a man of whom he knew absolutely nothing, except that he was "a thoughtless scribbler." If, as seems only too possible, Gifford deliberately poisoned his darts, it is also probable that he did not realize what he was doing. It would be unfair to accept Hazlitt's picture of him as a true portrait; but Lamb's apology for Hazlitt himself applies with at least equal force to the first editor of the Quarterly. "He does bad actions without being a bad man." Perhaps it is too lenient, for though Gifford's attack on Lamb was undoubtedly one of the bad actions of his life, it was, after all, a matter of conduct. The apology, whether truthful or the opposite, reveals deep-seated corruption of principle if not of character.
Lamb's phrase, "Mr. Shoemaker Gifford," had reason for its existence. William Gifford (1756–1826) was apprenticed to a shoemaker in 1772. Lamb later repaid some of his debt in the sonnet "St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford," which appeared in The Examiner, October 3, 1819, and was reprinted in The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion" in 1822. Gifford, who was editor of the Quarterly on its establishment in 1809, held the post until his death, in 1826.
The original copy of Lamb's review of Wordsworth, Mr. John Murray informs me, no longer exists. I have collated the extracts with the first edition of the Excursion and have also corrected the Tasso.
Page 187, line 3 of essay. To be called the Recluse. Wordsworth never completed this scheme. A fragment called The Recluse, Book I., was published in 1888.
Page 188, line 7. Which Thomson so feelingly describes. This is the passage, from Thomson's Seasons, "Winter," 799–809:—
There, through the prison of unbounded wilds,
Barr'd by the hand of Nature from escape,
Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around
Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow;
And heavy-loaded groves; and solid floods,
That stretch'd, athwart the solitary vast,
Their icy horrors to the frozen main;
And cheerless towns far-distant, never bless'd,
Save when its annual course the caravan
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,
With news of human-kind.
Page 200. On the Melancholy of Tailors.
The Champion, December 4, 1814. Works, 1818.
The editor of The Champion was then John Scott, afterwards editor of the London Magazine, which printed Lamb's best work. From a letter written by Lamb to Scott in 1814 (in the late Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Talks about Autographs, 1896) it seems that he was to contribute more or less regularly to The Champion. Lamb wrote:—
"Sir—Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I accede to your proposal most willingly.
"As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please call upon you for your part of the engagement (supposing I shall have performed mine) on the 1st of March next, and thence forward if it suit you quarterly—you will occasionally wink at Briskets and Veiny Pieces.
"Your Obt. Svt.,
C. Lamb.
This essay on "Tailors" is, however, the only piece by Lamb that can be identified, although probably many of the passages from old authors quoted in The Champion in Scott's time were contributed by Lamb. These might be the briskets and veiny pieces he refers to. On January 23, 1814, is "A Challenge" of the Learned Dog at Drury Lane which he might have written; but it is not interesting now. Later, after John Thelwall took over The Champion in 1818, Lamb contributed various epigrams, which will be found in Vol. IV. of the present edition.
Lamb seems to have sent the present essay to Wordsworth, whose reply we may imagine took the form of an account of certain tailors within his own experience that did not comply with Lamb's scription; since Lamb's answer to that letter is the one dated beginning, "Your experience about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton [Lamb's essay is signed 'Burton, Junior']" and so forth.
When preparing this essay for the Works, 1818, Lamb omitted certain portions. The footnote on page 202 originally continued thus:—
"But commend me above all to a shop opposite Middle Row, in Holborn, where, by the ingenious contrivance of the master taking in three partners, there is a physical impossibility of the conversation ever flagging, while 'the four' alternately toss it from one to the other, and at whatever time you drop in, you are sure of a discussion: an expedient which Mr. A——m would do well to think on, for with all the alacrity with which he and his excellent family are so dexterous to furnish their successive contributions, I have sometimes known the continuity of the dialogue broken into, and silence for a few seconds to intervene."
In connection with Mr. A——m there is a passage in a letter from Mary Lamb to Miss Hutchinson in 1818, wherein she says that when the Lambs, finding London insupportable after a long visit to Calne, in Wiltshire (at the Morgans'), had taken lodgings in Dalston, Charles was so much the creature of habit, or the slave of his barber, that he went to the Temple every morning to be shaved, on a roundabout way to the India House. This would very likely be Mr. A——m, Flower de Luce Court being just opposite the Temple, off Fetter Lane. The London directories in those days ignored barbers; hence his name must remain in disguise.
In The Champion, also, the paragraph on page 203, beginning, "I think," etc., ran thus:—
"I think, then, that they [the causes of tailors' melancholy] may be reduced to three, omitting some subordinate ones; viz.
"The sedentary habits of the tailor.—
Something peculiar in his diet.—
Mental perturbation from a sense of reproach, &c.—"
And at the end of the article, as it now stands, came the following exposition of the third theory:—
"Thirdly, and lastly, mental perturbation, arising from a sense of shame; in other words, that painful consciousness which he always carries about with him, of lying under a sort of disrepute in popular estimation. It is easy to talk of despising public opinion, of its being unworthy the attention of a wise man &c. The theory is excellent; but, somehow, in practice
"still the world prevails and its dread laugh.
"Tailors are men (it is well if so much be allowed them,) and as such, it is not in human nature not to feel sore at being misprized, undervalued, and made a word of scorn.[66] I have often racked my brains to discover the grounds of this unaccountable prejudice, which is known to exist against a useful and industrious body of men. I confess I can discover none, except in the sedentary posture, before touched upon, which from long experience has been found by these artists to be the one most convenient for the exercise of their vocation. But I would beg the more stirring and locomotive part of the community, to whom the quiescent state of the tailor furnishes a perpetual fund of rudeness, to consider, that in the mere action of sitting (which they make so merry with) there is
