MR. MUNDEN OT many nights ago we had come home from seeing this extra cockletop; and when we to our pillow, his whimsical image still stuck by us, in a manner as to threaten sleep. In vain we tried to divest ourselves of it by conjuring up the most We raised up the opposite associations. We resolved to be serious. gravest topics of life; private misery, public calamity. All would not do. -There, the antic sate 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 we were not to escape so easily. No sooner did we fall into slumbers, than the same image, only more perplexing, assailed us in Not one Munden, but five hundred, were the shape of dreams. dancing before us, 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 we awoke! A season or two since there was exhibited a Hogarth gallery. We 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. If his name There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one face (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. 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 Out of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his friend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as easily. We 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. countenance. We have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher Curry-in Old Dornton-diffuse 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. We have seen some faint approaches to this sort of excellence in other players. But in what has been truly denominated "the sublime 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 strangelyneglected thing, the Cobler of Preston-where his alternations from the Cobler to the Magnifico, and from the Magnifico to the Cobler, keep the brain of the spectator in as wild a ferment, as if some Arabian Night were being acted before him, or as if Thalaba were no tale! Who like him can throw, or ever attempted to throw, a supernatural 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. 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 Angeln, 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 primæval man, with the sun and stars about him. ELIA NOTES ELIA LAMB took the name of Elia, which should, he said, be pronounced Ellia (William Hone rhymed it to "desire"), from an old clerk, an Italian, at the South-Sea House in Lamb's time, that is, in 17911792. Writing to John Taylor in July, 1821, just after he had taken over the magazine (see below), Lamb says, referring to the SouthSea House essay, having a brother now there, and doubting how he might relish certain descriptions in it, I clapt down the name of Elia to it, which passed off pretty well, for Elia himself added the function of an author to that of a scrivener, like myself." No literary work by the original Elia has, however, come to light. 66 Continuing Lamb says: "I went the other day (not having seen him [Elia] for a year) to laugh over with him at my usurpation of his name, and found him, I alas! no more than a name, for he died of consumption eleven months So the name has fairly devolved to me, ago, and I knew not of it. think; and 'tis all he has left me." Elia. Essays which have appeared under that signature in the Lamb's original London Magazine, was published early in 1823. intention was to furnish the book with a whimsical preface, as we learn from the following letter to John Taylor, dated December 7, 1822 :"DEAR SIR,-I should like the enclosed Dedication to be printed, But if you I like it. It is in the olden style. dislike it. unless you object to it, put forth the book as it is; only pray don't let the printer mistake the word curt for curst. "DEDICATION. "TO THE FRIENDLY AND JUDICIOUS READER, "C. L. who will take these Papers, as they were meant; not understanding every thing perversely in its absolute and literal sense, but giving fair construction, as to an after-dinner conversation; allowing for the rashness and necessary incompleteness of first thoughts; and not remembering, for the purpose of an after taunt, words spoken peradventure after the fourth glass, the Author wishes (what he would will for himself) plenty of good friends to stand by him, good books to solace him, prosperous events to all his honest undertakings, and a candid interpretation to his most hasty words and actions. The other sort (and he hopes many of them will purchase his book too) he greets with the curt invitation of Timon, Uncover, dogs, and lap:' or he dismisses them with the confident security of the philosopher,-'you beat but on the case of Elia.' "On better consideration, pray omit that Dedication. The Essays want no Preface: they are all Preface. A Preface is nothing but a talk with the reader; and they do nothing else. Pray omit it. "There will be a sort of Preface in the next Magazine, which as an advertisement, but not proper for the volume. "Let ELIA Come forth bare as he was born. "N.B.-No Preface." may "C. L. act The "sort of Preface in the next number" was the "Character of the Late Elia" (see page 151). Elia did not reach a second edition in Lamb's lifetime, that is to say, just twelve years, although the editions into which it has passed between his death and the present day are practically uncountable. Why, considering the popularity of the essays as they appeared in the London Magazine, the book should have found so few purchasers is a problem difficult of solution. Lamb himself seems to have attributed some of the cause to Southey's objection, in the Quarterly Review, that Elia "wanted a sounder religious feeling" (see Vol. I., page 226); but that probably made no serious difference. Possibly the book was too dear: it was published at 9s. 6d. Ordinary reviewers do not seem to have perceived at all that a rare humorist, humanist and master of prose had arisen, although among the finer intellects who had any inclination to search for excellence for excellence' sake Lamb made his way. William Hazlitt, for example, drew attention to the rich quality of Elia; as also did Leigh Hunt; and William Hone, who cannot, however, as a critic be mentioned with these, was tireless in advocating the book. Among strangers to Lamb who from the first extolled his genius was Miss Mitford. But Elia did not sell. Ten years passed before Lamb collected his essays again, and then in 1833 was published The Last Essays of Elia, with Edward Moxon's imprint. The mass of minor essays in the London Magazine and elsewhere, which Lamb disregarded when he compiled his two collections, will be found in Vol. I. of the present edition. The Last Essays of Elia had little, if any, better reception than the first; and Lamb had the mortification of being asked by the Norris family to suppress the exquisite and kindly little memoir of Randal Norris, entitled "A DeathBed" (see page 246), which was held to be too personal. When, in 1835, after Lamb's death, a new edition of Elia and The Last Essays of Elia was issued, the "Confessions of a Drunkard" took its place (see Vol. I., page 133). |