his Autobiographical Recollections, 1860:—
I have noticed that Lamb sometimes did himself injustice by his odd sayings and actions, and he now and then did the same by his writings. His "Confessions of a Drunkard" greatly exaggerate any habits of excess he may ever have indulged. The regularity of his attendance at the India House, and the liberal manner in which he was rewarded for that attendance, proved that he never could have been a drunkard. Well, indeed, would it be for the world if such extraordinary virtues as he possessed were often found in company with so very few faults.
In all modern editions of Lamb the "Confessions of a Drunkard" are included with the Last Essays of Elia. But Lamb did not himself originally place them there. Apparently his intention was not to reprint them after their appearance in the London Magazine in 1822. When, however, the Last Essays of Elia was published, in 1833, the paper called "A Death-Bed" was objected to by Mrs. Randal Norris, as bearing too publicly upon her poverty. When, therefore, the next edition was preparing, "A Death-Bed" was taken out, and the "Confessions" put in its place, but whether Lamb made the substitution, or whether it was decided upon after his death, I do not know.
Page 160. Footnote. Poor M——. Probably George Morland, who died a drunkard in 1804. In The Life of George Morland, by George Dawe (Lamb's "Royal Academician"), we read: "When he [Morland] arose in the morning his hand trembled so as to render him incapable of guiding the pencil, until he had recruited his spirits with his fatal remedy."
Page 162. Recollections of Christ's Hospital.
This article was first printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1813, and in the supplement for that year, under the title "On Christ's Hospital and the Character of the Christ's Hospital Boys." In that place it had the following opening, which, having lost its timeliness, was discarded when in 1818 the essay was printed in the Works:—
"A great deal has been said about the Governors of this Hospital abusing their right of presentation, by presenting the children of opulent parents to the Institution. This may have been the case in an instance or two; and what wonder, in an establishment consisting, in town and country, of upwards of a thousand boys! But I believe there is no great danger of an abuse of this sort ever becoming very general. There is an old quality in human nature, which will perpetually present an adequate preventive to this evil. While the coarse blue coat and the yellow hose shall continue to be the costume of the school, (and never may modern refinement innovate upon the venerable fashion!) the sons of the Aristocracy of this country, cleric or laic, will not often be obtruded upon this seminary.
"I own, I wish there was more room for such complaints. I cannot but think that a sprinkling of the sons of respectable parents among them has an admirable tendency to liberalize the whole mass; and that to the great proportion of Clergymen's children in particular which are to be found among them it is owing, that the foundation has not long since degenerated into a mere Charity-school, as it must do, upon the plan so hotly recommended by some reformists, of recruiting its ranks from the offspring of none but the very lowest of the people.
"I am not learned enough in the history of the Hospital to say by what steps it may have departed from the letter of its original charter; but believing it, as it is at present constituted, to be a great practical benefit, I am not anxious to revert to first principles, to overturn a positive good, under pretence of restoring something which existed in the days of Edward the Sixth, when the face of every thing around us was as different as can be from the present. Since that time the opportunities of instruction to the very lowest classes (of as much instruction as may be beneficial and not pernicious to them) have multiplied beyond what the prophetic spirit of the first suggester of this charity[64] could have predicted, or the wishes of that holy man have even aspired to. There are parochial schools, and Bell's and Lancaster's, with their arms open to receive every son of ignorance, and disperse the last fog of uninstructed darkness which dwells upon the land. What harm, then, if in the heart of this noble City there should be left one receptacle, where parents of rather more liberal views, but whose time-straitened circumstances do not admit of affording their children that better sort of education which they themselves, not without cost to their parents, have received, may without cost send their sons? For such Christ's Hospital unfolds her bounty.
"To comfort, &c."
[64] "Bishop Ridley, in a Sermon preached before King Edward the Sixth."
Concerning this original opening a few words are necessary. Lamb had found the impetus to write his article in the public charges of favouritism and the undue distribution of influence, that were made by Robert Waithman (1764–1833), the reformer, against the governors of Christ's Hospital, in an open letter to those gentlemen in 1808. The newspapers naturally had much to say on the question, which was for some time a prominent one. The Examiner, for example, edited by Leigh Hunt—himself an old Christ's Hospitaller—spoke thus strongly (December 25, 1808): "That hundreds of unfortunate objects have applied in vain for admission is sufficiently notorious; and that many persons with abundant means of educating and providing for their children and relatives have obtained their admission into the School is also equally well known." The son of the Vicar of Edmonton, Mr. Dawson Warren, and a boy named Carysfoot Proby, whose father had two livings as well as his own and his wife's fortune, were the chief scapegoats.
Coleridge also wrote an article on the subject, which appeared in The Courier—a vigorous denial of Waithman's contention that the Hospital was intended for the poorest children, and the expression of a wish that the governors would permit no influence to change its aforetime policy. At the same time Coleridge expressed disapproval of the admission of boys whose fathers were in easy circumstances.
The Gentleman's Magazine version of Lamb's essay had one other difference from that of 1818. The second paragraph of the essay as it now stands did not then end at the words "would do well to go a little out of their way to see" (page 163). At the word "see" was a colon, and then came this passage:—
"let those judge, I say, who have compared this scene with the abject countenances, the squalid mirth, the broken-down spirit, and crouching, or else fierce and brutal deportment to strangers, of the very different sets of little beings who range round the precincts of common orphan schools and places of charity."
Lamb's essay was also printed in a quaint little book entitled A Brief History of Christ's Hospital from its Foundation by King Edward the Sixth to the Present Time, by J. I. W[ilson], published in 1820. It is there credited to Mr. Charles Lambe. In 1835, it was reissued as a pamphlet by some of Lamb's schoolfellows and friends "in testimony of their respect for the author, and of their regard for the Institution."
Christ's Hospital was founded in 1552 by Edward VI. in response to a sermon on charity by Ridley; his charge to Ridley being:—
To take out of the streets all the fatherless children and other poor men's children that were not able to keep them, and to bring them to the late dissolved house of the Greyfriars, which they devised to be a Hospital for them, where they should have meat, drink, and clothes, lodging and learning, and officers to attend upon them.
Later, this intention was somewhat modified, with the purpose of benefiting rather the reduced or embarrassed parents than the very poor.
The London history of the school is now ended. The boys have gone to Sussex, where, near Horsham, the new buildings have been erected, and the old Newgate Street structure has been demolished to make room for offices,
