MARIAN You are kind, Maria. My sad story I have troubled you with. I have some jewels here, which I unintentionally brought away. I have only to beg, that you will take the trouble to restore them to my father; and, without disclosing my present situation, to tell him, that my next step—with or without the concurrence of Mr. Davenport—shall be to throw myself at his feet, and beg to be forgiven. I dare not see him till you have explored the way for me. I am convinced I was tricked into this elopement.

MISS FLYN Your commands shall be obeyed implicitly.

MARIAN You are good (agitated).

MISS FLYN Moderate your apprehensions, my sweet friend. I too have known my sorrows—(smiling).—You have heard of the ridiculous affair.

MARIAN Between Mr. Pendulous and you? Davenport informed me of it, and we both took the liberty of blaming the over-niceness of your scruples.

MISS FLYN You mistake. The refinement is entirely on the part of my lover. He thinks me not nice enough. I am obliged to feign a little reluctance, that he may not take quite a distaste to me. Will you believe it, that he turns my very constancy into a reproach, and declares, that a woman must be devoid of all delicacy, that, after a thing of that sort, could endure the sight of her husband in——

MARIAN In what?

MISS FLYN The sight of a man at all in——

MARIAN I comprehend you not.

MISS FLYN In—in a—(whispers)—night cap, my dear; and now the mischief is out.

MARIAN Is there no way to cure him?

MISS FLYN None, unless I were to try the experiment, by placing myself in the hands of justice for a little while, how far an equality in misfortune might breed a sympathy in sentiment. Our reputations would be both upon a level, then, you know. What think you of a little innocent shop-lifting, in sport?

MARIAN And by that contrivance to be taken before a magistrate? the project sounds oddly.

MISS FLYN And yet I am more than half persuaded it is feasible.

Enter Betty.

BETTY Mr. Davenport is below, ma'am, and desires to speak with you.

MARIAN You will excuse me—(going—turning back.)—You will remember the casket? [Exit.]

MISS FLYN Depend on me.

BETTY And a strange man desires to see you, ma'am. I do not half like his looks.

MISS FLYN Shew him in.

(Exit Betty, and returns—with a Police Officer. Betty goes out.)

OFFICER Your servant, ma'am. Your name is——

MISS FLYN Flyn, sir. Your business with me?

OFFICER (Alternately surveying the lady and his paper of instructions.) Marian Flint.

MISS FLYN Maria Flyn.

OFFICER Aye, aye, Flyn or Flint. 'Tis all one. Some write plain Mary, and some put ann after it. I come about a casket.

MISS FLYN I guess the whole business. He takes me for my friend. Something may come out of this. I will humour him.

OFFICER (Aside)—Answers the description to a tittle. "Soft, grey eyes, pale complexion,"——

MISS FLYN Yet I have been told by flatterers that my eyes were blue—(takes out a pocket-glass)—I hope I look pretty tolerably to-day.

OFFICER Blue!—they are a sort of blueish-gray, now I look better; and as for colour, that comes and goes. Blushing is often a sign of a hardened offender. Do you know any thing of a casket?

MISS FLYN Here is one which a friend has just delivered to my keeping.

OFFICER And which I must beg leave to secure, together with your ladyship's person. "Garnets, pearls, diamond-bracelet,"—here they are, sure enough.

MISS FLYN Indeed, I am innocent.

OFFICER Every man is presumed so till he is found otherwise.

MISS FLYN Police wit! Have you a warrant?

OFFICER Tolerably cool that! Here it is, signed by Justice Golding, at the requisition of Reuben Flint, who deposes that you have robbed him.

MISS FLYN How lucky this turns out! (aside.)—Can I be indulged with a coach?

OFFICER To Marlborough Street? certainly—an old offender—(aside.) The thing shall be conducted with as much delicacy as is consistent with security.

MISS FLYN Police manners! I will trust myself to your protection then. [Exeunt.]



SCENE.—Police-Office.

JUSTICE, FLINT, OFFICERS, &c.

JUSTICE Before we proceed to extremities, Mr. Flint, let me entreat you to consider the consequences. What will the world say to your exposing your own child?

FLINT The world is not my friend. I belong to a profession which has long brought me acquainted with its injustice. I return scorn for scorn, and desire its censure above its plaudits.

JUSTICE But in this case delicacy must make you pause.

FLINT Delicacy—ha! ha!—pawnbroker—how fitly these words suit. Delicate pawnbroker—delicate devil—let the law take its course.

JUSTICE Consider, the jewels are found.

FLINT 'Tis not the silly baubles I regard. Are you a man? are you a father? and think you I could stoop so low, vile as I stand here, as to make money—filthy money—of the stuff which a daughter's touch has desecrated? Deep in some pit first I would bury them.

JUSTICE Yet pause a little. Consider. An only child.

FLINT Only, only,—there, it is that stings me, makes me mad. She was the only thing I had to love me—to bear me up against the nipping injuries of the world. I prate when I should act. Bring in your prisoner.

(The Justice makes signs to an Officer, who goes out, and returns with Miss Flyn.)

FLINT What mockery of my sight is here? This is no daughter.

OFFICER Daughter, or no daughter, she has confessed to this casket.

FLINT (Handling it.) The very same. Was it in the power of these pale splendours to dazzle the sight of honesty—to put out the regardful eye of piety and daughter-love? Why, a poor glow-worm shews more brightly. Bear witness how I valued them—(tramples on them).—Fair lady, know you aught of my child?

MISS FLYN I shall here answer no questions.

JUSTICE You must explain how you came by the jewels, madam.

MISS FLYN (Aside.) Now confidence assist me!——A gentleman in the neighbourhood will answer for me——

JUSTICE His name——

MISS FLYN Pendulous——

JUSTICE That lives in the next street?

MISS FLYN The same——now I have him sure.

JUSTICE Let him be sent for. I believe the gentleman to be respectable, and will accept his security.

FLINT Why do I waste my time, where I have no business? None—I have none any more in the world—none.

Enter Pendulous.

PENDULOUS What is the meaning of this extraordinary summons?—Maria here?

FLINT Know you any thing of my daughter, Sir?

PENDULOUS Sir, I neither know her nor yourself, nor why I am brought hither; but for this lady, if you have any thing against her, I will answer it with my life and fortunes.

JUSTICE Make out the bail-bond.

OFFICER (Surveying Pendulous.) Please, your worship, before you take that gentleman's bond, may I have leave to put in a word?

PENDULOUS (Agitated.) I guess what is coming.

OFFICER I have seen that gentleman hold up his hand at a criminal bar.

JUSTICE Ha!

MISS FLYN (Aside.) Better and better.

