Dowton's benefit, in which he did a cockney. The thing ran but one night; but when I say that Liston's Lubin Log was nothing to it, I say little: it was transcendent. And here let me say of actors, envious actors, that of Munden, Liston was used to speak, almost with the enthusiasm due to the dead, in terms of such allowed superiority to every actor on the stage, and this at a time when Munden was gone by in the world's estimation, that it convinced me that artists (in which term I include poets, painters, &c.), are not so envious as the world think. I have little time, and therefore enclose a criticism on Munden's Old Dosey and his general acting,* by a friend. C. LAMB." "Mr. Munden appears to us to be the most classical of actors. He is that in high farce, which Kemble was in high tragedy. The lines of these great artists are, it must be admitted, sufficiently distinct; but the same elements are in both,-the same directness of purpose, the same singleness of aim, the same concentration of power, the same ironcasing of inflexible manner, the same statuelike precision of gesture, movement, and attitude. The hero of farce is as little affected with impulses from without, as the retired Prince of Tragedians. There is something solid, sterling, almost adamantine, in the building up of his most grotesque characters. When he fixes his wonder-working face in any of its most amazing varieties, it looks as if the picture were carved out from a rock by Nature in a sportive vein, and might last for ever. It is like what we can imagine a mask of the old Grecian Comedy to have been, only that it lives, and breathes, and changes. His most fantastical gestures are the grand ideal of farce. He seems as though he belonged to the earliest and the stateliest age of Comedy, when instead of superficial foibles and the airy varieties of fashion, she had the grand asperities of man to work on, when her grotesque images had something romantic about them, and when humour and parody were themselves heroic. His expressions of feeling and bursts of enthusiasm are among the most genuine A little article inserted in "The Champion" before Lamb wrote his essay on the Acting of Munden. Lamb's repetition may cast on it sufficient interest to excuse its repetition here. which we have ever felt. They seem to come up from a depth of emotion in the heart, and burst through the sturdy casing of manner with a strength which seems increased tenfold by its real and hearty obstacle. The workings of his spirit seem to expand his frame, till we can scarcely believe that by measure it is small: for the space which he fills in the imagination is so real, that we almost mistake it for that of corporeal dimensions. His Qld Dosey, in the excellent farce of 'Past Ten o'Clock,' is his grandest effort of this kind, and we know of nothing finer. He seems to have a 'heart of oak' indeed. His description of a sea-fight is the most noble and triumphant piece of enthusiasm which we remember. It is as if the spirits of a whole crew of nameless heroes' were swelland proud a sympathy with the valour of ing in his bosom.' We never felt so ardent England as when we heard it. May health long be his, thus to do our hearts good-for we never saw any actor whose merits have the least resemblance to his even in species; and when his genius is withdrawn from the stage, we shall not have left even a term by which we can fitly describe it.” The following letter is TO MR. CARY. "Assidens est mihi bona soror, Euripiden evolvens, donum vestrum, carissime Cary, pro quo gratias agimus, lecturi atque iterum lecturi idem. Pergratus est liber ambobus, nempe 'Sacerdotis Commiserationis,' sacrum opus a te ipso Humanissimæ Religionis Sacerdote dono datum. Lachrymantes gavisuri sumus; est ubi dolor fiat voluptas ; nec semper dulce mihi est ridere; aliquando commutandum est he! he he! cum heu! heu ! heu ! "A Musis Tragicis me non penitus abhorruisse testis sit Carmen Calamitosum, nescio quo autore linguâ prius vernaculâ scriptum, et nuperrimè a me ipso Latine versum, scilicet, "Tom Tom of Islington.' Tenuistine? Thomas Thomas de Islington, Ægrotat succedenti, Mortua fit crastina.' "My dear Coleridge,-Not an unkind thought has passed in my brain about you. But I have been wofully neglectful of you, so that I do not deserve to announce to you, that if I do not hear from you before then, I will set out on Wednesday morning to take you by the hand. I would do it this moment, but an unexpected visit might flurry you. I shall take silence for acquiescence; and come. I am glad you could write so long a letter. Old loves to, and hope of kind looks from, the Gilmans when I come. Lamb's regard for Mr. Cary had now ripened into a fast friendship; and by agreement he dined every third Wednesday in the month at the Museum. In general, these were occasions on which Lamb observed the strictest rules of temperance; but once accident of stomach or of sentiment caused a woful deviation, which Lamb deplored in the following letter. TO MR. CARY. "I protest I know not in what words to invest my sense of the shameful violation of hospitality, which I was guilty of on that fatal Wednesday. Let it be blotted from the calendar. Had it been committed at a layman's house, say a merchant's or a manufacturer's, a cheesemonger's, or greengrocer's, or, to go higher, a barrister's, a member of Parliament's, a rich banker's, I should have felt alleviation, a drop of self-pity. But to be seen deliberately to go out of the house of a clergyman drunk! a clergyman of the Church of England too! not that alone, but of an expounder of that dark Italian Hierophant, an exposition little short of his who dared unfold the Apocalypse: divine riddles both; and, without supernal grace vouchsafed, Arks not to be fingered without present blasting to the touchers. And then, from what house! Not a common glebe, or vicarage (which yet had been shameful), but from a kingly repository of sciences, human and divine, with the primate of England for its guardian, arrayed in public majesty, from which the profane vulgar are bid fly. Could all those volumes have taught me nothing better! With feverish eyes on the succeeding dawn I opened upon the faint light, enough to distinguish, in a strange chamber, not immediately to be recognised, garters, hose, waistcoat, neckerchief, arranged in dreadful order and proportion, which I knew was not mine own. 