indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out— 5 sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me-and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came 10 offering to pluck them, because they were to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one forbidden fruit, unless now and then,-and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and were to carry away the old tombs they had 15 the fir-apples, which were good for nothing but to look at—or in lying about upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden smells around me or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too along warmth or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C's tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, "that would be foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by 20 with the oranges and the limes in that grateful a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman; so good indeed that she 25 state, as if it mocked at their impertinent knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their greatgrandmother Field once was; and how in her 30 youth she was esteemed the best dancer-here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer 35 ened tone, I told how, though their greatcame, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I told friskings,—I had more pleasure in these busyidle diversions than in all the sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such-like common baits of children. Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in somewhat a more height grandmother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John L- -;3 because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone 40 to the rest of us; and, instead of moping about chamber of the great lone house; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county she said "those innocents would do her no 45 in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out-and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries and how their uncle grew up to man's harm;" and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows 50 estate as brave as he was handsome, to the and tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to the great house in the holy-days, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts 55 of the twelve Cæsars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them; how I never could be tired with admiration of everybody, but of their greatgrandmother Field most especially; and how he used to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed boy-for he was a good bit older than me-many a mile when I could not walk for pain; and how in after life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) 3 Lamb's brother John, twelve years his senior, had died a short time before this essay was written. 10 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS (Last Essays, 1833) 5 An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he has left off reading alto nality. At the hazard of losing some credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's thoughts. I dream away my life in others' speculations. I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me. I have no repugnances. Shaftsbury2 is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild3 too low. I can read anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. make allowances enough for him when he was impatient and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when I was lame-footed; and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be 15 gether, to the great improvement of his origialive again, to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor uncle, must have been when the doctor took off his limb-Here the 20 children fell a-crying, and asked if their little mourning which they had on was not for Uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. 25 Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W -n; and as much as children could understand, I explained, to them what coyness, and difficulty, and de- 30 biblia a-biblia-I reckon Court Calendars, nial meant in maidens-when suddenly turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of representment, that I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that 35 bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without 40 I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unspeech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech: "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only 45 what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name;"-and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor armchair, where I had 50 withering Population Essay. To expect a fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side-but John L. (or James Elia) was gone forever. Lamb never married. He gave up his courtship of the "fair Alice" in order to devote his life to the care of his afflicted sister Mary. 5 The river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology. The cousin Bridget of the Essays of Elia is Lamb's sister Mary. In this catalogue of books which are no books Directories, Pocket-Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large: the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally, all those volumes which "no gentleman's library should be without:" the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. excluding. I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books' clothing perched upon shelves like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a wellbound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted playbook, then, opening what "seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a 5 1A shallow, affected dandy in Sir John Vanbrugh's play. The Relapse, 1697. 2 Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftsbury (1671-1713). A moral philosopher and generally considered a model of the genteel style in writing. A famous English thief (c. 1682-1725). subject of Fielding's satire, History of a Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great (1743). He is the Folding checker-boards, made outwardly to resemble books. Malthus, an English economist, published in 1798 his famous essay on the Principle of Population. Steele, or a Farquhar, and find -Adam Smith." To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded Encyclopædias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of russia, or morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably reclothe my shivering folios; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lullys to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils. To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is not We know not where is that Promethean torch such a book, for instance, as the Life of the 5 Duke of Newcastle, by his Duchess 10—no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such a jewel. Not only rare volumes of this description, which seem hopeless ever to be reprinted, but 10 old editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose works, Fuller-of whom we have reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go about, and are talked of here and there, we know ever will) in the national heart, so as to become stock books-it is good to possess these in durable and costly covers. I do not care for a First Folio of Shakespeare.11 [You cannot to be lavished upon all kinds of books indis- 15 have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly criminately. I would not dress a set of Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The dishabille, or half-binding (with russia backs ever) is our costume. A Shakespeare or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere foppery to 20 make a pet book of an author whom everybody reads.] I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Tonson, 12 without notes, and with plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as maps or modest remembrancers to the text; and, without pretending to any supposable emulation with it, are so much better than the Shakespeare gallery engravings, 13 which did. I have a community of feeling with my countrymen about his Plays, and I like those editions trick out in gay apparel. The possession of them confers no distinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no tickling sense of property in the owner. Thom- 25 son's Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond russia), if we would not 30 of him best which have been oftenest tumbled forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old "Circulating Library" Tom Jones, or Vicar of Wakefield! How they speak of the thousand thumbs that have turned over their pages with delight! of the lone sempstress, whom they 35 may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling 40 earthing the bones of that fantastic old great out their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? what better condition could we desire to see them in? In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands from binding. Fielding, 45 Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes-Great Nature's Stereotypes-we see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the copies of them to be "eterne." But where a book is 50 at once both good and rare-where the individual is almost the species, and when that perishes, The author of the Wealth of Nations, and the founder of modern political economy. A celebrated German physician, alchemist, and philosopher (1493-1541). A medieval philosopher and alchemist, author of a system of logic. The presence of Paracelsus and Lully in Lamb's library suggest his fondness for quaint and out-of-the-way reading. about and handled.