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　　UNCOLLECTED PIECES

　　Page 85. Dramatic Fragment.

　　London Magazine, January, 1822. An excerpt from Lamb's play, "Pride's Cure" (John Woodvil). See note below.

　　Page 86. Dick Strype.

　　Writing to John Rickman in January, 1802, Lamb says, "My editor [Dan Stuart of the Morning Post] uniformly rejects all that I do, considerable in length. I shall only do paragraphs with now and then a slight poem, such as Dick Strype, if you read it, which was but a long epigram." The verses, which appeared on January 6, 1802, may be compared with the story of Ephraim Wagstaff, on page 432 of Vol. I., written twenty-five years later. It has been pointed out that Points of Misery, 1823, by Charles Molloy Westmacott (Bernard Blackmantle of the English Spy), contains the poem with slight alterations. But Westmacott reaped where he could, and his book is confessedly not wholly original. Lamb seems to me to admit authorship by implication fairly completely. Westmacott was only thirteen when it was first printed.

　　Page 88. Two Epitaphs on a young Lady, etc.

　　Morning Post, February 7, 1804. Signed C.L. Lamb sends the poem both to Wordsworth and Manning in 1803. He says to Manning:—"Did I send you an epitaph I scribbled upon a poor girl who died at nineteen?—a good girl, and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, but strangely neglected by all her friends and kin…. Brief, and pretty, and tender, is it not? I send you this, being the only piece of poetry I have done since the Muses all went with T.M. [Thomas Manning] to Paris."

　　The young lady was Mary Druitt of Wimborne who died of consumption in 1801. The verses are not on her tombstone. A letter from Lamb to his friend Rickman (see Canon Ainger's edition), shows that it was for Rickman that the lines were written. Lamb did not know Mary Druitt. Writing to Rickman in February, 1802, Lamb sends the second epitaph:—"Your own prose, or nakedly the letter which you sent me, which was in some sort an epitaph, would do better on her gravestone than the cold lines of a stranger."

　　Page 89. The Ape.

　　Printed in the London Magazine, October, 1820, where it was preceded by these words:—

　　"To THE EDITOR

　　"Mr. Editor,—The riddling lines which I send you, were written upon a young lady, who, from her diverting sportiveness in childhood, was named by her friends The Ape. When the verses were written, L.M. had outgrown the title—but not the memory of it—being in her teens, and consequently past child-tricks. They are an endeavour to express that perplexity, which one feels at any alteration, even supposed for the better, in a beloved object; with a little oblique grudging at Time, who cannot bestow new graces without taking away some portion of the older ones, which we can ill miss.

　　"*****."

　　L.M. was Louisa Martin, who is now and then referred to in Lamb's letter as Monkey, and to whom he addressed the lines on page 82, which come as a sequel to the present ones. In a letter to Wordsworth, many years later, dated February 22, 1834, Lamb asks a favour for this lady:—"The oldest and best friends I have left are in trouble. A branch of them (and they of the best stock of God's creatures, I believe) is establishing a school at Carlisle; Her name is Louisa Martin … her qualities … are the most amiable, most upright. For thirty years she has been tried by me, and on her behaviour I would stake my soul."

　　Page 90. In Tabulam Eximii….

　　These Latin verses were printed in The Champion, May 6 and 7, 1820, signed Carlagnulus, accompanied by this notice: "We insert, with great pleasure, the following beautiful Latin Verses on HAYDON'S fine Picture, and shall be obliged to any of our correspondents for a spirited translation for our next." The following week brought one translation—Lamb's own—signed C.L. Both were reprinted in The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion" in 1822, and again in Tom Taylor's Life of Haydon, 1853.

　　Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) was for six years at work upon this picture—"Christ's Entry into Jerusalem"—which was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall in 1820. The story goes that Mrs. Siddons established the picture's reputation in society. While the private-view company were assembled in doubt the great actress entered and walked across the room. "It is completely successful," she was heard to say to Sir George Beaumont; and then, to Haydon, "The paleness of your Christ gives it a supernatural look." A stream of 30,000 persons followed this verdict. The picture is now in Philadelphia.

　　Line 4. Palma. There were two Palmas, both painters of the Venetian school. Giacomo Palma the Elder, who is referred to here, was born about 1480. Both painted many scenes in the life of Christ.

　　Lines 7 and 8. Flaccus' sentence.

　　Valeat res ludicra si me

　　Palma negata macrum, donata reducit opimum.

　　Horace, Epist., II., I, 180-181.

　　(Farewell to performances, if the palm, denied, sends one home lean, but, granted, flourishing.)

　　Lamb has not quite represented the poet's meaning, which is a profession of independence in regard to popular applause.

　　Page 91. Sonnet to Miss Burney….

