Gainsborough:—
After this admirable artist [Hogarth] had spent the greater part of his life in an active, busy, and, we may add, successful attention to the ridicule of life; after he had invented a new species of dramatic painting, in which probably he will never be equalled, and had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain and illustrate the domestic and familiar scenes of common life, which were generally, and ought to have been always, the subject of his pencil; he very imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempted the great historical style, for which his previous habits had by no means prepared him: he was indeed so entirely unacquainted with the principles of this style, that he was not even aware that any artificial preparation was at all necessary. It is to be regretted, that any part of the life of such a genius should be fruitlessly employed. Let his failure teach us not to indulge ourselves in the vain imagination, that by a momentary resolution we can give either dexterity to the hand, or a new habit to the mind.
Page 95, line 10. Children's books. The Reflector version added, "or the tale of Carlo the Dog."
Page 97, line 8 from foot. With Dr. Swift. The page opposite the title of the Tale of a Tub contains a (fictitious) list of "Treatises writ by the same author." The fifth of these is "A Panegyric upon the World." It is probable that Lamb had this in mind.
Page 101. On the Custom of Hissing at the Theatres.
The Reflector, No. III., 1811. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Lamb omits to say that he joined in the hissing of his farce, "Mr. H.," on the unhappy night of December 10, 1806. In its ill fortune he seems always to have taken a kind of humorous sympathetic pride. When he printed the play at the end of his Works, 1818, he prefixed a quotation from Hazlitt's essay on "Great and Little Things," of which this is a portion:—
Mr. H.——thou wert damned. Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announced thy appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of persons asking one another if they would go to see Mr. H.——, and answering that they would certainly; but before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his friends, and the town, was eclipsed, for thou wert damned!
Writing to Manning concerning the play's failure, Lamb said:—"Damn 'em, how they hissed! It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring sometimes, like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hiss'd me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God should give his favourite children, men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with, and that they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent labours of their fellow-creatures who are desirous to please them!"
Page 101, line 3 of essay. That memorable season, 1806–1807. Lamb here exaggerates. It is true that ten new pieces were tried at Drury Lane in the season mentioned; but five were successful, and Monk Lewis's "Adelgitha," the only tragedy, could hardly be called a failure. Of the remaining four plays which failed, Holcroft's "Vindictive Man" was the most notable.
Page 101, line 9 of essay. The Clerk of Chatham.
Cade. Dost thou use to write thy name? or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest plain-dealing man?
Clerk of Chatham. Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can write my name.
All. He hath confessed: away with him! he's a villain and a traitor.
Cade. Away with him, I say! hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck.
"II. Henry VI.," Act IV., Scene 2, lines 109–117.
Page 101, line 7 from foot. "The Vindictive Man." This was the comedy by Thomas Holcroft, Lamb's friend, the failure of which occurred a few nights before that of "Mr. H." Lamb describes the luckless performance in a letter to Manning dated December 5, 1806.
Page 102, line 5. "Our nonsense did not … suit their nonsense." From Burnet's History of His Own Times, Vol. II.: "He [Charles II.] told me he had a chaplain that was a very honest man, but a very great blockhead, to whom he had given a living in Suffolk, that was full of that sort of people: he had gone about among them from house to house, though he could not imagine what he could say to them, for, he said, he was a very silly fellow, but that he believed his nonsense suited their nonsense; yet he had brought them all to church: and, in reward of his diligence, he had given him a bishopric in Ireland." (A note by Swift states the cleric to be Bishop Woolly of Clonfert.)
Page 102, line 25. A Syren Catalani. Angelica Catalani (1779–1849), one of the most beautiful of all singers.
Page 104, line 19. The O.P. differences. The O.P.—Old Prices—Riots raged in 1809. On September 18 of that year the new Covent Garden Theatre was opened under the management of John Philip Kemble and Charles Kemble, with a revised price list. The opposition to this revision was so determined that "Macbeth," with John Philip Kemble as Macbeth, and Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, was played practically in dumb show, and in the end the theatre was closed again for a while. The battle was waged not only by fists but by pamphlets. After two months' fighting a compromise was effected.
Page 105, line 17. Obstinate, in John Bunyan. At the beginning of the Pilgrim's Progress. It was not Obstinate, however, but Christian who put his fingers in his ears. Obstinate pursued and caught him. Lamb made the same mistake again in some verses to Bernard Barton.
A club of hissed authors existed in Paris in the 1870's. Flaubert, Daudet and Zola were members.
Page 107. On Burial Societies; and the Character of an Undertaker.
Reflector, No. III., 1811. The letter there begins "Sir." Printed again in part, in The Yellow Dwarf, January 17, 1818. Reprinted in the Works, 1818.
Page 110. The following short Essay. "The Character of an Undertaker" is, of course, Lamb's own. Sable is the undertaker in Sir Richard Steele's "Funeral; or, Grief à la Mode," 1702. Two of his remarks run thus: "There is often nothing more … deeply Joyful than a Young Widow in her Weeds and Black Train," and "The poor Dead are deliver'd to my Custody … not to do them Honour, but to satisfy the Vanity or Interest of their Survivors."
Page 112. On the Tragedies of Shakespeare.
Printed in The Reflector, No. IV. (1811), under the title "Theatralia, No. I. On Garrick, and Acting; and the Plays of Shakespeare, considered