-On the contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I have no sympathy with them. If they were as much read as the current editions of the other poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy.14 What need was there of un man, to expose them in a winding sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular?-The wretched Malone15 Quoted by memory from Othello, V. ii. 12. "I know not where is that Promethean heat 10 Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1624- 12 Nicholas Rowe edited the first critical edition of Shakespeare; it was published by Tonson in 1709. 13 The Shakespeare gallery of John Boydell, who in 1786 began the publication of a series of prints illustrative of Shakespeare's plays, after pictures painted for him by English artists; he built a gallery in Pall Mall for their exhibition. 14 By Robert Burton (1577-1740), see p. 229, supra. 15 "This happened in 1793 on the occasion of Malone's visit to Stratford to examine the municipal and other records of that town, for the purpose of his edition." Ainger. shops and public-houses a fellow will get up and spell out a paragraph, which he communicates as some discovery. Another follows with his selection. So the entire journal tran5 spires at length by piecemeal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and, without this expedient, no one in the company would probably ever travel through the contents of a whole paper. Newspapers always excite curiosity. No could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him whitewash the painted effigy of old Shakespeare, which stood there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to wearthe only authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. They covered him over with a coat of white paint. By ——, if I had been a justice 10 one ever lays one down without a feeling of of peace for Warwickshire, I would have clapt disappointment. both commentator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious varlets. What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at Nando's," keeps the paper! I am sick of hearing the waiter bawling out inces I think I see them at their work-these 15 santly, "The Chronicle is in hand, Sir." sapient trouble-tombs. Coming into an inn at night-having ordered your supper-what can be more delightful than to find lying in the window-seat, left there time out of mind by the carelessness of the old Town and Country Magazine, with its amusing tête-à-tête pictures-"The Royal Lover and Lady G- ;" "The Melting Platonic and the old Beau,"-and such-like antiquated scandal? Would you exchange it—at that time, and in that place for a better book? Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess, that the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear-to mine, at least-than that of Milton or Shake- 20 some former guest,-two or three numbers of speare? It may be, that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley. 25 Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes'16 30 could have read to him-but he missed the sermons? Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears. 35 Winter evenings-the world shut out-with less of ceremony the gentle Shakespeare enters. At such a season the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale Poor Tobin, 18 who latterly fell blind, did not regret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading the Paradise Lost, or Comus, he pleasure of skimming over with his own eye a magazine, or a light pamphlet. I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues of some cathedral alone, and reading Candide, 19 I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been once detected-by a familiar damsel-reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill 20 (her Cythera) reading These two poets you cannot avoid reading 40 Pamela.21 There was nothing in the book to aloud to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one-and it degenerates into an audience. make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure, but as she seated herself down by me, and scemed determined to read in company, I could have wished it had been-any other Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. 45 book. We read on very sociably for a few pages; It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness. A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of the Bank offices it is the custom (to 50 save so much individual time) for one of the clerks who is the best scholar-to commence upon the Times, or the Chronicle and recite its entire contents aloud, pro bono publico. With every advantage of lungs and elocution, 55 the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' 15 Author of sermons, and a member of the commission appointed by James I to make the King James' Version of the Bible, which appeared in 1611. and, not finding the author much to her taste, she got up, and-went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for there was one between us) was the property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret. 17 A London coffee-house. 18 John Tobin, a dramatist, whose life had recently been published. 19 A philosophical novel by Voltaire, whose sceptical, scoffing spirit Lamb felt would ill harmonize with the associations of a cathedral. 20 Primrose Hill was north of Regent's Park. The "familiar damsel" arose from the grass, as Venus did from the sea-foam at the isle of Cythera. 21 A novel by Samuel Richardson. I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill (as yet Skinner's Street was not), between the hours of ten and 5 eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner.22 I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate encounter with 10 a porter's knot,23 or a breadbasket, would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points.24 If peradventure, Reader, it has been thy lot to waste the golden years of thy life-thy shining youth-in the irksome confinement of There is a class of street-readers, whom I 15 an office; to have thy prison-days prolonged can never contemplate without affection-the poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls-the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, 20 as the prerogatives of childhood; then, and through middle age down to decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or respite; to have lived to forget that there are such things as holidays, or to remember them but then only, will you be able to appreciate my deliverance. It is now six-and-thirty years since I took my seat at the desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the transition at fourteen from the abundant playtime, and the frequentlyintervening vacations of school days, to the eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day attendance at the counting-house. But time partially reconciles us to anything. I gradually became content-doggedly contented, as wild animals in cages. and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification, they "snatch a fearful joy." 25 Martin B- 25 in this way, by daily fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa," when the stallkeeper damped his laudable ambition, by asking him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant to purchase the work. 30 M. declares, that under no circumstance in his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess 27 of our day has moralized upon this subject in two very touch- 35 is for purposes of worship, are for that very ing but homely stanzas: I saw a boy with eager eye Open a book upon a stall, And read, as he'd devour it all; Of sufferings the poor have many, 22 Nathaniel Lardner (1684-1768), wrote a noted defense of the Christian religion, which was used as a theological text book. 23 A pad used by porters for carrying trunks. 24 The leading tenets of Calvinistic theology. 25 Martin Burney, an unsuccessful lawyer, who died in London, 1852. Clarissa Harlowe, a novel by Richardson in eight volumes. 27 Mary Lamb. It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sundays, admirable as the institution of them reason the very worst adapted for days of unbending and recreation. In particular, there is a gloom for me attendant upon a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheerful cries 40 of London, the music, and the ballad-singers,— the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those eternal bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless succession of knacks and 45 gewgaws, and ostentatiously displayed wares of tradesmen, which make a weekday saunter through the less busy parts of the metropolis so delightful-are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle over-no busy faces to re50 create the idle man who contemplates them ever passing by-the very face of business a charm by contrast to his temporary relaxation 1 The line in Vergil is: Libertas, quae sera tamen respexit inertem, Liberty, though late, at last looks on the idle. 2 Lamb was a clerk in the office of the East India Company from 1792-1825. From 1789-92 he had been in the South Sea House. He was retired on a pension of £450, two-thirds of his salary at the time of his retire ment. The South Sea House was on Mincing Lane, and the East India House was not far away. |