225, first line of essay. The Roxburgh sale. The library of the third Duke of Roxburgh was sold, in a forty-five days' sale, between May 18 and July 8, 1812.
Page 229. II.—Charles Lloyd's Poems.
Examiner, October 24 and 25, 1819. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb. Lamb and Lloyd had been intimate friends in 1797 and 1798, when they produced together Blank Verse, and when for a while Lloyd shared rooms with James White. But serious differences arose which need not be inquired into here, and after 1800 they drifted apart and were never really friendly again. Lloyd settled among the Lakes, where at frequent intervals for many years he became the prey of religious mania. In 1818, however, the clouds effectually dispersed for a while, and, returning to London, he resumed the poetical activity of his early life. The new pieces in Nugæ Canoræ, 1819, were the first-fruit of this period, which lasted until 1823. He then relapsed into his old state and died, lost to the world, in 1839. Writing to Lloyd concerning his later poetry Lamb said: "Your lines are not to be understood reading on one leg."
In Lloyd's poem, "Desultory Thoughts in London," 1821, are portraits of both Coleridge and Lamb. One stanza on Lamb has these lines:—
It is a dainty banquet, known to few,
To thy mind's inner shrine to have access;
While choicest stores of intellect endue
That sanctuary, in marvellous excess.
Those lambent glories ever bright and new,
Those, privileged to be its inmates, bless!
This shows that Lloyd retained his old affection and admiration for Lamb, just as Lamb's willingness to review Lloyd shows that he had forgotten the past. The quotations have been corrected from Lloyd's pages.
Page 230, line 15. Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1759–1797), the first wife of William Godwin, and the advocate of women's independence. Charles Lloyd had known her in his early London days.
Page 232. III.—Barron Field's Poems.
Examiner, January 16 and 17, 1820. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Barron Field (1786–1846), son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital, was long one of Lamb's friends, possibly through his brother, a fellow clerk of Lamb's in the India House. See the Elia essays on "Distant Correspondents" and "Mackery End," and notes. Field was in Australia from 1817 to 1824 as Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. His First-Fruits of Australian Poetry was printed privately in 1819 and afterwards added as an appendix to Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales, 1825.
Page 232. Motto. "I first adventure. … " An adaptation of the couplet in Hall's satires:—
I first adventure. Follow me who list,
And be the second English satirist.
This couplet was placed by Field on the threshold of the poems in the Geographical Memoirs, borrowed, I imagine, from Lamb's review.
Page 232, line 11 from foot. Thiefland. Compare the Elia essay "Distant Correspondents."
Page 232, line 8 from foot. A merry Captain. Captain (afterwards Rear-Admiral) James Burney (1750–1821), Lamb's friend, who sailed with Cook on two voyages. Lamb told Mrs. Shelley of the Captain's pun in much the same words; but the pun itself we do not know.
Page 233, line 16. Jobson, etc. These characters are in "The Devil to Pay," by Charles Coffey, 1731.
Page 233, line 26. Braham or Stephens. John Braham, the tenor; Miss Stephens made her first appearance at Drury Lane, as Polly in "The Beggar's Opera," in 1798.
Page 233, line 12 from foot. The first. … The first poem was entitled "Botany Bay Flowers."
Page 234. "The Kangaroo." Writing to Barron Field in 1820 Lamb says: "We received your 'Australian First-Fruits,' of which I shall say nothing here, but refer you to **** of 'The Examiner,' who speaks our mind on all public subjects. I can only assure you that both Coleridge and Wordsworth … were hugely taken with your Kangaroo." The poem is here corrected from the author's text.
Page 235. IV.—Keats' "Lamia."
The New Times, July 19, 1820. This is the article referred to by Cowden Clarke in his Recollections of Writers, 1878: "Upon the publication of the last volume of poems [Lamia, etc.] Charles Lamb wrote one of his finely appreciative and cordial critiques in the Morning Chronicle." By a slip of memory Clarke gave the wrong paper. Lamb wrote in the Morning Chronicle occasionally (his sonnet to Sarah Burney appeared in it as near to the date in question as July 13, 1820), but it was in The New Times that he reviewed Keats. The New Times was founded by John (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart (1773–1856), Lamb and Coleridge's friend, and the brother-in-law of Hazlitt.
Two days after the appearance of Lamb's review—on July 21, 1820—The New Times printed some further extracts from the book, which presumably had been crowded out of the article.
There is so little doubt in my own mind that this is Lamb's review that I have placed it in the body of this book and not in the Appendix. The internal evidence is very strong, particularly at the end, and in the use of such phrases as "joint strengths" and "younger impressibilities." But there is external evidence too. Leigh Hunt, writing of Keats, in his Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, 1828, says:—
I remember Charles Lamb's delight and admiration on reading this work [Lamia]; how pleased he was with the designation of Mercury as the "star of Lethe" (rising, as it were, and glittering, as he came upon that pale region); with the fine daring anticipation in that passage of the second poem—
"So the two brothers and their murdered man, Rode past fair Florence;"
and with the description, at once delicate and gorgeous, of Agnes [i.e., Madeline], praying beneath the painted window.
Lamb did not know Keats well. He had met him only a few times, the historic occasion being the dinner at Haydon's, in December, 1817, when the Comptroller of Stamps was present. But he admired his work (he told Crabb Robinson he considered it next to Wordsworth's), and he hated the treatment that Keats received from certain critics. Keats, by the way, mentions meeting Lamb at Novello's and having to endure some wretched puns.
Page 239. Sir Thomas More.
The Indicator, December 20, 1820. Signed ****. Leigh Hunt introduced the
