Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/582

 482 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9"'S~V1- DEC- 22.1900- text criticized, is easy to understand. _Could not the letter to rocter, printed in his ‘Autobio raiphy’ (1877, p. 281), have_been included? ll editors leave it out, but it has a special interest, as bearing on the com- promise of the disgéute with Taylor about the ‘ Last Essays of lia.’ To offer something besides cérmmenthwhicli may appear rat er un rate u, per aps may add three items which I believe to be new to editors. Canon Ainger says Lamb’s employment at the South Sea House, which gave us the delicious openiigg Essay of Elia, was “at some date unfix ,” and “ we are ignorant as to the duties and emoluments of his situa- tion” (vol. viii. p. 27). Now in a small ex- hibit of documents illustrative of the great Bubble, Preserved in the Albert Museum at Exeter, found the following:- Recd 8°*‘ febl. 1792 of the Honble South Sea Company by the hands of their Secretary Twelve Eaunds ls. 6d. for 23 weeks attendance in the xamxners Omce £12 : 1 : 6 Cass. LAMB. Only the signature is in Lamb’s hand writing; This gives us the department in which Lam was employed (the Examiner’s) his salary (1Os. 6d. a week-paid half-yearly it seems, an appalling idea to extra clerks of these degenerate days), and the date of part at least of his term. In Hone’s ‘Every-day Book’ is a letter called forth by a communication of the editor on ‘Mad Dogs.’ It is under date of 14 Jul in the first volume (my text is Tegg’s reprint; It is undoubtedly Lamb’s, and may be com- pared with the letter of September, 1827 (7 the month), to Patmore (No. 330 in Canon Ainger’s last edition). Hon not having the fear of Christopher North ebefore his eyes, had dared to pronounce (3 July) that “Dogs are wholly useless in towns. Exterminate them.” Lamb’s tender heart could not stand this, and under the mask of “Pompe ” he pleads for mercy. A reference to Honda treatment of “mad dogs” may be found in Lamb’s letter to him ated 25 July, 1826 (it should be 1825), No. 304, but this gives no clue to his own protest. In the Atlwrweum for 13 April, 1833, is another very characteristic uncollected piece, unsigned, but unmistakably Lamb’s-a review (or puff) of Moxon’s ‘Sonnets.’ It is worth notice, sliglht as it is, if only for the remarks on publis ers. He compliments Moxon on “inte rit above his avocation”! The im 8 Y ° shed assumption that a publisher is to be eemed a rogue until he prove the contrary may be respectfully recommended to Sir Walter Besant. To students of Lamb it presents itself as apparently that very rare thing in his writings, a piece of uncomcwus humour. I am tempted to ask space lastly for a %lOt8,tl0I1 from one of Southey’s letters. riting to his daughter on 17 May, 1824, an account of some jest with Mrs. Coleridge, he describes the expression of her face thus :- “ First, then it was an expression of dolorous alarm, such as Le Brun ought to have painted: but such as Manning never cou d have equalled, when, while Mrs. Lloyd was keeping her room in child- bed, he and Charles Lamb sate drinking R/linch in the room below till 3 in t-he morning- anning acting:Le Brun’s gassions (punchiiied at the time), and harles Lam (pxunchified also) roaring aloud and swearing, while t e tears ran down his cheeks, that it required more genius than even Shake- speare possessed to personate them so well; Charles L oyd the while (not punchified) praying and en- treating them to go to bed, and not disturb his wife by the upioar they were making.”-‘ Selec- ‘gina from the tters of Robert Southey,’ 1% iii. There is a genuine glimpse of Charles Lamb by punch-light! It affords a very interesting illustration of the letter to Manning of 28 December, 1799 (No. 51), which has not, I think, been hitherto noticed. The scene is one among many proofs that the supposition of a want of sympathy between the temperaments of the two friends is quite unfounded (see Canon Ainger, vol. viii. 64; Mr. Carew Hazlitt in Bohn’s edition of the ‘ Letters,’ i. 223). The Quarterly critic alludes to their intimacy as likely to receive new illustration, and it is to be hoped he is right, for the friendship with Manning is uite exceptional in some respects. I may add that the ‘ Collection of J ests translated from the Chinese,’ attributed to Manning in the announcement to which the Quarterly evidently refers (Athenaeum, 24 February), are pretty sure to be those alluded to in Lamb’s letters to Charles Ollier, which editors have been content to assi n specu- latively to Hood or to Lamb himself, though a reference to the New Monthly Magazme would have proved both alternatives out of the question. The extract from Southey has a furt-her interest of a very tempting, if rather un- certain kind. It seems to imply Southey’s personal presence at the scene. Was there a sort of lound Table set at Cambridge on that memorable occasion, where Coleridge, Southey Lloyd, and Lamb met to adjust their diiierencesl See the remark in Lamb’s letter to Manning of 28 December, 1799 (No. 51), “I have not seen Coleridge since.” And what has become of the mass of corre-