　　First printed in the Morning Chronicle, July 13, 1820. The Burney family began to be famous with Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814), the musician, the author of the History of Music, and the friend of Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Among his children were the Rev. Charles Burney (1757-1817), the classical scholar and owner of the Burney Library, now in the British Museum; Rear-Admiral James Burney (1750-1821), who sailed with Cook, wrote the Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, and became a friend of Lamb; Frances Burney, afterwards Madame d'Arblay (1752-1840), the novelist, author of Evelina, Camilla and Cecilia; and Sarah Harriet Burney (1770?-1844), a daughter of Dr. Burney's second wife, also a novelist, and the author, among other stories, of Geraldine Fauconberg. "Country Neighbours; or, The Secret," the tale that inspired Lamb's sonnet, formed Vols. II. and III. of Sarah Burney's Tales of Fancy. Blanch is the heroine.

　　The good old man in Madame d'Arblay's Camilla is Sir Hugh Tyrold, who adopted the heroine.

　　Page 91. To my Friend The Indicator.

　　Printed in The Indicator, September 27, 1820, signed ****, preceded by these words by Leigh Hunt, the editor:—

　　Every pleasure we could experience in a friend's approbation, we have felt in receiving the following verses. They are from a writer, who of all other men, knows how to extricate a common thing from commonness, and to give it an underlook of pleasant consciousness and wisdom. …The receipt of these verses has set us upon thinking of the good-natured countenance, which men of genius, in all ages, have for the most part shewn to contemporary writers.

　　Page 92. On seeing Mrs. K—— B——.

　　The late Mr. Dykes Campbell thought it very likely that these charming verses were Lamb's. I think they may be, although it is odd that he should not have reprinted anything so pretty. Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's belief that they are Lamb's, added to that of their discoverer, leads me to include them confidently here. Here and there it seems impossible that the poem could come from any other hand: line 11 for example, and the idea in lines 13 to 16, and the statement in lines 27 and 28. None the less it must be borne in mind that one does but conjecture. The lines are in The Tickler Magazine for 1821.

　　Page 93. To Emma, Learning Latin, and Desponding.

　　First printed in Blackwood's Magazine, June, 1829.

　　Mary Lamb had other pupils in her time, among them Miss Kelly, the actress, Mary Victoria Novello (afterwards Mrs. Cowden Clarke), and William Hazlitt, the essayist's son. Emma was, of course, Emma Isola. Sara Coleridge's translation of Martin Dobrizhoffer's Historia de Abiponibus under the title Account of the Abipones was published in 1822, when she was only twenty.

　　"To think [Lamb wrote to Barton, on February 17, 1823, of Sara Coleridge] that she should have had to toil thro' five octavos of that cursed (I forget I write to a Quaker) Abbey pony History, and then to abridge them to 3, and all for £113. At her years, to be doing stupid Jesuits' Latin into English, when she should be reading or writing Romances." Sara Coleridge's romance-writing came later, in 1837, when her fairy tale, Phantasmion, appeared.

　　In its original form this sonnet in its fifth line ran thus:—

　　(In new tasks hardest still the first appears).

　　Derwent Coleridge read the sonnet in 1853 in Mrs. Moxon's album, and copying it out, sent it to his wife, saying that he wished Sissy (his daughter Christabel) to get it by heart. He added this note: "Charles Lamb having discovered that this Sonnet consisted but of thirteen lines, Miss Lamb inserted the 5th, which interrupts the flow and repeats a rhime." Derwent Coleridge goes on to suggest two alternative lines:—

　　And hope may surely chase desponding fears

　　or

　　Let hope encouraged chase desponding fears.

　　Lamb, however, had already amended the fifth line (as in Blackwood's

　　Magazine) to—

　　To young beginnings natural are these fears.

　　Page 93. Lines addressed to Lieut. R.W.H. Hardy, R.N.

　　First printed in The Athenaeum, January 10, 1846, contributed by an anonymous correspondent (probably Thomas Westwood the Younger) who sent also "The First Leaf of Spring" (page 105). Travels in the Interior of Mexico in 1825 … 1828, by Robert William Hale Hardy, was published in 1829. Lamb made an exception in favour of Hardy's book. Writing to Dilke for something to read from The Athenaum office, in 1833, he particularly desired that "no natural history or useful learning, such as Pyramids, Catacombs, Giraffes, or Adventures in Southern Africa" might be sent.

　　Page 94. Lines for a Monument….