OFFICER My eyes cannot deceive me. His lips quivered about, while he was being tried, just as they do now. His name is not Pendulous.

MISS FLYN Excellent!

OFFICER He pleaded to the name of Thomson at York assizes.

JUSTICE Can this be true?

MISS FLYN I could kiss the fellow!

OFFICER He was had up for a footpad.

MISS FLYN A dainty fellow!

PENDULOUS My iniquitous fate pursues me everywhere.

JUSTICE You confess, then.

PENDULOUS I am steeped in infamy.

MISS FLYN I am as deep in the mire as yourself.

PENDULOUS My reproach can never be washed out.

MISS FLYN Nor mine.

PENDULOUS I am doomed to everlasting shame.

MISS FLYN We are both in a predicament.

JUSTICE I am in a maze where all this will end.

MISS FLYN But here comes one who, if I mistake not, will guide us out of all our difficulties.

Enter Marian and Davenport.

MARIAN (Kneeling.) My dear father!

FLINT Do I dream?

MARIAN I am your Marian.

JUSTICE Wonders thicken!

FLINT The casket—

MISS FLYN Let me clear up the rest.

FLINT The casket—

MISS FLYN Was inadvertently in your daughter's hand, when, by an artifice of her maid Lucy,—set on, as she confesses, by this gentleman here,—

DAVENPORT I plead guilty.

MISS FLYN She was persuaded, that you were in a hurry going to marry her to an object of her dislike; nay, that he was actually in the house for the purpose. The speed of her flight admitted not of her depositing the jewels; but to me, who have been her inseparable companion since she quitted your roof, she intrusted the return of them; which the precipitate measures of this gentleman (pointing to the Officer) alone prevented. Mr. Cutlet, whom I see coming, can witness this to be true.

Enter Cutlet, in haste.

CUTLET Aye, poor lamb! poor lamb! I can witness. I have run in such a haste, hearing how affairs stood, that I have left my shambles without a protector. If your worship had seen how she cried (pointing to Marian), and trembled, and insisted upon being brought to her father. Mr. Davenport here could not stay her.

FLINT I can forbear no longer. Marian, will you play once again, to please your old father?

MARIAN I have a good mind to make you buy me a new grand piano for your naughty suspicions of me.

DAVENPORT What is to become of me?

FLINT I will do more than that. The poor lady shall have her jewels again.

MARIAN Shall she?

FLINT Upon reasonable terms (smiling). And now, I suppose, the court may adjourn.

DAVENPORT Marian!

FLINT I guess what is passing in your mind, Mr. Davenport; but you have behaved upon the whole so like a man of honour, that it will give me pleasure, if you will visit at my house for the future; but (smiling) not clandestinely, Marian.

MARIAN Hush, father.

FLINT I own I had prejudices against gentry. But I have met with so much candour and kindness among my betters this day—from this gentleman in particular—(turning to the Justice)—that I begin to think of leaving off business, and setting up for a gentleman myself.

JUSTICE You have the feelings of one.

FLINT Marian will not object to it.

JUSTICE But (turning to Miss Flyn) what motive could induce this lady to take so much disgrace upon herself, when a word's explanation might have relieved her?

MISS FLYN This gentleman (turning to Pendulous) can explain.

PENDULOUS The devil!

MISS FLYN This gentleman, I repeat it, whose backwardness in concluding a long and honourable suit from a mistaken delicacy—

PENDULOUS How!

MISS FLYN Drove me upon the expedient of involving myself in the same disagreeable embarrassments with himself, in the hope that a more perfect sympathy might subsist between us for the future.

PENDULOUS I see it—I see it all.

JUSTICE (To Pendulous.) You were then tried at York?

PENDULOUS I was—CAST—

JUSTICE Condemned—

PENDULOUS EXECUTED.

JUSTICE How?

PENDULOUS CUT DOWN and CAME TO LIFE AGAIN. False delicacy, adieu! The true sort, which this lady has manifested—by an expedient which at first sight might seem a little unpromising, has cured me of the other. We are now on even terms.

MISS FLYN And may—

PENDULOUS Marry,—I know it was your word.

MISS FLYN And make a very quiet—

PENDULOUS Exemplary—

MISS FLYN Agreeing pair of—

PENDULOUS ACQUITTED FELONS.

FLINT And let the prejudiced against our profession acknowledge, that a money-lender may have the heart of a father; and that in the casket, whose loss grieved him so sorely, he valued nothing so dear as (turning to Marian) one poor domestic jewel.



* * * * *



THE WIFE'S TRIAL; OR, THE INTRUDING WIDOW

A DRAMATIC POEM

Founded on Mr. Crabbe's Tale of "The Confidant."

(1827)

* * * * *

CHARACTERS

MR. SELBY,—a Wiltshire Gentleman_. KATHERINE, _Wife to Selby_. LUCY, _Sister to Selby_. MRS. FRAMPTON, _a Widow_. SERVANTS.

SCENE.—At Mr. Selby's house, or in the grounds adjacent.

* * * * *

SCENE—A Library.

MR. SELBY, KATHERINE.

SELBY Do not too far mistake me, gentlest wife; I meant to chide your virtues, not yourself, And those too with allowance. I have not Been blest by thy fair side with five white years Of smooth and even wedlock, now to touch With any strain of harshness on a string Hath yielded me such music. 'Twas the quality Of a too grateful nature in my Katherine, That to the lame performance of some vows, And common courtesies of man to wife, Attributing too much, hath sometimes seem'd To esteem in favours, what in that blest union Are but reciprocal and trivial dues, As fairly yours as mine: 'twas this I thought Gently to reprehend.

KATHERINE In friendship's barter The riches we exchange should hold some level, And corresponding worth. Jewels for toys Demand some thanks thrown in. You took me, sir, To that blest haven of my peace, your bosom, An orphan founder'd in the world's black storm. Poor, you have made me rich; from lonely maiden, Your cherish'd and your full-accompanied wife.

SELBY But to divert the subject: Kate too fond, I would not wrest your meanings; else that word Accompanied, and full-accompanied too, Might raise a doubt in some men, that their wives Haply did think their company too long; And over-company, we know by proof, Is worse than no attendance.

KATHERINE I must guess, You speak this of the Widow—

SELBY 'Twas a bolt At random shot; but if it hit, believe me, I am most sorry to have wounded you Through a friend's side. I know not how we have swerved From our first talk. I was to caution you Against this fault of a too grateful nature: Which, for some girlish obligations past, In that relenting season of the heart, When slightest favours pass for benefits Of endless binding, would entail upon you An iron slavery of obsequious duty To the proud will of an imperious woman.

KATHERINE The favours are not slight to her I owe.

