a few prefatory remarks in which it was stated: "We believe we are taking no greater liberty with him [Charles Lainb] than our motives will warrant, when we add that he sometimes writes in the London Magazine under the signature of Elia." In The Indicator of March 7, 1821, Leigh Hunt replied to Elia. Leigh Hunt was no match for Lamb in this kind of raillery, and the first portion of the reply is rather cumbersome. At the end, however, he says: There was, by the bye, a family of the name of Elia who came from Italy,-Jews; which may account for this I boast about Genoa. See also in his last article in the London Magazine [the essay on "Ears"] some remarkable fancies of conscience in reference to the Papal religion. They further corroborate what we have heard; viz. that the family were obliged to fly from Genoa for saying that the Pope was the author of Rabelais; and that Elia is not an anagram, as some have thought it, but the Judaico-Christian name of the writer before us, whose surname, we find, is not Lamb, but Lomb;-Elia Lomb! What a name! He told a friend of ours so in company, and would have palmed himself upon him for a Scotchman, but that his countenance betrayed him." It is amusing to note that Maginn, writing the text to accompany the Maclise portrait of Lamb in Fraser's Magazine in 1835, gravely states that Lamb's name was really Lomb, and that he was of Jewish extraction. The subject of Lamb's birth reopened a little while later. In the "Lion's Head," which was the title of the pages given to correspondence in the London Magazine, in the number for November, 1821, was the following short article from Lamb's pen: 66 'ELIA TO HIS COrrespondents.—A Correspondent, who writes himself Peter Ball, or Bell,-for his hand-writing is as ragged as his manners admonishes me of the old saying, that some people (under a courteous periphrasis I slur his less ceremonious epithet) had need have good memories. In my Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,' I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler who had called my good identity in question, (see P.S. to my Chapter on Ears,') I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not see, except this tinkling cymbal, that in that idle fiction of Genoese ancestry I was answering a fool according to his folly that Elia there expresseth himself ironically, as to an approved slanderer, who hath no right to the truth, and can be no fit recipient of it? Such a one it is usual to leave to his delusions; or, leading him from error still to contradictory error, to plunge him (as we say) deeper in the mire, and give him line till he suspend himself. No understanding reader could be imposed upon by such obvious rhodomontade to suspect me for an alien, or be lieve me other than English.-To a second Correspondent, who signs himself a Wiltshire man,' and claims me for a countryman upon the strength of an equivocal phrase in my Christ's Hospital,' a more mannerly reply is due. Passing over the Genoese fable, which Bell makes such a ring about, he nicely detects a more subtle discrepancy, which Bell was too obtuse to strike upon. Referring to the passage (in page 484 of our second volume 1), I must confess, that the term native town,' applied to Calne, prima facie seems to bear out the construction which my friendly Correspondent is willing to put upon it. The context too, I am afraid, a little favours it. But where the words of an author, taken literally, compared with some other passage in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable contradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenuous commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition, that in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was chiefly intended. So by the word 'native,' I may be supposed to mean a town where I might have been born; or where it might be desirable that I should have been born, as being situate in wholesome air, upon a dry chalky soil, in which I delight; or a town, with the inhabitants of which I passed some weeks, a summer or two ago, so agreeably, that they and it became in a manner native to me. Without some such latitude of interpretation in the present case, I see not how we can avoid falling into a gross error in physics, as to conceive that a gentleman may be born in two places, from which all modern and ancient testimony is alike abhorrent. Bacchus cometh the nearest to it, whom I remember Ovid to have honoured with the epithet 'Twice born.' 2 But not to mention that he is so called (we conceive) in reference to the places whence rather than the places where he was delivered, for by either birth he may probably be challenged for a Theban-in a strict way of speaking, he was a filius femoris by no means in the same sense as he had been before a filius alvi, for that latter was but a secondary and tralatitious way of being born, and he but a denizen of the second house of his geniture. Thus much by way of explanation was thought due to the courteous 'Wiltshire man.'-To 'Indagator,' 'Investigator,' 'Incertus,' and the rest of the pack, that are so importunate about the true localities of his birth-as if, forsooth, Elia were presently about to be passed to his parish-to all such churchwarden critics he answereth, that, any explanation here given notwithstanding, he hath not so fixed his nativity (like a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but that, if he 1 See page 15 of this volume. "2 Imperfectus adhuc infans genetricis ab alvo Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi. “Metamorph. lib, iii., 310.” seeth occasion, or the argument shall demand it, he will be born again, in future papers, in whatever place, and at whatever period, shall seem good unto him. "Modò me Thebis-modò Athenis. "ELIA." Page 48. ALL FOOLS' DAY. London Magazine, April, 1821. Page 49, line 1. Empedocles. Lamb appended this footnote in the London Magazine : He who, to be deem'd A god, leap'd fondly into Etna's flames. Paradise Lost, III., lines 470-471 [should be 469-470]. Page 49, line 5. Cleombrotus. Lamb's London Magazine footnote : Paradise Lost, III., lines 471-472. Page 49, line 8. Plasterers at Babel. Lamb's London Magazine note: The builders next of Babel on the plain Of Sennaar. Paradise Lost, III., lines 466-467. Page 49, line 10. My right hand. Lamb, it is probably unnecessary to remind the reader, stammered too. Page 49, line 13 from foot. Duns. Duns Scotus (1265 ?