refreshment room of the House. There is a description of it in Sketches by Boz—"A Parliamentary Sketch."
Page 284, line 6 from foot. Berenice's curl. After these words came, in The Reflector version of the essay, this passage:—
"—all, in their degrees, glittering somewhere. Sussex misses her member[71] on earth, but is consoled to view him, on a starry night, siding the Great Bear. Cambridge beholds hers[72] next Scorpio. The gentle Castlereagh curdles in the Milky Way."
[71] "J—— F——, Esq."
[72] "Sir V—— G——."
The member for Sussex at the time this essay was written (1811) was John Fuller, or Jack Fuller, of Rosehill, Sussex, and Devonshire Place, a bluff, eccentric character about town in those days, of huge stature and great wealth, whose house was famous for its musical soirées. Lamb calls him Ursa Major; his friend Jekyll, the wit, and one of Lamb's Old Benchers, called him the Hippopotamus. He once was forcibly removed from the House for refusing to give way and calling the Speaker "the insignificant little person in a wig." Fuller did not sit after 1812. He died in 1834. The member for Cambridge University was Sir Vicary Gibbs, then Attorney General, who in that capacity was a fierce opponent of the press, amongst those prosecuted by him being John and Leigh Hunt. From his caustic tongue he was known as Vinegar Gibbs—hence the reference to Scorpio. Castlereagh was, in 1823, no more; he had committed suicide in 1821.
Page 285. On a Passage in "The Tempest."
London Magazine, November 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb.
In the Magazine it was entitled "Nugæ Criticæ. By the author of Elia. II. On a Passage in 'The Tempest,'" the first contribution under this general title being the essay on Sir Philip Sidney's sonnets in the London Magazine, September, 1823, reprinted in the Last Essays of Elia. Lamb did not continue the series. The present paper was signed "L."
An ingenious commentary upon Lamb's theory was contributed by "Lælius" to the December London Magazine. After detailing his objections to Ogilby's narrative as a final solution, he put forward a theory of his own which is interesting enough to be reprinted here. Lælius wrote:—
The sense which I always attributed to the passage is this: uno verbo, the Witch Sycorax was pregnant;—and that humanity which teaches us to spare the guilty mother for the sake of her embryo innocent, was imputed by Shakespeare to the Algerines on this occasion. … The "one thing she did" is evidently what Shakespeare in his "Merchant of Venice" with great delicacy calls "the deed of kind;" and this sense, though by no means obvious, is justly inferrible from the context. Why then should it not be preferred? I have not been able to discover any thing in the rest of the piece inconsistent with the meaning here attributed to these lines; you, perhaps, may be more successful. A friend objected to me, that the law is—to spare the mother only till the birth of her child, and therefore that the Witch, instead of being exiled at once, would have been kept till she was delivered, and then punished with death for her "manifold mischiefs." But poets are not expected to dispense justice with such nice and legal discrimination—not to speak of what might have been the immediate necessity of expelling Sycorax from the Algerine community, either by death or banishment; the former of which was forbidden by the existing circumstances of her situation.
In connection with this theory it may be remarked that it was an old belief that during pregnancy a woman's eyes became blue. Webster, in the "Duchess of Malfi," makes Bosola say of the Duchess:—
The fins of her eyelids look most teeming blue.
I do not know of any editor of Shakespeare who has adopted Lamb's suggestion.
Page 288. Original Letter of James Thomson.
London Magazine, November, 1824. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This letter of James Thomson is printed in this edition, because Lamb was sufficiently interested in it to copy it out; but it is believed to be a genuine work of the author of the Seasons, and not, as has been stated, a hoax of Lamb's. In the memoir of Thomson by Sir Harris Nicolas (revised by Peter Cunningham), prefixed to the Aldine edition of Thomson's poems, the letter will be found in its right place. It is addressed to Dr. Cramston, September, 1725.
Page 292. Biographical Memoir of Mr. Liston.
London Magazine, January, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
This article was not signed, but we know it to be Lamb's from a reference in a letter to Miss Hutchinson, of January 20, 1825:—
"But did you read the 'Memoir of Liston'? and did you guess whose it was? Of all the Lies I ever put off, I value this most. It is from top to toe, every paragraph, Pure Invention; and has passed for Gospel, has been republished in newspapers, and in the penny play-bills of the Night, as an authentic Account. I shall certainly go to the Naughty Man some day for my Fibbings."
Writing to Barton on February 10, 1825, Lamb alludes to it again, remarking, "A life more improbable for him [Liston] to have lived would not be easily invented."
To come from Lamb to facts—according to the best accounts that we have, the father of John Liston (1776?-1846) was either a watchmaker, or a subordinate official in the Custom House. He went to Soho School, afterwards became an usher at Dr. Burney's school at Gosport, and in 1799 was a master at the Grammar School of St. Martin's in Castle Street, Leicester Square. His first appearance on the stage proper was at Weymouth, where he failed utterly. Later he joined a touring company in the north of England as a serious actor, and again failed. At last, however, a manager induced him to take up comic old men's and bumpkins' parts, and his real talents were at once discovered. Thereafter he succeeded steadily, until his salary was larger than that paid to any other comedian of his time. His greatest part was Paul Pry in John Poole's play of that name, which was produced in September in the year of Lamb's essay. Liston left the stage in 1837. He married a Miss Tyrer, a favourite actress in burlesque. Liston's own tendency to punning and practical jokes must have led him to look upon this spurious biography with much favour.
Mrs. Cowden Clarke in her autobiography, My Long Life, says that she often met Mr. and Mrs. Liston in the Lambs' rooms in Great Russell Street.
It is interesting, in connection with Lamb's joke, to know that Liston's library contained a number of works of biblical criticism.
Page 299. A Vision of Horns.
London Magazine, January, 1825. Signed "Elia." Not reprinted by Lamb.
I had some little doubt as to whether or no to include in the present edition this fantasia on a theme no longer acceptable, since Lamb himself says he did not care to be associated with it. "The Horns is in poor taste [he wrote to Miss Hutchinson], resembling the most laboured papers in the Spectator. I had sign'd it 'Jack Horner:' but Taylor and Hessey said, it would be thought an offensive article, unless I put my known signature to it; and wrung from me my