SELBY Slight or not slight, the tribute she exacts Cancels all dues—[A voice within.] even now I hear her call you In such a tone, as lordliest mistresses Expect a slave's attendance. Prithee, Kate, Let her expect a brace of minutes or so. Say, you are busy. Use her by degrees To some less hard exactions.

KATHERINE I conjure you, Detain me not. I will return—

SELBY Sweet wife Use thy own pleasure—[Exit Katherine.] but it troubles me. A visit of three days, as was pretended, Spun to ten tedious weeks, and no hint given When she will go! I would this buxom Widow Were a thought handsomer! I'd fairly try My Katherine's constancy; make desperate love In seeming earnest; and raise up such broils, That she, not I, should be the first to warn The insidious guest depart.

Re-enter Katherine.

So soon return'd! What was our Widow's will?

KATHERINE A trifle, Sir.

SELBY Some toilet service-to adjust her head, Or help to stick a pin in the right place—

KATHERINE Indeed 'twas none of these.

SELBY or new vamp up The tarnish'd cloak she came in. I have seen her Demand such service from thee, as her maid, Twice told to do it, would blush angry-red, And pack her few clothes up. Poor fool! fond slave! And yet my dearest Kate!—This day at least (It is our wedding-day) we spend in freedom, And will forget our Widow.—Philip, our coach— Why weeps my wife? You know, I promised you An airing o'er the pleasant Hampshire downs To the blest cottage on the green hill side, Where first I told my love. I wonder much, If the crimson parlour hath exchanged its hue For colours not so welcome. Faded though it be, It will not shew less lovely than the tinge Of this faint red, contending with the pale, Where once the full-flush'd health gave to this cheek An apt resemblance to the fruit's warm side, That bears my Katherine's name.—

Our carriage, Philip.

Enter a Servant.

Now, Robin, what make you here?

SERVANT May it please you, The coachman has driven out with Mrs. Frampton.

SELBY He had no orders—

SERVANT None, Sir, that I know of, But from the lady, who expects some letter At the next Post Town.

SELBY Go, Robin.

[Exit Servant.]

How is this?

KATHERINE I came to tell you so, but fear'd your anger—

SELBY It was ill done though of this Mistress Frampton, This forward Widow. But a ride's poor loss Imports not much. In to your chamber, love, Where you with music may beguile the hour, While I am tossing over dusty tomes, Till our most reasonable friend returns.

KATHERINE I am all obedience. [Exit Katherine]

SELBY Too obedient, Kate, And to too many masters. I can hardly On such a day as this refrain to speak My sense of this injurious friend, this pest, This household evil, this close-clinging fiend, In rough terms to my wife. 'Death! my own servants Controll'd above me! orders countermanded!' What next? _[Servant enters and announces the Sister]

Enter Lucy.

Sister! I know you are come to welcome This day's return. 'Twas well done.

LUCY You seem ruffled. In years gone by this day was used to be The smoothest of the year. Your honey turn'd So soon to gall?

SELBY Gall'd am I, and with cause, And rid to death, yet cannot get a riddance, Nay, scarce a ride, by this proud Widow's leave.

LUCY Something you wrote me of a Mistress Frampton.

SELBY She came at first a meek admitted guest, Pretending a short stay; her whole deportment Seem'd as of one obliged. A slender trunk, The wardrobe of her scant and ancient clothing, Bespoke no more. But in a few days her dress, Her looks, were proudly changed. And now she flaunts it In jewels stolen or borrow'd from my wife; Who owes her some strange service, of what nature I must be kept in ignorance. Katherine's meek And gentle spirit cowers beneath her eye, As spell-bound by some witch.

LUCY Some mystery hangs on it. How bears she in her carriage towards yourself?

SELBY As one who fears, and yet not greatly cares For my displeasure. Sometimes I have thought, A secret glance would tell me she could love, If I but gave encouragement. Before me She keeps some moderation; but is never Closeted with my wife, but in the end I find my Katherine in briny tears. From the small chamber, where she first was lodged, The gradual fiend by specious wriggling arts Has now ensconced herself in the best part Of this large mansion; calls the left wing her own; Commands my servants, equipage.—I hear Her hated tread. What makes she back so soon?

Enter Mrs. Frampton.

MRS. FRAMPTON O, I am jolter'd, bruised, and shook to death, With your vile Wiltshire roads. The villain Philip Chose, on my conscience, the perversest tracks, And stoniest hard lanes in all the county, Till I was fain get out, and so walk back, My errand unperform'd at Andover.

LUCY And I shall love the knave for ever after. [Aside.]

MRS. FRAMPTON A friend with you!

SELBY My eldest sister, Lucy, Come to congratulate this returning morn.— Sister, my wife's friend, Mistress Frampton.

MRS. FRAMPTON Pray Be seated. For your brother's sake, you are welcome. I had thought this day to have spent in homely fashion With the good couple, to whose hospitality I stand so far indebted. But your coming Makes it a feast.

LUCY

She does the honours naturally—[Aside.]

SELBY

As if she were the mistress of the house—[Aside.]

MRS. FRAMPTON I love to be at home with loving friends. To stand on ceremony with obligations, Is to restrain the obliger. That old coach, though, Of yours jumbles one strangely.

SELBY I shall order An equipage soon, more easy to you, madam—

LUCY To drive her and her pride to Lucifer, I hope he means. [Aside.]

MRS. FRAMPTON I must go trim myself; this humbled garb Would shame a wedding feast. I have your leave For a short absence?—and your Katherine—

SELBY You'll find her in her closet—

MRS. FRAMPTON Fare you well, then. [Exit.]

SELBY How like you her assurance?

LUCY Even so well, That if this Widow were my guest, not yours, She should have coach enough, and scope to ride. My merry groom should in a trice convey her To Sarum Plain, and set her down at Stonehenge, To pick her path through those antiques at leisure; She should take sample of our Wiltshire flints. O, be not lightly jealous! nor surmise, That to a wanton bold-faced thing like this Your modest shrinking Katherine could impart Secrets of any worth, especially Secrets that touch'd your peace. If there be aught, My life upon't, 'tis but some girlish story Of a First Love; which even the boldest wife Might modestly deny to a husband's ear, Much more your timid and too sensitive Katherine.

SELBY I think it is no more; and will dismiss My further fears, if ever I have had such.

LUCY Shall we go walk? I'd see your gardens, brother; And how the new trees thrive, I recommended. Your Katherine is engaged now—

SELBY I'll attend you. [Exeunt.]



SCENE.—Servants' Hall.

HOUSEKEEPER, PHILIP, and OTHERS, laughing.

