibraltar for some

　　years.

　　Page 106. To M. L—— F——.

　　M.L. Field, the second daughter of Henry Field, and Barron Field's sister. This lady, who lived to a great age, gave Canon Ainger the copy of the prologue to "Richard II." written by Lamb for an amateur performance at her home.

　　Page 106. To Esther Field.

　　Another of Barron Field's sisters.

　　The text of these three poems has been corrected by the Thomas

　　Hutchinson's Oxford edition.

　　Page 107. To Mrs. Williams.

　　See note above. In writing to Mrs. Williams on April 2, 1830, to tell of Emma Isola's safe journey after her illness, Lamb says:—"How I employed myself between Epping and Enfield the poor verses in the front of my paper may inform you, which you may please to christen an Acrostic in a Cross Road."

　　Mrs. Williams replied with the following acrostic upon Lamb's name, which Mr. Cecil Turner, a descendant, has sent me and which I give according to his copy:—

　　TO CHARLES LAMB

　　Answer to Acrostics on the Names of Two Friends.

　　Charmed with the lines thy hand has sent,

　　Honour I feel thy compliment,

　　Amongst thy products that have won the ear

　　Ranged in thy verse two friends most dear.

　　Lay not thy winning pen away,

　　Each line thou writest we bid thee stay.

　　Still ask to charm us with another lay.

　　Long-linked, long-lived by public fame,

　　A friend to misery whate'er its claim,

　　Marvel I must if e'er we find

　　Bestowed by Heaven a kindlier mind.

　　The two friends were Cecilia Catherine Lawton (see page 64) and Edward Hogg (see page 109). In reply Lamb says (Good Friday, 1830):—"I do assure you that your verses gratified me very much, and my sister is quite proud of them. For the first time in my life I congratulated myself upon the shortness and meanness of my name. Had it been Schwartzenberg or Esterhazy it would have put you to some puzzle."

　　Later in the same letter, referring to the present acrostic, he said speaking of Harriet Isola, Emma's sister, she "blames my last verses as being more written on Mr. Williams than on yourself; but how should I have parted whom a Superior Power has brought together?"

　　Page 107. To the Book.

　　Written for the Album of Sophia Elizabeth Frend, afterwards the wife of Augustus De Morgan, the mathematician (1806-1871), and mother of the novelist Mr. William De Morgan. Her father was William Frend (1757-1841), the reformer and a friend of Crabb Robinson and George Dyer. The lines were printed in Mrs. De Morgan's Three Score Years and Ten, as are also those that follow—"To S.F."

　　Page 108. To R Q.

　　From the Album of Rotha Quillinan.

　　Page 109. To S.L…. To M.L.

　　I have not been able to identify the Lockes. The J.F. of the last line might be Jane Field. Copies of these poems are preserved at South Kensington.

　　Page 109. An Acrostic against Acrostics.

　　Edward Hogg was a friend of Mr. Williams (see above). These verses were first printed in The Lambs by Mr. W.C. Hazlitt.

　　Page 110. On being Asked to Write in Miss Westwood's Album.

　　Frances Westwood was the daughter of the Westwoods, with whom the Lambs were domiciled at Enfield Chase in 1829-1832. See letters to Gillman and Wordsworth (November 30, 1829, and January 22, 1830) for description of the Westwoods. The only son, Thomas Westwood, who died in 1888, and was an authority on the literature of angling, contributed to Notes and Queries some very interesting reminiscences of the Lambs in those days. This poem and that which follows it were sent to Notes and Queries by Thomas Westwood (June 4, 1870).

　　It is concerning these lines that Lamb writes to Barton, in 1827:— "Adieu to Albums—for a great while—I said when I came here, and had not been fixed two days, but my Landlord's daughter (not at the Pot-house) requested me to write in her female friend's, and in her own. If I go to —— thou art there also, O all pervading Album! All over the Leeward Islands, in Newfoundland, and the Back Settlements, I understand there is no other reading. They haunt me. I die of Albo-phobia!"

　　Page 111. Un Solitaire.

　　E.I., who made the drawing in question, would be Emma Isola. The verses were copied by Lamb into his Album, which is now in the possession of Mrs. Alfred Morrison.

　　Page 111. To S[arah] T[homas].

