The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 705 pages of information about The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6.

The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 705 pages of information about The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6.
Mr. Moxon has begun his career as a bookseller in singularly high taste.  He has no connection but with the select of the earth.  The least thing he does, is to give us a dandy poem, suitable to Bond street, and not without wit.  We allude to the Byronian brochure, entitled “Mischief.”  But this is a mere condescension to the elegance of the street he lives in.  Mr. Moxon commenced with some of the primaeval delicacies of Charles Lamb.  He then astonished us with Mr. Rogers’ poems on Italy....  Of some of these publications we have already spoken,—­Mr. Lamb’s Album Verses among them.  And why (the reader may ask) not have noticed his Satan in Search of a Wife?  Because, to say the truth, we did not think it worthy of him.  We rejoice in Mr. Lamb’s accession to the good cause advocated by Sterne and Burns, refreshed by the wholesome mirth of Mr. Moncrieff, and finally carried (like a number of other astonished humanities, who little thought of the matter, and are not all sensible of it now) on the triumphant shoulders of the Glorious Three Days.  But Mr. Lamb, in the extreme sympathy of his delight, has taken for granted, that everything that can be uttered on the subject will be held to be worth uttering, purely for its own sake, and because it could not well have been said twelve months ago.  He merges himself, out of the pure transport of his good will, into the joyous common-places of others; just as if he had joined a great set of children in tossing over some mighty bowl of snap-dragon, too scalding to bear; and thought that nothing could be so good as to echo their “hurras!” Furthermore, we fear that some of his old friends, on the wrong side of the House, would think a little of his merriment profane:  though for our parts, if we are certain of anything in this world, it is that nothing can be more Christian.

“The Banquet.”  I cannot find this poem.  It is, I think, not in The Tatler.

“How capitally the Frenchman ...”  I cannot find any French paraphrase of Satan in Search of a Wife, nor has a search at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris revealed one.

“R.’s interview with the Premier.”  R. would be Rogers.  Perhaps the best explanation of this portion of Lamb’s letter is the following passage from Mr. Dykes Campbell’s memoir of Coleridge:—­

On June 26, 1830, died George IV., and with him died the pensions of the Royal Associates.  Apparently they did not find this out until the following year.  In the Englishman’s Magazine for June, 1831, attention was directed to the fact that “intimation had been given to Mr. Coleridge and his brother Associates that they must expect their allowances ‘very shortly’ to cease”—­the allowances having been a personal bounty of the late King.  On June 3, 1831, Gillman wrote a letter to the Times, “in consequence of a paragraph which appeared in the Times of this day.”  He states

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The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.