HOUSEKEEPER Our Lady's guest, since her short ride, seems ruffled, And somewhat in disorder. Philip, Philip, I do suspect some roguery. Your mad tricks Will some day cost you a good place, I warrant.

PHILIP Good Mistress Jane, our serious housekeeper, And sage Duenna to the maids and scullions, We must have leave to laugh; our brains are younger, And undisturb'd with care of keys and pantries. We are wild things.

BUTLER Good Philip, tell us all.

ALL Ay, as you live, tell, tell—

PHILIP Mad fellows, you shall have it. The Widow's bell rang lustily and loud—

BUTLER I think that no one can mistake her ringing.

WAITING-MAID Our Lady's ring is soft sweet music to it, More of entreaty hath it than command.

PHILIP I lose my story, if you interrupt me thus. The bell, I say, rang fiercely; and a voice, More shrill than bell, call'd out for "Coachman Philip." I straight obey'd, as 'tis my name and office. "Drive me," quoth she, "to the next market town, Where I have hope of letters." I made haste. Put to the horses, saw her safely coach'd, And drove her—

WAITING-MAID —By the straight high-road to Andover, I guess—

PHILIP Pray, warrant things within your knowledge, Good Mistress Abigail; look to your dressings, And leave the skill in horses to the coachman.

BUTLER He'll have his humour; best not interrupt him.

PHILIP 'Tis market-day, thought I; and the poor beasts, Meeting such droves of cattle and of people, May take a fright; so down the lane I trundled, Where Goodman Dobson's crazy mare was founder'd, And where the flints were biggest, and ruts widest, By ups and downs, and such bone-cracking motions, We flounder'd on a furlong, till my madam, In policy, to save the few joints left her, Betook her to her feet, and there we parted.

ALL Ha! ha! ha!

BUTLER Hang her! 'tis pity such as she should ride.

WAITING-MAID I think she is a witch; I have tired myself out With sticking pins in her pillow; still she 'scapes them—

BUTLER And I with helping her to mum for claret, But never yet could cheat her dainty palate.

HOUSEKEEPER Well, well, she is the guest of our good Mistress, And so should be respected. Though I think Our Master cares not for her company, He would ill brook we should express so much, By rude discourtesies, and short attendance, Being but servants. (A bell rings furiously.) 'Tis her bell speaks now; Good, good, bestir yourselves: who knows who's wanted?

BUTLER But 'twas a merry trick of Philip coachman. [Exeunt.]



SCENE.—Mrs. Selby's Chamber.

MRS. FRAMPTON, KATHERINE, working.

MRS. FRAMPTON I am thinking, child, how contrary our fates Have traced our lots through life. Another needle, This works untowardly. An heiress born To splendid prospects, at our common school I was as one above you all, not of you; Had my distinct prerogatives; my freedoms, Denied to you. Pray, listen—

KATHERINE I must hear What you are pleased to speak!—How my heart sinks here! [Aside.]

MRS. FRAMPTON My chamber to myself, my separate maid, My coach, and so forth.—Not that needle, simple one, With the great staring eye fit for a Cyclops! Mine own are not so blinded with their griefs But I could make a shift to thread a smaller. A cable or a camel might go through this, And never strain for the passage.

KATHERINE

I will fit you.— Intolerable tyranny! [Aside.]

MRS. FRAMPTON Quick, quick; You were not once so slack.—As I was saying, Not a young thing among ye, but observed me Above the mistress. Who but I was sought to In all your dangers, all your little difficulties, Your girlish scrapes? I was the scape-goat still, To fetch you off; kept all your secrets, some, Perhaps, since then—

KATHERINE No more of that, for mercy, If you'd not have me, sinking at your feet, Cleave the cold earth for comfort. [Kneels.]

MRS. FRAMPTON This to me? This posture to your friend had better suited The orphan Katherine in her humble school-days To the then rich heiress, than the wife of Selby, Of wealthy Mr. Selby, To the poor widow Frampton, sunk as she is. Come, come, 'Twas something, or 'twas nothing, that I said; I did not mean to fright you, sweetest bed-fellow! You once were so, but Selby now engrosses you. I'll make him give you up a night or so; In faith I will: that we may lie, and talk Old tricks of school-days over.

KATHERINE Hear me, madam—

MRS. FRAMPTON Not by that name. Your friend—

KATHERINE My truest friend, And saviour of my honour!

MRS. FRAMPTON This sounds better; You still shall find me such.

KATHERINE That you have graced Our poor house with your presence hitherto, Has been my greatest comfort, the sole solace Of my forlorn and hardly guess'd estate. You have been pleased To accept some trivial hospitalities, In part of payment of a long arrear I owe to you, no less than for my life.

MRS. FRAMPTON You speak my services too large.

KATHERINE Nay, less; For what an abject thing were life to me Without your silence on my dreadful secret! And I would wish the league we have renew'd Might be perpetual—

MRS. FRAMPTON Have a care, fine madam! [Aside.]

KATHERINE That one house still might hold us. But my husband Has shown himself of late—

MRS. FRAMPTON How Mistress Selby?

KATHERINE Not, not impatient. You misconstrue him. He honours, and he loves, nay, he must love The friend of his wife's youth. But there are moods In which—

MRS. FRAMPTON I understand you;—in which husbands, And wives that love, may wish to be alone, To nurse the tender fits of new-born dalliance, After a five years' wedlock.

KATHERINE Was that well Or charitably put? do these pale cheeks Proclaim a wanton blood? this wasting form Seem a fit theatre for Levity To play his love-tricks on; and act such follies, As even in Affection's first bland Moon Have less of grace than pardon in best wedlocks? I was about to say, that there are times, When the most frank and sociable man May surfeit on most loved society, Preferring loneness rather—

MRS. FRAMPTON To my company—

KATHERINE Ay, your's, or mine, or any one's. Nay, take Not this unto yourself. Even in the newness Of our first married loves 'twas sometimes so. For solitude, I have heard my Selby say, Is to the mind as rest to the corporal functions; And he would call it oft, the day's soft sleep.

MRS. FRAMPTON What is your drift? and whereto tends this speech, Rhetorically labour'd?

KATHERINE That you would Abstain but from our house a month, a week; I make request but for a single day.

MRS. FRAMPTON A month, a week, a day! A single hour In every week, and month, and the long year, And all the years to come! My footing here, Slipt once, recovers never. From the state Of gilded roofs, attendance, luxuries, Parks, gardens, sauntering walks, or wholesome rides, To the bare cottage on the withering moor, Where I myself am servant to myself, Or only waited on by blackest thoughts— I sink, if this be so. No; here I sit.

KATHERINE Then I am lost for ever! [Sinks at her feet—curtain drops.]



