André (1751–1780), a major in the British army in America in the War of Independence. In his capacity as Clinton's Adjutant-General he corresponded with one Arnold, who was plotting to deliver West Point to the British. In the course of his negotiations with Arnold, he crossed into the American lines and was compelled by circumstances to adopt civilian clothes. Being caught in this costume, he was charged as a spy, and, though every effort was made to save him, was, by the necessities of war, shot as such by Washington on October 2, 1780. He died like a hero. The British army donned mourning for his death, and a monument to his memory was erected in Westminster Abbey. Lamb alludes to the mutilation of this monument by the fracture of a nose, but as a matter of fact the whole head of Washington had to be renewed more than once. According to Mrs. Gordon's Life of Dean Buckland, two heads taken from the monument were returned from America to the Dean many years ago, with the request that they might be replaced. They had been appropriated as relics. Lamb's reference to Transatlantic Freedom was another hit at Southey's Pantisocratic tendencies (see note above) and his Joan of Arc rebel days.
In the London Magazine for December, 1823, under "The Lion's Head," is the following:—
We have to thank an unknown correspondent for the following
Sonnet
Occasioned by reading in Elia's Letter to Dr. Southey, that the admirable translator of Dante, the modest and amiable C——, still remained a curate—or, as a waggish friend observed—after such a Translation should still be without Preferment.[70]
O Thou! who enteredst the tangled wood,
By that same spirit trusting to be led,
That on the first discoverer's footsteps shed
The light with which another world was view'd;
Thou hast well scann'd the path, and firmly stood
With measured niceness in his holy tread,
Till, mounting up thy star-illumined head,
Thou lookedst in upon the perfect good!
What treasures does thy golden key unfold!
Riches immense, the pearl beyond all price,
And saintly truths to gross ears vainly told!
Say, gilds thy earthly path some Beatrice?—
If bread thou want'st, they will but give thee stones,
And when thou'rt gone, will quarrel for thy bones!
—An Unworthy Rector.
[70] We suspect, by the way, this is not strictly the case, though we believe it is very nearly so.
Page 278. Guy Faux.
London Magazine, November, 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This essay is a blend of new and old. The first portion is new; but at the words (page 279, line 3 from foot) "The Gunpowder Treason was the subject," begins a reprint, with very slight modifications, of an article contributed by Lamb to The Reflector, No. II., in 1811, under the title "On the Probable Effects of the Gunpowder Treason in this country if the Conspirators had accomplished their Object." The Reflector essay was signed "Speculator."
Page 278, line 1. Ingenious and subtle writer. This was Hazlitt, whose article on "Guy Faux," from which Lamb quotes, appeared in The Examiner of November 11, 18 and 25, 1821, signed "Z." Lamb seems to have suggested to Hazlitt this whitewashing of Guido. See Hazlitt's essay on "Persons one would wish to have seen" (1826), reprinted in Winterslow, the report of a conversation "twenty years ago," where, after stating that it was Lamb's wish that Guy Faux should be defended, Hazlitt remarks that he supposes he will have to undertake the task himself. Later in the same essay Hazlitt quotes Lamb as mentioning Guy Faux and Judas Iscariot as two persons he would wish to see; adding, of the conspirator:—
I cannot but think that Guy Faux, that poor, fluttering, annual scarecrow of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give something to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion.
Again, in the article on "Lamb" in the Spirit of the Age (1825) Hazlitt wrote:—
Whittington and his Cat are a fine hallucination for Mr. Lamb's historic Muse, and we believe he never heartily forgave a certain writer who took the subject of Guy Faux out of his hands.
A few years afterwards Lamb told Carlyle he regretted that the Faux conspiracy had failed—there would have been such a magnificent explosion. Carlyle cites this remark in his diary in evidence of Lamb's imbecility, but I fancy that Lamb had merely taken the measure of his visitor.
Lamb's reference to Hazlitt as an ex-Jesuit with the mention of Douay and M——th (Maynooth, the Irish Roman Catholic College), is, of course, chaff, resulting from Hazlitt's defence of this arch-Romanist.
After "Father of the Church" (page 280, line 7) Lamb had written in The Reflector:—
"The conclusion of his discourse is so pertinent to my subject, that I must beg your patience while I transcribe it. He has been drawing a parallel between the fire which Vaux and his accomplices meditated, and that which James and John were willing to have called down from heaven upon the heads of the Samaritans who would not receive our Saviour into their houses. 'Lastly,' he says, 'it (the powder treason) was a fire so strange that it had no example. The apostles, indeed, pleaded a mistaken precedent for the reasonableness of their demand, they desired leave to do but even as Elias did. The Greeks only retain this clause, it is not in the Bibles of the Church of Rome. And, really," etc.
I have collated the passage quoted by Lamb with the original edition of the sermon. Of the Latin phrases which Taylor does not translate, the first is from Sidonius Apollinaris, Carm., XXII.: "The stall of the Thracian King, the altars of Busiris, the feasts of Antiphates, and the Tauric sovereignty of Thoas." Rex Bistonius was Diomed, King of the Bistones, in Thrace, who fed his horses with human flesh, and was himself thrown to be their food by Hercules. Busiris, King of Egypt, seized and sacrificed all foreigners who visited this country, and he also was slain by Hercules. Antiphates was King of the Læstrygonians in Sicily, man-eating giants, who destroyed eleven of the ships of Ulysses. Thoas was King of Lemnos, and when the Lemnian women killed all the men in the island, his daughter, Hypsipylé, then elected queen, saved him, and he fled to Taurus where he became a king. This is the only legend of cruelty associated with the name of Thoas, and of course he is not the prepetrator; the crime is that of the women.
Concerning Taylor's second quotation, I am informed that the words "ergo quæ … tuas qui" occur (virtually) in Prudentius, Cathemerinon, V., 81. The Latin is monkish, but means evidently: "But that massacre of princes who fell unavenged, Christ brooked not, lest perchance the house that His Father had built should be overthrown. And so what tongue can unfold Thy praise, O Christ, who dost abase the disloyal people and its treacherous ruler?"
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