　　First printed in The Athenaeum, November 5, 1831, and again in The Tatler, Hunt's paper, December 31, 1831. In August, 1830, four sons and two daughters of John and Ann Rigg, of York, were drowned in the Ouse. Several literary persons were asked for inscriptions for the monument, erected at York in 1831, and that by James Montgomery, of Sheffield, was chosen. Lamb sent his verses to Vincent Novello, through whom he seems to have been approached in the matter, on November 8, 1830, adding: "Will these lines do? I despair of better. Poor Mary is in a deplorable state here at Enfield."

　　Page 94. To C. Aders, Esq.

　　First printed in Hone's Year Book (March 19), 1831 (see note to "Angel

　　Help," above).

　　Page 95. Hercules Pacificatus.

　　First printed in the Englishman's Magazine, August, 1831. Suidas is supposed to have lived in the tenth or eleventh century, and to have compiled a Lexicon—a blend of biographical dictionary.

　　Page 98. The Parting Speech of the Celestial Messenger to the Poet.

　　First printed in The Athenaeum, February 25, 1832.

　　Palingenius was an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, whose real name was Pietro Angelo Mazolli, but who wrote in Latin under the name of Marcellus Palingenius Stollatus. His Zodiacus Vitae, a philosophical poem, was published in 1536.

　　Page 99. Existence, considered in itself, no Blessing. First printed in The Athenaeum, July 7, 1832.

　　Page 100. To Samuel Rogers, Esq., on the New Edition of his "Pleasures of Memory."

　　First printed in The Times, December 13, 1833. Signed C. Lamb. This is the sonnet mentioned in the letter which is "ed on page 344, in the note to the sonnet to Stothard. The new edition of Pleasures of Memory was published by Moxon in 1833, dated 1834.

　　Page 101. To Clara N—— .

　　First printed in The Athenaeum, July 26, 1834. Clara N—— was, of course, Clara Anastasia Novello, daughter of Lamb's friend, Vincent Novello (1781-1861), the organist, and herself a fine soprano singer (see also the poem "The Sisters," on the same page). Miss Novello, who was born on June 10, 1818, became the Countess Gigliucci, and survived until March 12, 1908. Clara Novella's Reminiscences, compiled by her daughter, the Contessa Valeria Gigliucci, with a memoir by Arthur Duke Coleridge, were published in 1910. In them is this charming passage:—

　　How I loved dear Charles Lamb! I once hid—to avoid the ignominy of going to bed—in the upright (cabinet) pianoforte, which in its lowest part had a sort of tiny cupboard. In this I fell asleep, awakening only when the party was supping. My appearance from beneath the pianoforte was hailed with surprise by all, and with anger from my mother; but Charles Lamb not only took me under his protection, but obtained that henceforth I should never again be sent to bed when he came, but—glory and delight!—always sit up to supper. Later, in Frith Street days, my Father made me sing to him one day; but [Lamb] stopped me, saying, "Clara, don't make that d—d noise!" for which, I think, I loved him as much as for all the rest. Some verses he sent me were addressed to "St. Clara."

　　In spite of Lamb's declaration about himself and want of musical sense, both Crabb Robinson and Barron Field tell us that he was capable of humming tunes.

　　Page 101. The Sisters.

　　These verses, printed in Mr. W.C. Hazlitt's Lamb and Hazlitt, 1900, were addressed:—

　　"For SAINT CECILIA,

　　At Sign'r Vincenzo Novello's

　　Music Repository,

　　No. 67 Frith Street.

　　Soho."

　　They were signed C. Lamb. One might imagine Emma, the nut-brown maid, to be Emma Isola, as that was a phrase Lamb was fond of applying to her—assuming the title "The Sisters" to be a pleasantry; but the late Miss Mary Sabilia Novello assured me that the sisters were herself, Emma Aloysia Novello and Clara Anastasia Novello (see above).

　　Page 102. Love will Come.

　　"Love will Come" was included by Lamb in a letter to Miss Fryer, a school-fellow of Emma Isola. Lamb writes:—"By desire of Emma I have attempted new words to the old nonsense of Tartar Drum; but with the nonsense the sound and spirit of the tune are unaccountably gone, and we have agreed to discard the new version altogether. As you may be more fastidious in singing mere silliness, and a string of well-sounding images without sense or coherence—Drums of Tartars, who use none, and Tulip trees ten foot high, not to mention Spirits in Sunbeams, &c.,—than we are, so you are at liberty to sacrifice an enspiriting movement to a little sense, tho' I like LITTLE SENSE less than his vagarying younger sister NO SENSE—so I send them.—The 4th line of 1st stanza is from an old Ballad."

　　The old ballad is, I imagine, "Waly, Waly," of which Lamb was very fond.

　　Page 102. To Margaret W——.

　　This poem, believed to be the last that Lamb wrote, was printed in The

　　Athenaeum for March 14, 1835. I have not been able to ascertain who

　　Margaret W—— was. The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4