SCENE.—An Apartment, contiguous to the last.

SELBY, as if listening.

SELBY The sounds have died away. What am I changed to? What do I here, list'ning like to an abject, Or heartless wittol, that must hear no good, If he hear aught? "This shall to the ear of your husband." It was the Widow's word. I guess'd some mystery, And the solution with a vengeance comes. What can my wife have left untold to me, That must be told by proxy? I begin To call in doubt the course of her life past Under my very eyes. She hath not been good, Not virtuous, not discreet; she hath not outrun My wishes still with prompt and meek observance. Perhaps she is not fair, sweet-voiced; her eyes Not like the dove's; all this as well may be, As that she should entreasure up a secret In the peculiar closet of her breast, And grudge it to my ear. It is my right To claim the halves in any truth she owns, As much as in the babe I have by her; Upon whose face henceforth I fear to look, Lest I should fancy in its innocent brow Some strange shame written.

Enter Lucy.

Sister, an anxious word with you. From out the chamber, where my wife but now Held talk with her encroaching friend, I heard (Not of set purpose heark'ning, but by chance) A voice of chiding, answer'd by a tone Of replication, such as the meek dove Makes, when the kite has clutch'd her. The high Widow Was loud and stormy. I distinctly heard One threat pronounced—"Your husband shall know all." I am no listener, sister; and I hold A secret, got by such unmanly shift, The pitiful'st of thefts; but what mine ear, I not intending it, receives perforce, I count my lawful prize. Some subtle meaning Lurks in this fiend's behaviour; which, by force, Or fraud, I must make mine.

LUCY The gentlest means Are still the wisest. What, if you should press Your wife to a disclosure?

SELBY I have tried All gentler means; thrown out low hints, which, though Merely suggestions still, have never fail'd To blanch her cheek with fears. Roughlier to insist, Would be to kill, where I but meant to heal.

LUCY Your own description gave that Widow out As one not much precise, nor over coy, And nice to listen to a suit of love. What if you feign'd a courtship, putting on, (To work the secret from her easy faith,) For honest ends, a most dishonest seeming?

SELBY I see your drift, and partly meet your counsel. But must it not in me appear prodigious, To say the least, unnatural, and suspicious, To move hot love, where I have shewn cool scorn, And undissembled looks of blank aversion?

LUCY Vain woman is the dupe of her own charms, And easily credits the resistless power, That in besieging Beauty lies, to cast down The slight-built fortress of a casual hate.

SELBY I am resolved—

LUCY Success attend your wooing!

SELBY And I'll about it roundly, my wise sister. [Exeunt.]



SCENE.—The Library.

MR. SELBY. MRS. FRAMPTON.

SELBY A fortunate encounter, Mistress Frampton. My purpose was, if you could spare so much From your sweet leisure, a few words in private.

MRS. FRAMPTON What mean his alter'd tones? These looks to me, Whose glances yet he has repell'd with coolness? Is the wind changed? I'll veer about with it, And meet him in all fashions. [Aside.] All my leisure, Feebly bestow'd upon my kind friends here, Would not express a tithe of the obligements I every hour incur.

SELBY No more of that.— I know not why, my wife hath lost of late Much of her cheerful spirits.

MRS. FRAMPTON It was my topic To-day; and every day, and all day long, I still am chiding with her. "Child," I said, And said it pretty roundly—it may be I was too peremptory—we elder school-fellows, Presuming on the advantage of a year Or two, which, in that tender time, seem'd much, In after years, much like to elder sisters, Are prone to keep the authoritative style, When time has made the difference most ridiculous—

SELBY The observation's shrewd.

MRS. FRAMPTON "Child," I was saying, "If some wives had obtained a lot like yours," And then perhaps I sigh'd, "they would not sit In corners moping, like to sullen moppets That want their will, but dry their eyes, and look Their cheerful husbands in the face," perhaps I said, their Selby's, "with proportion'd looks Of honest joy."

SELBY You do suspect no jealousy?

MRS. FRAMPTON What is his import? Whereto tends his speech? [Aside.] Of whom, of what, should she be jealous, sir?

SELBY I do not know, but women have their fancies; And underneath a cold indifference, Or show of some distaste, husbands have mask'd A growing fondness for a female friend, Which the wife's eye was sharp enough to see Before the friend had wit to find it out. You do not quit us soon?

MRS. FRAMPTON 'Tis as I find Your Katherine profits by my lessons, sir.— Means this man honest? Is there no deceit? [Aside.]

SELBY She cannot chuse.—Well, well, I have been thinking, And if the matter were to do again—

MRS. FRAMPTON What matter, sir?

SELBY This idle bond of wedlock; These sour-sweet briars, fetters of harsh silk; I might have made, I do not say a better, But a more fit choice in a wife.

MRS. FRAMPTON The parch'd ground, In hottest Julys, drinks not in the showers More greedily than I his words! [Aside.]

SELBY My humour Is to be frank and jovial; and that man Affects me best, who most reflects me in My most free temper.

MRS. FRAMPTON Were you free to chuse, As jestingly I'll put the supposition, Without a thought reflecting on your Katherine, What sort of woman would you make your choice?

SELBY I like your humour, and will meet your jest. She should be one about my Katherine's age; But not so old, by some ten years, in gravity. One that would meet my mirth, sometimes outrun it; No puling, pining moppet, as you said, Nor moping maid, that I must still be teaching The freedoms of a wife all her life after: But one, that, having worn the chain before, (And worn it lightly, as report gave out,) Enfranchised from it by her poor fool's death, Took it not so to heart that I need dread To die myself, for fear a second time To wet a widow's eye.

MRS. FRAMPTON Some widows, sir, Hearing you talk so wildly, would be apt To put strange misconstruction on your words, As aiming at a Turkish liberty, Where the free husband hath his several mates, His Penseroso, his Allegro wife, To suit his sober, or his frolic fit.

SELBY How judge you of that latitude?

MRS. FRAMPTON As one, In European customs bred, must judge. Had I Been born a native of the liberal East, I might have thought as they do. Yet I knew A married man that took a second wife, And (the man's circumstances duly weigh'd, With all their bearings) the considerate world Nor much approved, nor much condemn'd the deed.

SELBY You move my wonder strangely. Pray, proceed.

MRS. FRAMPTON An eye of wanton liking he had placed Upon a Widow, who liked him again, But stood on terms of honourable love, And scrupled wronging his most virtuous wife—- When to their ears a lucky rumour ran, That this demure and saintly-seeming wife Had a first husband living; with the which Being question'd, she but faintly could deny. "A priest indeed there was; some words had passed, But scarce amounting to a marriage rite. Her friend was absent; she supposed him dead; And, seven years parted, both were free to chuse."

