allusion to that fearsome personage. Lastly, the second paragraph is wanting and the third reduced by half, the conclusion (from "Trample not," etc., on), in which the miracle of the raising of Lazarus is referred to, being omitted.
I cannot, however, quite accept Mr. Hutchinson's theory that Lamb wrote the "Confessions" as a joke at the expense of the seriousness of the Quaker editor and his Benthamite assistant. Mr. Hutchinson writes: "We can fancy with what glee the sly humorist, who found the world as it was so lovable and good to live in, prepared to hoax the fussy John Amend-All of Plough Court and his fiery lieutenant, James Mill," and he adds later, "An amusing feature of the 'Confessions' is the introduction, twice over, of the sacred Benthamite catchword, 'Springs of Action,' and, once, of its equivalent, the 'Springs of the Will,' a plausible device to bribe the judgment of the editors." But Lamb's jokes were always jokes, and it is difficult, sitting down to these "Confessions" with what anticipation we will of humour or whimsicality, to rise from them in anything but sadness. They are too real for a "flam." Of this, however, more below.
The "Confessions" made their second appearance in Basil Montagu's collection of arguments in favour of teetotalism—Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors. By a Water Drinker. 1814; and second edition, 1818. This volume was divided into sections, Lamb's contribution being ranged under the question, "Do Fermented Liquors Contribute to Moral Excellence?" Montagu's book was reprinted in 1841, when Lamb's contribution was acknowledged as from the Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb (more properly the Last Essays). Lamb's "Confessions" were also reprinted separately in a series of tracts called "Beacon Lights," in 1854, as being a true statement of their unhappy author's case, under the title, "Charles Lamb's Confessions." This misrepresentation led to some correspondence in the press, and the tract was withdrawn, a new edition being substituted in 1856 with the harrowing story of poor Hartley Coleridge in the place of Lamb's essay.
The "Confessions" were reprinted in the London Magazine, August, 1822, under the following circumstances. In the summer of 1822 Lamb and his sister visited the Kenneys at Versailles—an absence which interrupted the regular course of the Elia essays. The Editor therefore reprinted one or two of Lamb's old papers, the first being these "Confessions," advising his readers of his action in a note in which Lamb's own hand is plainly apparent. This is the note:—
"Reprints of Elia.—Many are the sayings of Elia, painful and frequent his lucubrations, set forth for the most part (such his modesty!) without a name, scattered about in obscure periodicals and forgotten miscellanies. From the dust of some of these, it is our intention, occasionally, to revive a Tract or two, that shall seem worthy of a better fate; especially, at a time like the present, when the pen of our industrious Contributor, engaged in a laborious digest of his recent Continental Tour, may haply want the leisure to expatiate in more miscellaneous speculations. We have been induced, in the first instance, to re-print a Thing, which he put forth in a friend's volume some years since, entitled the Confessions of a Drunkard, seeing that Messieurs the Quarterly Reviewers have chosen to embellish their last dry pages with fruitful quotations therefrom; adding, from their peculiar brains, the gratuitous affirmation, that they have reason to believe that the describer (in his delineations of a drunkard forsooth!) partly sate for his own picture. The truth is, that our friend had been reading among the Essays of a contemporary, who has perversely been confounded with him, a paper in which Edax (or the Great Eater) humorously complaineth of an inordinate appetite; and it struck him, that a better paper—of deeper interest, and wider usefulness—might be made out of the imagined experiences of a Great Drinker. Accordingly he set to work, and with that mock fervor, and counterfeit earnestness, with which he is too apt to over-realise his descriptions, has given us—a frightful picture indeed—but no more resembling the man Elia, than the fictitious Edax may be supposed to identify itself with Mr. L., its author. It is indeed a compound extracted out of his long observations of the effects of drinking upon all the world about him; and this accumulated mass of misery he hath centered (as the custom is with judicious essayists) in a single figure. We deny not that a portion of his own experiences may have passed into the picture, (as who, that is not a washy fellow, but must at some times have felt the after-operation of a too generous cup?)—but then how heightened! how exaggerated!—how little within the sense of the Review, where a part, in their slanderous usage, must be understood to stand for the whole!—but it is useless to expostulate with this Quarterly slime, brood of Nilus, watery heads with hearts of jelly, spawned under the sign of Aquarius, incapable of Bacchus, and therefore cold, washy, spiteful, bloodless.——Elia shall string them up one day, and show their colours—or rather how colourless and vapid the whole fry—when he putteth forth his long promised, but unaccountably hitherto delayed, Confessions of a Water-drinker."
The remarks in the Quarterly Review, to which Lamb very naturally objected, and which are believed to have been written by Dr. Robert Gooch (1784–1830), a friend of Southey, had occurred in an article, in the number for April, 1822, on Reid's Essays on Hypochondriasis and other Nervous Affections. There, in a passage introducing quotations from Lamb's "Confessions of a Drunkard," the reviewer says:—
In a collection of tracts "On the Effects of Spirituous Liquors," by an eminent living barrister, there is a paper entitled the "Confessions of a Drunkard," which affords a fearful picture of the consequences of intemperance, and which we have reason to know is a true tale.
It was, we may suppose, as a kind of challenge to this statement that Lamb authorised the republication of his "Confessions." It cannot be denied, however, that the circumstantiality of the story gave a handle to the Quarterly's theory. For example, twelve years before 1813 (when the essay was probably first written), Lamb had completed his twenty-sixth year. He was known to have an impediment in his speech. He was known also to have been in bondage to tobacco. The two sets of friends (see pp. 156 and 157) correspond to Fenwick, Fell & Co., and the Burney whist players.
If a portion of the "Confessions" was true, it was more likely to be true in 1812–1813 than at any time in Lamb's life. He was then between thirty-seven and thirty-nine, a critical age. He had apparently abandoned most of his literary ambition and was beginning the least productive period of his life; if a man is at all given to seeking alcoholic stimulant he resorts to it more when his ambition sleeps than when it is lively. In 1812–1813 Lamb was hard worked at the East India House; and with the failure of The Reflector, to which he was an important contributor, immediately behind him, the failure of John Woodvil (in which he had believed) more remotely behind him, his children's book vein dry, and little but office routine and disappointment to look forward to, he may conceivably have indulged now and then, after a festive night with his friends, in some such gloomy thoughts as are expressed in this essay. Crabb Robinson, indeed, who saw much of Lamb at this season, records in his unpublished Diary that the "Confessions" seemed to him sadly true. Robinson, however, was disposed to be rather a severe judge of any weakness, and we may perhaps discount such an impression; but the fact remains that among Lamb's friends there was one who, wishing him all happiness, looked on the "Confessions" in this way.
Yet whatever proportion of truth may have been in the "Confessions" when they were written (possibly when Mary Lamb was ill and hope was with Lamb at its lowest) Lamb soon recovered. We may feel confident of that. He remained to the end conscious of the stimulating effect of wine and spirits and too easily influenced by them, as are so many persons of sensitive habit and quick imagination: that is all. As Talfourd wrote:—
Drinking with him [Lamb], except so far as it cooled a feverish thirst, was not a sensual but an intellectual pleasure; it lighted up his fading fancy, enriched his humour, and impelled the struggling thought or beautiful image into day.
One of the best proofs of the untruth of the "Confessions" is urged by Charles Robert Leslie, the painter, and it becomes particularly cogent when we remember the case of Tommy Bye, described by Lamb in two of his letters, who was reduced to a paltry income at the East India House as a punishment for insobriety.