'Tis the common symptom, on awaking, I judge my last night's condition from. A tolerable scattering on the floor I hail as being too probably my own, and if the candlestick be not removed, I assoil myself. But this finical arrangement, this finding everything in the morning in exact diametrical rectitude, torments me. By whom was I divested? Burning blushes! not by the fair hands of nymphs, the Buffam Graces ? Remote whispers suggested that I coached it home in triumph. Far be that from working pride on Elliston, "Captain Jackson," and "The in me, for I was unconscious of the locomotion. Old Margate Hoy," are among the most That a young Mentor accompanied a repro- original, the least constrained, and the most bate old Telemachus; that, the Trojan like, richly coloured of his works. It was favourhe bore his charge upon his shoulders, ably noticed by almost all the principal while the wretched incubus, in glimmering critics-by many enthusiastically and sinsense, hiccuped drunken snatches of flying cerely praised-and an admirable notice in on the bats' wings after sunset. An "The Quarterly" was published just after aged servitor was also hinted at, to make the foreboding of the title was fulfilled. His disgrace more complete, one, to whom my indisposition to write, however, increased; ignominy may offer further occasions of but in creating so much, excellent in its kind, revolt (to which he was before too fondly so complete in itself, and so little tinged with inclining) from the true faith; for, at a sight alloy, he had, in truth, done enough, and of my helplessness, what more was needed to had earned in literature, as in the drudgery drive him to the advocacy of independency? of the desk, a right to repose. Yet, still Occasion led me through Great Russell ready to obey the call of friendship, he wrote Street yesterday. I gazed at the great both prologue and epilogue to Knowles's play knocker. My feeble hands in vain essayed of "The Wife;" the composition of which to lift it. I dreaded that Argus Portitor, must have been mere labour, as they are who doubtless lanterned me out on that only decently suited to the occasion, and prodigious night. I called the Elginian have no mark or likelihood to repay the marbles. They were cold to my suit. I vanity of the poet. shall never again, I said, on the wide gates unfolding, say, without fear of thrusting back, in a light but a peremptory air, 'I am going to Mr. Cary's.' I passed by the walls of Balclutha. I had imaged to myself a zodiac of third Wednesdays irradiating by glimpses the Edmonton dulness. I dreamed of Highmore! I am de-vited to come on Wednesdays. Villanous old age, that, with second childhood, brings linked hand in hand her inseparable twin, new inexperience, which knows not effects of liquor. Where I was to have sate for a sober, middle-agedand-a-half-gentleman, literary too, the neat fingered artist can educe no notions but of a dissoluted Silenus, lecturing natural philosophy to a jeering Chromius, or a Mnasilus. Pudet. From the context gather the lost name of In 1833 the choicest prose essays, which Lamb had written since the publication of Elia, were collected and published-as with a melancholy foreboding-under the title of "The Last Essays of Elia;" by Mr. Moxon. The work contains ample proof that the powers of the author had ripened rather than declined; for the paper called "Blakesmoor in H-shire," which embodies his recollection of the old mansion in which his grandmother lived as housekeeper; those, Miss Isola's marriage, which left Lamb and his sister once more alone, induced them to draw a little nearer to their friends; and they fixed their abode in Church-street, Edmonton, within reach of the Enfield walks which custom had endeared to them. There with his sister he continued, regularly visiting London and dining with Mr. Cary on every third Wednesday. The following notelet is in answer to a letter inclosing a list of candidates for a widows' fund society, for which he was entitled to vote. TO MR. CARY. "Dear Sir,-The unbounded range of munificence presented to my choice, staggers me. What can twenty votes do for one hundred and two widows? I cast my eyes hopeless among the viduage. N.B. Southey* might be ashamed of himself to let his aged mother stand at the top of the list, with his 100l. a year and butt of sack. Sometimes I sigh over No. 12, Mrs. Carve-ill, some poor relation of mine, no doubt. No. 15 has my wishes, but then she is a Welsh one. I have Ruth upon No. 21. I'd tug hard for No. 24. No. 25 is an anomaly, there can be no Mrs. Hogg. No. 34 ensnares me. No. 73 should not have met so foolish a person. No. 92 * A Mrs. Southey headed the inclosed list. may bob it as she likes, but she catches no expected-but the calamity sank deep into cherry of me. So I have even fixed at haphazard, as you'll see. "Yours, every third Wednesday, "C. L." Lamb was entirely destitute of what is commonly called "a taste for music." A few old tunes ran in his head; now and then the