SELBY What did the indignant husband? Did he not With violent handlings stigmatize the cheek Of the deceiving wife, who had entail'd Shame on their innocent babe?

MRS. FRAMPTON He neither tore His wife's locks nor his own; but wisely weighing His own offence with her's in equal poise, And woman's weakness 'gainst the strength of man, Came to a calm and witty compromise. He coolly took his gay-faced widow home, Made her his second wife; and still the first Lost few or none of her prerogatives. The servants call'd her mistress still; she kept The keys, and had the total ordering Of the house affairs; and, some slight toys excepted, Was all a moderate wife would wish to be.

SELBY A tale full of dramatic incident!— And if a man should put it in a play, How should he name the parties?

MRS. FRAMPTON The man's name Through time I have forgot—the widow's too;— But his first wife's first name, her maiden one, Was—not unlike to that your Katherine bore, Before she took the honour'd style of Selby.

SELBY A dangerous meaning in your riddle lurks. One knot is yet unsolved; that told, this strange And most mysterious drama ends. The name Of that first husband—-

Enter Lucy.

MRS. FRAMPTON Sir, your pardon— The allegory fits your private ear. Some half hour hence, in the garden's secret walk, We shall have leisure. [Exit.]

SELBY Sister, whence come you?

LUCY From your poor Katherine's chamber, where she droops In sad presageful thoughts, and sighs, and weeps, And seems to pray by turns. At times she looks As she would pour her secret in my bosom—- Then starts, as I have seen her, at the mention Of some immodest act. At her request I left her on her knees.

SELBY The fittest posture; For great has been her fault to Heaven and me. She married me, with a first husband living, Or not known not to be so, which, in the judgment Of any but indifferent honesty, Must be esteem'd the same. The shallow Widow, Caught by my art, under a riddling veil Too thin to hide her meaning, hath confess'd all. Your coming in broke off the conference, When she was ripe to tell the fatal name, That seals my wedded doom.

LUCY Was she so forward To pour her hateful meanings in your ear At the first hint?

SELBY Her newly flatter'd hopes Array'd themselves at first in forms of doubt; And with a female caution she stood off Awhile, to read the meaning of my suit, Which with such honest seeming I enforced, That her cold scruples soon gave way; and now She rests prepared, as mistress, or as wife, To seize the place of her betrayed friend— My much offending, but more suffering, Katherine.

LUCY Into what labyrinth of fearful shapes My simple project has conducted you— Were but my wit as skilful to invent A clue to lead you forth!—I call to mind A letter, which your wife received from the Cape, Soon after you were married, with some circumstances Of mystery too.

SELBY I well remember it. That letter did confirm the truth (she said) Of a friend's death, which she had long fear'd true, But knew not for a fact. A youth of promise She gave him out—a hot adventurous spirit— That had set sail in quest of golden dreams, And cities in the heart of Central Afric; But named no names, nor did I care to press My question further, in the passionate grief She shew'd at the receipt. Might this be he?

LUCY Tears were not all. When that first shower was past, With clasped hands she raised her eyes to Heav'n, As if in thankfulness for some escape, Or strange deliverance, in the news implied, Which sweeten'd that sad news.

SELBY Something of that I noted also—

LUCY In her closet once, Seeking some other trifle, I espied A ring, in mournful characters deciphering The death of "Robert Halford, aged two And twenty." Brother, I am not given To the confident use of wagers, which I hold Unseemly in a woman's argument; But I am strangely tempted now to risk A thousand pounds out of my patrimony, (And let my future husband look to it If it be lost,) that this immodest Widow Shall name the name that tallies with that ring.

SELBY That wager lost, I should be rich indeed— Rich in my rescued Kate—rich in my honour, Which now was bankrupt. Sister, I accept Your merry wager, with an aching heart For very fear of winning. 'Tis the hour That I should meet my Widow in the walk, The south side of the garden. On some pretence Lure forth my Wife that way, that she may witness Our seeming courtship. Keep us still in sight, Yourselves unseen; and by some sign I'll give, (A finger held up, or a kerchief waved,) You'll know your wager won—then break upon us, As if by chance.

LUCY I apprehend your meaning—

SELBY And may you prove a true Cassandra here, Though my poor acres smart for't, wagering sister. [Exeunt.]



SCENE.-Mrs. Selby's Chamber.

MRS. FRAMPTON. KATHERINE.

MRS. FRAMPTON Did I express myself in terms so strong?

KATHERINE As nothing could have more affrighted me.

MRS. FRAMPTON Think it a hurt friend's jest, in retribution Of a suspected cooling hospitality. And, for my staying here, or going hence, (Now I remember something of our argument,) Selby and I can settle that between us. You look amazed. What if your husband, child, Himself has courted me to stay?

KATHERINE You move My wonder and my pleasure equally.

MRS. FRAMPTON Yes, courted me to stay, waiv'd all objections. Made it a favour to yourselves; not me, His troublesome guest, as you surmised. Child, child! When I recall his flattering welcome, I Begin to think the burden of my presence Was—

KATHERINE What, for Heaven—

MRS. FRAMPTON A little, little spice Of jealousy—that's all—an honest pretext, No wife need blush for. Say that you should see (As oftentimes we widows take such freedoms, Yet still on this side virtue,) in a jest Your husband pat me on the cheek, or steal A kiss, while you were by,—not else, for virtue's sake.

KATHERINE I could endure all this, thinking my husband Meant it in sport—

MRS. FRAMPTON But if in downright earnest (Putting myself out of the question here) Your Selby, as I partly do suspect, Own'd a divided heart—

KATHERINE My own would break—

MRS. FRAMPTON Why, what a blind and witless fool it is, That will not see its gains, its infinite gains—

KATHERINE Gain in a loss, Or mirth in utter desolation!

MRS. FRAMPTON He doting on a face—suppose it mine, Or any other's tolerably fair— What need you care about a senseless secret?

KATHERINE Perplex'd and fearful woman! I in part Fathom your dangerous meaning. You have broke The worse than iron band, fretting the soul, By which you held me captive. Whether my husband Is what you gave him out, or your fool'd fancy But dreams he is so, either way I am free.

MRS. FRAMPTON It talks it bravely, blazons out its shame; A very heroine while on its knees; Rowe's Penitent, an absolute Calista!

KATHERINE Not to thy wretched self these tears are falling; But to my husband, and offended heaven, Some drops are due—and then I sleep in peace, Reliev'd from frightful dreams, my dreams though sad. [Exit.]

MRS. FRAMPTON I have gone too far. Who knows but in this mood She may forestall my story, win on Selby By a frank confession?—and the time draws on For our appointed meeting. The game's desperate, For which I play. A moment's difference May make it hers or mine. I fly to meet him. [Exit.]