　　From Lamb's Album. I have not been able to trace this lady.

　　Page 111. To Mrs. Sarah Robinson.

　　From the copy preserved among Henry Crabb Robinson's papers at Dr. Williams' Library. Sarah Robinson was the niece of H.C.R., who was the pilgrim in Rome. The stranger to thy land was Emma Isola, Fornham, in Suffolk, where she was living, being near to Bury St. Edmunds, the home of the Robinsons.

　　Page 112. To Sarah.

　　From the Album of Sarah Apsey. Lamb seems to have known very many

　　Sarahs.

　　Page 112. To Joseph Vale Asbury.

　　From Lamb's Album. Jacob (not Joseph, as Lamb supposed) Vale Asbury was the Lambs' doctor at Enfield. There are extant two amusing letters from Lamb to Asbury.

　　Page 113. To D.A.

　　From Lamb's Album. Dorothy Asbury, the wife of the doctor.

　　Page 113. To Louisa Morgan.

　　From Lamb's Album. Louisa Morgan was probably the daughter of Coleridge's friend, John Morgan, of Calne, in Wiltshire, with whom the Lambs stayed in 1817—the same Morgan—"Morgan demigorgon"—who ate walnuts better than any man Lamb knew, and munched cos-lettuce like a rabbit (see letters to Coleridge in August, 1814). Southey and Lamb each allowed John Morgan £10 a year in his old age and adversity, beginning with 1819.

　　Page 113. To Sarah James of Beguildy.

　　Sarah James was Mary Lamb's nurse, and the sister of the Mrs. Parsons with whom she lived during the last years of her life. Miss James was the daughter of the rector of Beguildy, in Shropshire. The verses are reprinted from My Lifetime by the late John Hollingshead, who was the great-nephew of Miss James and Mrs. Parsons.

　　Page 114. To Emma Button.

　　Included in a letter from Lamb to John Aitken, editor of The Cabinet,

　　July 5, 1825.

　　Page 114. Written upon the cover of a blotting book. The Mirror, May 7, 1836.

　　Identified by Mr. Walter Jerrold. First collected by Mr. Thomas

　　Hutchinson.

　　Page 115. POLITICAL AND OTHER EPIGRAMS.

　　Lamb was not a politician, but he had strong—almost passionate—prejudices against certain statesmen and higher persons, which impelled him now and then to sarcastic verse. The earliest examples in this vein that can be identified are two quatrains from the Morning Post in January, 1802, printed on page 115, and the epigram on Sir James Mackintosh in The Albion, printed on the same page, to which Lamb refers in the Elia essay on "Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago" (see Vol. II.). Until a file of The Albion turns up we shall never know how active Lamb's pen was at that time. The next belong to the year 1812—in The Examiner (see page 116)—and we then leap another seven years or so until 1819-1820, Lamb's busiest period as a caustic critic of affairs—in The Examiner, possibly the Morning Chronicle, and principally in The Champion. After 1820, however, he returned to this vein very seldom, and then with less bitterness and depth of feeling. "The Royal Wonders," in The Times for August 10, 1830 (see page 122), and "Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross," in the Englishman's Magazine, September, 1831 (written, however, some years earlier), on page 121, being his latest efforts that we know of. Of course there must be many other similar productions to which we have no clue—the old Morning Post days doubtless saw many an epigram that cannot now be definitely claimed for Lamb—but those that are preserved here sufficiently show how feelingly Lamb could hate and how trenchantly he could chastise. Others that seem to me likely to be Lamb's I could have included; but it is well to dispense as much as possible with the problematic. For example, I suspect Lamb of the authorship of several of the epigrams "ed in The Examiner in 1819 and 1820 from the Morning Chronicle. He used to send verses to the Morning Chronicle at that time, and Leigh Hunt, the editor of The Examiner, would naturally be pleased to give anything of his friend's an additional publicity.

　　The majority of the epigrams printed in this section might have remained unidentified were it not that in 1822 John Thelwall, who owned and edited The Champion in 1818-1820, issued a little volume entitled The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion," wherein Lamb's contributions were signed R. et R. This signature being appended to certain poems of which we know Lamb to have been the author—as "The Three Graves," which he sent also to the London Magazine (in 1825), and which he was in the habit of reading or reciting to his friends—enables us to ascertain the authorship of the others. A note placed by Thelwall above the index of the book states, "it is much to be regretted that, by mere oversight, or rather mistake, several of the printed epigrams of R. et R. have been omitted;" but a search through the files of The Champion has failed to bring to light any others with Lamb's adopted signature.