expression of a sentiment, though never of song, touched him with rare and exquisite delight; and Braham in his youth, Miss Rennell, who died too soon, and who used to sing the charming air, “In infancy our hopes and fears," and Miss Burrell, won his ear and his heart. But usually music only confused him, and an opera-to which he once or twice tried to accompany Miss Isola-was to him a maze of sound in which he almost lost his wits. But he did not, therefore, take less pleasure in the success of Miss Clara Novello, -whose family he had known for many years, and to whom he addressed the following lines, which were inserted in the "Athenæum," of July 26, in this his last year. TO CLARA N The Gods have made me most unmusical, Upon the captive afr; I know no note, rich his mind, and was, I believe, seldom far from his thoughts. It had been arranged that the attendance at the funeral should be confined to the family of the departed poet and philosopher, and Lamb, therefore, was spared the misery of going through the dismal ceremony of mourning. For the first week he forebore to write; but at its close he addressed the following short letter to one of the family of him whom he once so justly denominated Coleridge's "more than friend." Like most of Lamb's letters, it is undated, but the postmark is Aug. 5, 1834. TO THE REV. JAMES GILMAN. "My dear Sir,-The sad week being over, "Mr. Walden's, C. LAMB." Shortly after, assured that his presence would be welcome, Lamb went to Highgate. There he asked leave to see the nurse who had attended upon Coleridge; and being struck and affected by the feeling she manifested towards his friend, insisted on her receiving five guineas from him,—a gratuity which seemed almost incomprehensible to the poor woman, but which Lamb could not help giving as an immediate expression of his own gratitude. From her he learned the He had now to sustain the severest of his effort by which Coleridge had suppressed the losses. After a long and painful illness-expression of his sufferings, and the discovery borne with an heroic patience which con- affected him even more than the news of his cealed the intensity of his sufferings from death. He would startle his friends somethe bystanders, Coleridge died. As in the instance of Hazlitt, Lamb did not feel the immediate blow so acutely as he himself C. LAMB. times by suddenly exclaiming, "Coleridge is dead!" and then pass on to common themes, having obtained the momentary relief of THOUGHTS ON PRESENTS OF GAME, &C. "We love to have our friend in the country sitting thus at our table by proxy; to apprehend his presence (though a hundred miles may be between us) by a turkey, whose goodly aspect reflects to us his 'plump corpusculum;' to taste him in grouse or woodcock; to feel him gliding down in the toast peculiar to the latter; to concorporate him in a slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed to have him within ourselves; to know him intimately; such participation is methinks unitive, as the old theologians phrase it."-Last Essays of Elia. "Elia presents his acknowledgments to his 'Correspondent unknown,' for a basket of prodigiously fine game. He takes for granted that so amiable a character must be a reader of the "Athenæum," else he had meditated a notice in the "Times." Now if this friend had consulted the Delphic oracle for a present • Marguerite, in French, signifies a daisy. suited to the palate of Elia, he could not have hit upon a morsel so acceptable. The birds he is barely thankful for: pheasants are poor fouls disguised in fine feathers. But a hare roasted hard and brown, with gravy and melted butter!-old Mr. Chambers, the sensible clergyman in Warwickshire, whose son's acquaintance has made many hours happy in the life of Elia, used to allow a pound of Epping to every hare. Perhaps that was over-doing it. But, in spite of the note of Philomel, who, like some fine poets, that think no scorn to adopt plagiarisms from a humble brother, reiterates every spring her cuckoo cry of 'Jug, Jug, Jug,' Elia pronounces that a hare, to be truly palated, must be roasted. Jugging sophisticates her. In our way it eats so 'crips,' as Mrs. Minikin says. Time was, when Elia was not arrived at his taste, that he preferred to all luxuries a roasted pig. But he disclaims all such green-sickness appetites in future, though he hath to acknowledge the receipt of many a delicacy in that kind from correspondents-good, but mistaken men— in consequence of their erroneous supposition, that he had carried up into mature life the prepossessions of childhood. From the worthy Vicar of Enfield he acknowledges a tithe contribution of extraordinary sapor. The ancients must have loved hares. why adopt the word lepores (obviously from lepus) but for some subtle analogy betweer. the delicate flavour of the latter, and the finer relishes of wit in what we most poorly translate pleasantries. The fine madnesses of the poet are the very decoction of his diet. Thence is he hare-brained. Harum-scarum is a libellous unfounded phrase, of modern usage. 'Tis true the hare is the most circumspect of animals, sleeping with her eye open. Her ears, ever erect, keep them in that wholesome exercise, which conduces them to form the very tit-bit of the admirers of this noble animal. Noble will I call her, in spite of her detractors, who from occasional demonstrations of the principle of self-preservation (common to all animals), infer in her a defect of heroism. Half a hundred horsemen, with thrice the number of dogs, scour the country in pursuit of puss across three counties; and because the wellflavoured beast, weighing the odds, is willing to evade the hue and cry, with her delicate Else |