SCENE.—A Garden.

MR. SELBY. MRS. FRAMPTON.

SELBY I am not so ill a guesser, Mrs. Frampton, Not to conjecture, that some passages In your unfinished story, rightly interpreted, Glanced at my bosom's peace; You knew my wife?

MRS. FRAMPTON Even from her earliest school-days.—What of that? Or how is she concerned in my fine riddles, Framed for the hour's amusement?

SELBY By my hopes Of my new interest conceived in you, And by the honest passion of my heart, Which not obliquely I to you did hint; Come from the clouds of misty allegory, And in plain language let me hear the worst. Stand I disgraced or no?

MRS. FRAMPTON Then, by my hopes Of my new interest conceiv'd in you, And by the kindling passion in my breast, Which through my riddles you had almost read, Adjured so strongly, I will tell you all. In her school years, then bordering on fifteen, Or haply not much past, she loved a youth—

SELBY My most ingenuous Widow—

MRS. FRAMPTON Met him oft By stealth, where I still of the party was—

SELBY Prime confidant to all the school, I warrant, And general go-between— [Aside.]

MRS. FRAMPTON One morn he came In breathless haste. "The ship was under sail, Or in few hours would be, that must convey Him and his destinies to barbarous shores, Where, should he perish by inglorious hands, It would be consolation in his death To have call'd his Katherine his."

SELBY Thus far the story Tallies with what I hoped. [Aside.]

MRS. FRAMPTON Wavering between The doubt of doing wrong, and losing him; And my dissuasions not o'er hotly urged, Whom he had flatter'd with the bride-maid's part;—

SELBY I owe my subtle Widow, then, for this. [Aside.]

MRS. FRAMPTON Briefly, we went to church. The ceremony Scarcely was huddled over, and the ring Yet cold upon her finger, when they parted— He to his ship; and we to school got back, Scarce miss'd, before the dinner-bell could ring.

SELBY And from that hour—

MRS. FRAMPTON Nor sight, nor news of him, For aught that I could hear, she e'er obtain'd.

SELBY Like to a man that hovers in suspense Over a letter just receiv'd, on which The black seal hath impress'd its ominous token, Whether to open it or no, so I Suspended stand, whether to press my fate Further, or check ill curiosity That tempts me to more loss.—The name, the name Of this fine youth?

MRS. FRAMPTON What boots it, if 'twere told?

SELBY Now, by our loves, And by my hopes of happier wedlocks, some day To be accomplish'd, give me his name!

MRS. FRAMPTON 'Tis no such serious matter. It was—Huntingdon.

SELBY How have three little syllables pluck'd from me A world of countless hopes!— [Aside.] Evasive Widow.

MRS. FRAMPTON How, Sir! I like not this. [Aside.]

SELBY No, no, I meant Nothing but good to thee. That other woman, How shall I call her but evasive, false, And treacherous?—by the trust I place in thee, Tell me, and tell me truly, was the name As you pronounced it?

MRS. FRAMPTON Huntingdon—the name, Which his paternal grandfather assumed, Together with the estates, of a remote Kinsman; but our high-spirited youth—

SELBY Yes—

MRS. FRAMPTON Disdaining For sordid pelf to truck the family honours, At risk of the lost estates, resumed the old style, And answer'd only to the name of—

SELBY What?

MRS. FRAMPTON Of Halford—

SELBY A Huntingdon to Halford changed so soon! Why, then I see, a witch hath her good spells, As well as bad, and can by a backward charm Unruffle the foul storm she has just been raising. [Aside.] [He makes the signal.]

My frank, fair spoken Widow! let this kiss, Which yet aspires no higher, speak my thanks, Till I can think on greater.

Enter LUCY and KATHERINE.

MRS. FRAMPTON Interrupted!

SELBY My sister here! and see, where with her comes My serpent gliding in an angel's form, To taint the new-born Eden of our joys. Why should we fear them? We'll not stir a foot, Nor coy it for their pleasures. [He courts the Widow.]

LUCY (to Katherine.)

This your free, And sweet ingenuous confession, binds me For ever to you; and it shall go hard, But it shall fetch you back your husband's heart, That now seems blindly straying; or at worst, In me you have still a sister.—Some wives, brother, Would think it strange to catch their husbands thus Alone with a trim widow; but your Katherine Is arm'd, I think, with patience.

KATHERINE I am fortified With knowledge of self-faults to endure worse wrongs, If they be wrongs, than he can lay upon me; Even to look on, and see him sue in earnest, As now I think he does it but in seeming, To that ill woman.

SELBY Good words, gentle Kate, And not a thought irreverent of our Widow. Why, 'twere unmannerly at any time, But most uncourteous on our wedding day, When we should shew most hospitable.—Some wine. [Wine is brought.]

I am for sports. And now I do remember, The old Egyptians at their banquets placed A charnel sight of dead men's skulls before them, With images of cold mortality, To temper their fierce joys when they grew rampant. I like the custom well: and ere we crown With freer mirth the day, I shall propose, In calmest recollection of our spirits, We drink the solemn "Memory of the dead."

MRS. FRAMPTON Or the supposed dead. [Aside to him.]

SELBY Pledge me, good wife. [She fills.] Nay, higher yet, till the brimm'd cup swell o'er.

KATHERINE I catch the awful import of your words; And, though I could accuse you of unkindness, Yet as your lawful and obedient wife, While that name lasts (as I perceive it fading, Nor I much longer may have leave to use it) I calmly take the office you impose; And on my knees, imploring their forgiveness, Whom I in heav'n or earth may have offended, Exempt from starting tears, and woman's weakness, I pledge you, Sir—the Memory of the Dead! [She drinks kneeling.]

SELBY 'Tis gently and discreetly said, and like My former loving Kate.

MRS. FRAMPTON Does he relent? [Aside.]

SELBY That ceremony past, we give the day To unabated sport. And, in requital Of certain stories, and quaint allegories, Which my rare Widow hath been telling to me To raise my morning mirth, if she will lend Her patient hearing, I will here recite A Parable; and, the more to suit her taste, The scene is laid in the East.

MRS. FRAMPTON I long to hear it. Some tale, to fit his wife. [Aside.]

KATHERINE Now, comes my TRIAL.

LUCY The hour of your deliverance is at hand, If I presage right. Bear up, gentlest sister.

SELBY "The Sultan Haroun"—Stay—O now I have it— "The Caliph Haroun in his orchards had A fruit-tree, bearing such delicious fruits, That he reserved them for his proper gust; And through the Palace it was Death proclaim'd To any one that should purloin the same."