　　The origin of the signature R. et R. is unknown. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald suggests that it might stand for Romulus and Remus, but offers no supporting theory. He might have added that so unfamiliar a countenance is in these epigrams shown by their author, that the suggestion of a wolf rather than a Lamb might have been intended. Lamb's principal political epigrams were drawn from him by his intense contempt for the character of George IV., then Prince of Wales. His treatment of Caroline of Brunswick, as we see, moved Lamb to utterances of almost sulphurous indignation not only for the prince himself, but for all who were on his side, particularly Canning. Lamb, we must suppose, was wholly on the side of the queen, thus differing from Coleridge, who when asked how his sympathies were placed would admit only to being anti-Prince.

　　John Thelwall (1764-1834)—Citizen Thelwall—was one of the most popular and uncompromising of the Radicals of the seventeen-nineties. He belonged to the Society of the Friends of the People and other Jacobin confederacies. In May, 1794, he was even sent to the Tower (with Home Tooke and Thomas Hardy) for sedition; moved to Newgate in October; and tried and acquitted in December. Lamb first met him, I fancy, in 1797, when Thelwall was intimate with Coleridge. After 1798 Thelwall's political activities were changed for those of a lecturer on more pacific subjects, and later he opened an institution in London where he taught elocution and corrected the effects of malformation of the organs of speech. He bought The Champion in 1818, and held it for two or three years, but it did not succeed. Thelwall died in 1834. Among his friends were Coleridge, Haydon, Hazlitt, Southey, Crabb Robinson and Lamb, all of whom, although they laughed at his excesses and excitements as a reformer, saw in him an invincible honesty and sincerity.

　　Before leaving this subject I should like to "e the following lines from The Champion of November 4 and 5, 1820:—

　　A LADY'S SAPPHIC

　　Now the calm evening hastily approaches,

　　Not a sound stirring thro' the gentle woodlands,

　　Save that soft Zephyr with his downy pinions

　　Scatters fresh fragrance.

　　Now the pale sun-beams in the west declining

　　Gild the dew rising as the twilight deepens,

　　Beauty and splendour decorate the landscape;

　　Night is approaching.

　　By the cool stream's side pensively and sadly

　　Sit I, while birds sing on the branches sweetly,

　　And my sad thoughts all with their carols soothing,

　　Lull to oblivion.

　　M.L.

　　A correspondence on English sapphics was carried on in The Champion for some weeks at this time, various efforts being printed. On November 4 appeared the "Lady's Sapphic," just "ed, signed M.S. On the following day—for The Champion, like The Examiner, had a Saturday and Sunday edition—this signature was changed to M.L., and was thus given when the verses were reprinted in The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion" in 1822. There is no evidence that Mary Lamb wrote it; but she played with verse, and presumably read The Champion, since her brother was writing for it, and the poem might easily be hers. Personally I like to think it is, and that Lamb, on seeing the mistake in the initials in the Saturday edition, hurried down to the office to have it put right in that of Sunday. The same number of The Champion (November 4 and 5, 1820) contains another poem in the same measure signed C., which not improbably was Lamb's contribution to the pastime. It runs as follows:—

　　DANAE EXPOSED WITH HER INFANT

　　An English Sapphic

　　Dim were the stars, and clouded was the azure, Silence in darkness

　　brooded on the ocean, Save when the wave upon the pebbled sea-beach

　　Faintly resounded.

　　Then, O forsaken daughter of Acrisius! Seiz'd in the hour of woe and

　　tribulation, Thou, with the guiltless victim of thy love, didst Rock on

　　the surges.

　　Sad o'er the silent bosom of the billow, Borne on the breeze and

　　modulated sweetly, Plaintive as music, rose the mother's tones of

　　Comfortless anguish.

　　"Sad is thy birth, and stormy is thy cradle, Offspring of sorrow!

　　nursling of the ocean! Waves rise around to pillow thee, and night winds

　　Lull thee to slumber!"

　　Page 115. To Sir James Mackintosh.