-1308?), metaphysician, author of De modis significandi sive Grammatica Speculativa and other philosophic works. Known as Doctor Subtilis. There was nothing of Duns in the London Magazine; the sentence ran: Mr. Hazlitt, I cannot indulge you in your de. finitions." This was at a time when Lamb and Hazlitt were not on good terms. Page 49, last line. Honest R--. Lamb's Key gives "Ramsay, London Library, Ludgate Street; now extinct." I have tried in vain to find out more about Ramsay. The London Library was established at 5 Ludgate Street in 1785. Later, the books were lodged at Charles Taylor's house in Hatton Garden, and were finally removed to the present London Institute in Finsbury Circus. Page 50, line 6. Good Granville S. Lamb's Key gives Granville Sharp. This was the eccentric Granville Sharp, the Quaker abolitionist (1735-1813). Page 51. A QUAKER'S MEETING. Lamb's connection with Quakers was somewhat intimate through out his life. In early days he was friendly with the Birmingham Lloyds-Charles, Robert and Priscilla, of the younger generation, and their father, Charles Lloyd, the banker and translator of Horace and Homer (see Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, 1898); and later with Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet of Woodbridge. Also he had loved from afar Hester Savory, the subject of his poem "Hester" (see Vol. IV.). A passage from a letter written in February, 1797, to Coleridge, bears upon this essay:-"Tell Lloyd I have had thoughts of turning Quaker, and have been reading, or am rather just beginning to read, a most capital book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn's No Cross, No Crown,' I like it immensely. Unluckily I went to one of his meetings, tell him, in St. John Street [Clerkenwell] yesterday, and saw a man under all the agitations and workings of a fanatic, who believed himself under the influence of some 'inevitable presence.' This cured me of Quakerism; I love it in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit. . . ." Both Forster and Hood tell us that Lamb in outward appearance resembled a Quaker. Page 52, line 13. The uncommunicating muteness of fishes. Lamb had in mind this thought on the silence of fishes when he was at work on John Woodvil. Simon remarks, in the exquisite passage (Vol. IV.) in reply to the question, "What is it you love?" The fish in th' other element Page 53, second quotation. "How reverend An adapta tion of Congreve's description of York Minster in "The Mourning Bride" (Mary Lamb's "first play "), Act I., Scene 1 : How reverend is the face of this tall pile. ... Page 53, middle. Fox and Dewesbury. George Fox (16241691) founded the Society of Friends. William Dewesbury was one of Fox's first colleagues, and a famous preacher. William Penn (1644-1718), the founder of Pennsylvania, was the most illustrious of the early converts to Quakerism. Lamb refers to him again, before his judges, in the essay on "Imperfect Sympathies," page 73. George Fox's Journal was lent to Lamb by a friend of Bernard Barton's in 1823. On returning it, Lamb remarked (February 17, 1823):-"I have quoted G. F. in my 'Quaker's Meeting' as having said he was lifted up in spirit' (which I felt at the time to be not a Quaker phrase), and the Judge and Jury were as dead men under his feet.' I find no such words in his Journal, and I did not get them from Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to invent. I must have put some other Quaker's words into his mouth." Sewel was a Dutchman-William Sewel (1654-1720). His title runs: History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers, written originally in Low Dutch by W. Sewel, and by himself translated into English, 1722. James Naylor (1617-1660) was one of the early Quaker martyrs-"my favourite" Lamb calls him in a letter. John Woolman (1720-1772) was an American Friend. His principal writings are to be found in A Journal of the Life, Gospel Labours, and Christian Experiences of that faithful minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman, late of Mount Holly in the Province of Jersey, North America, 1795. Modern editions are obtainable. Page 56. THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. London Magazine, May, 1821. Page 56, line 9. Ortelius Arrowsmith. Abraham Ortellius (1527-1598), the Dutch geographer and the author of Theatrum Orbis Terræ, 1570. Aaron Arrowsmith (1750-1823) was a well-known cartographer at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Lamb would perhaps have known something of his Atlas of Southern India, a very useful work at the East India House. Page 56, line 13. A very dear friend. Barron Field (see the essay on "Distant Correspondents"). Page 56, line 10 from foot. My friend M. Thomas Manning (1772-1840), the mathematician and traveller, and Lamb's correspondent. Page 56, last line. "On Devon's leafy shores." From Wordsworth's Excursion, III. Page 57, line 16. Daily jaunts. Though Lamb was then (1821) living at 20 Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, he rented rooms at 14 Kingsland Row, Dalston, in which to take holidays and do his literary work undisturbed. At that time Dalston, which adjoins Shackleton, was the country and Kingsland Green an open space opposite Lamb's lodging. Page 58, line 23. The North Pole Expedition. This would probably be Sir John Franklin's expedition which set out in 1819 and ended in disaster, the subject of Franklin's book, Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the years 1819, 20, 21, 22 (1823). Sir John Ross made an expedition in 1818, and Sir William Edward Parry in 1819, and again in 1821-1823 with Lyon. The panorama was possibly at Burford's Panorama in the Strand, afterwards moved to Leicester Square. Page 60, line 17. Tractate on Education. Milton's Tractate on Education, addressed to his friend, Samuel Hartlib, was published in 1644. The quotation above is from that work. This para graph of Lamb's essay was afterwards humorously expanded in II.--24 |