　　In a letter to Manning in August, 1801, Lamb "es this epigram as having been printed in The Albion and caused that paper's death the previous week. In his Elia essay on "Newspapers," written thirty years later, he stated that the epigram was written at the time of Mackintosh's departure for India to reap the fruits of his 'tasy; but here Lamb's memory deceived him, for Mackintosh was not appointed Recorder of Bombay until 1803 and did not sail until 1804, whereas there is reason to believe the date of Lamb's letter to Manning of August, 1801, to be accurate. The epigram must then have referred to a rumour of some earlier appointment, for Mackintosh had been hoping for something for several years.

　　Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), the lawyer and philosopher, had in 1791 issued his Vindicia Galliae, a reply to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. Later, however, he became one of Burke's friends and an opponent of the Revolution, and in 1798 he issued his Introductory Discourse to his lectures on "The Law of Nature and Nations," in which the doctrines of his Vindiciae Gallicae were repudiated. Hence his "'tasy." Mackintosh applied unsuccessfully for a judgeship in Trinidad, and for the post of Advocate-General in Bengal, and Lord Wellesley had invited him to become the head of a college in Calcutta. Rumour may have credited him with any of these posts and thus have suggested Lamb's epigram. In 1803 he was appointed Recorder of Bombay. Lamb's dislike of Mackintosh may have been due in some measure to Coleridge, between whom and Mackintosh a mild feud subsisted. It had been Mackintosh, however, brother-in-law of Daniel Stuart of the Morning Post, who introduced Coleridge to that paper. (See notes to Vol. II., where further particulars of The Albion, edited by Lamb's friend, John Fenwick, will be found.)

　　Lamb may or may not have invented the sarcasm in this epigram; but it was not new. In Mrs. Montagu's letters, some years before, we find something of the kind concerning Charles James Fox: "His rapid journeys to England, on the news of the king's illness, have brought on him a violent complaint in the bowels, which will, it is imagined, prove mortal. However, if it should, it will vindicate his character from the general report that he has no bowels, as has been most strenuously asserted by his creditors."

　　Page 115. Twelfth Night Characters….

　　Morning Post, January 8, 1802.

　　These epigrams were identified by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell from a letter of Lamb's to John Rickman, dated Jan. 14, 1802, printed in Ainger's edition.

　　A—— is, of course, Henry Addington (1757-1844), afterwards Viscount

　　Sidmouth. After being Speaker for eleven years, he became suddenly Prime

　　Minister in 1801, at the wish of George III., who was rendered uneasy by

　　Pitt's project for Catholic relief.

　　C—— and F—— were George Canning (1770-1827) and John Hookham Frere (1769-1846) of The Anti-Jacobin, against whom Lamb had a grudge on account of the Anti-Jacobin's treatment of himself and Lloyd (see note to Blank Verse, page 320). Lamb returned to the attack on Canning again and again, as the epigrams that follow will show.

　　The epigram on Count Rumford was not included. We know that it was sent, from the Rickman letter. The same missive tells us that that on Dr. Solomon was also written in 1802, but it was not printed till The Champion took it on July 15 and 16, 1820. Solomon was alive in 1802 and was therefore a present Empiric. He was a notorious quack doctor, author of the Guide to Health and the purveyor of a nostrum called Balm of Gilead. One of Southey's letters (October 14, 1801) contains a diverting account of this Empiric. I copy one of Solomon's advertisements from a provincial paper:—

　　DR. SOLOMON'S CORDIAL BALM OF GILEAD

　　To the young it will afford lasting health, strength and spirits, in place of lassitude and debility; and to the aged and infirm it will assuredly furnish great relief and comfort by gently and safely invigorating the system; it will not give immortality; but if it be in the power of medicine to gild the autumn of declining years, and calmly and serenely protract the close of life beyond its narrow span, this restorative is capable of effecting that grand desideratum.

　　The price was 10s. 6d. a bottle.

　　Lamb's epigrams were only a few among many printed in the Morning Post for January 7 and 8, 1802. Whether he wrote also the following I do not know, but these are not inconceivably from his hand:—

　　LORD NELSON

　　Off with BRIAREUS, and his HUNDRED HANDS,

　　OUR NELSON, with one arm, unconquer'd stands! The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4