MRS. FRAMPTON A heavy penance for so light a fault—

SELBY Pray you, be silent, else you put me out. "A crafty page, that for advantage watch'd, Detected in the act a brother page, Of his own years, that was his bosom friend; And thenceforth he became that other's lord, And like a tyrant he demean'd himself, Laid forced exactions on his fellow's purse; And when that poor means fail'd, held o'er his head Threats of impending death in hideous forms; Till the small culprit on his nightly couch Dream'd of strange pains, and felt his body writhe In tortuous pangs around the impaling stake."

MRS. FRAMPTON I like not this beginning—

SELBY Pray you, attend. "The Secret, like a night-hag, rid his sleeps, And took the youthful pleasures from his days, And chased the youthful smoothness from his brow, That from a rose-cheek'd boy he waned and waned To a pale skeleton of what he was; And would have died, but for one lucky chance."

KATHERINE Oh!

MRS. FRAMPTON Your wife—she faints—some cordial—smell to this.

SELBY Stand off. My sister best will do that office.

MRS. FRAMPTON Are all his tempting speeches come to this? [Aside.]

SELBY What ail'd my wife?

KATHERINE A warning faintness, sir, Seized on my spirits, when you came to where You said "a lucky chance." I am better now, Please you go on.

SELBY The sequel shall be brief.

KATHERINE But brief or long, I feel my fate hangs on it. [Aside.]

SELBY "One morn the Caliph, in a covert hid, Close by an arbour where the two boys talk'd (As oft, we read, that Eastern sovereigns Would play the eaves-dropper, to learn the truth, Imperfectly received from mouths of slaves,) O'erheard their dialogue; and heard enough To judge aright the cause, and know his cue. The following day a Cadi was dispatched To summon both before the judgment-seat: The lickerish culprit, almost dead with fear, And the informing friend, who readily, Fired with fair promises of large reward, And Caliph's love, the hateful truth disclosed."

MRS. FRAMPTON What did the Caliph to the offending boy, That had so grossly err'd?

SELBY His sceptred hand He forth in token of forgiveness stretch'd, And clapp'd his cheeks, and courted him with gifts, And he became once more his favourite page.

MRS. FRAMPTON But for that other—

SELBY He dismiss'd him straight, From dreams of grandeur and of Caliph's love, To the bare cottage on the withering moor, Where friends, turn'd fiends, and hollow confidants, And widows, hide, who, in a husband's ear, Pour baneful truths, but tell not all the truth; And told him not that Robert Halford died Some moons before his marriage-bells were rung. Too near dishonour hast thou trod, dear wife, And on a dangerous cast our fates were set; But Heav'n, that will'd our wedlock to be blest, Hath interposed to save it gracious too. Your penance is—to dress your cheek in smiles, And to be once again my merry Kate.—

Sister, your hand. Your wager won makes me a happy man, Though poorer, Heav'n knows, by a thousand pounds. The sky clears up after a dubious day. Widow, your hand. I read a penitence In this dejected brow; and in this shame Your fault is buried. You shall in with us, And, if it please you, taste our nuptial fare: For, till this moment, I can joyful say, Was never truly Selby's Wedding Day.

FINIS.



NOTES

Page 1. DEDICATION TO S.T. COLERIDGE, ESQ.

In 1818, when Lamb wrote these words, he was forty-three and Coleridge forty-six. The Works, in the first volume of which this dedication appeared, were divided into two volumes, the second, containing prose, being dedicated to Martin Burney, in the sonnet which I have placed on page 45. The publishers of the Works were Charles and James Ollier, who, starting business about 1816, had already published for Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Shelley.

For the allusion to the threefold cord, in the second paragraph, see the note on page 313.

The ****** Inn was the Salutation and Cat, in Newgate Street, since rebuilt, where Coleridge used to stay on his London visits when he was at Cambridge, and where the landlord is said to have asked him to continue as a free guest—if only he would talk and talk. Writing to Coleridge in 1796 Lamb recalls "the little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy;" and again, "I have been drinking egg-hot and smoking Oronooko (associated circumstances, which ever forcibly recall to my mind our evenings and nights at the Salutation)." Later he added to these concomitants of a Salutation evening, "Egg-hot, Welsh-rabbit, and metaphysics," and gave as his highest idea of heaven, listening to Coleridge "repeating one of Bowles's sweetest sonnets, in your sweet manner, while we two were indulging sympathy, a solitary luxury, by the fire side at the Salutation."

The line—

Of summer days and of delightful years

is from Bowles—"Sonnet written at Ostend."

* * * * *

Page 3. Lamb's Earliest Poem. Mille Vice Mortis.

In a MS. book that had belonged to James Boyer of Christ's Hospital, in which his best scholars inscribed compositions, are these lines signed Charles Lamb, 1789. All Lamb's Grecians are there too. The book was described by the late Dykes Campbell, Lamb's most accomplished and enthusiastic student, in the Illustrated London News, December 26, 1891.

* * * * *

Page 4. POEMS IN COLERIDGE'S POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, 1796.

This book was published by Cottle, of Bristol, in 1796. Lamb contributed four poems, which were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: "The Effusions signed C.L. were written by Mr. CHARLES LAMB, of the India House—independently of the signature their superior merit would have sufficiently distinguished them." Lamb reprinted the first only once, in 1797, in the second edition of Coleridge's Poems, the remaining three again in his Works in 1818. I have followed in the body of this volume the text of these later appearances, the original form of the sonnets being relegated to the notes.

Page 4. As when a child on some long winter's night.

Some mystery attaches to the authorship of this sonnet. On December 1, 1794, Coleridge wrote to the editor of the Morning Chronicle saying that he proposed to send a series of sonnets ("as it is the fashion to call them") addressed to eminent contemporaries; and he enclosed one to Mr. Erskine. The editor, with almost Chinese politeness, inserted beneath the sonnet this note: "Our elegant Correspondent will highly gratify every reader of taste by the continuance of his exquisitely beautiful productions." The series continued with Burke, Priestley, Lafayette, Kosciusko, Chatham, Bowles, and, on December 29, 1794, Mrs. Siddons—the sonnet here printed—all signed S.T.C.

But the next appearance of the sonnet was as an effusion by Lamb in Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects, 1796, signed C.L.; and its next in the Poems, 1797, among Lamb's contributions. In 1803, however, we find it in Coleridge's Poems, third edition, with no reference to Lamb whatever. This probably means that Lamb and Coleridge had written it together, that Coleridge's original share had been the greater, and that Lamb and he had come to an arrangement by which Coleridge was to be considered the sole author; for Lamb did not reprint it in 1818 with his other early verse. Writing in 1796 to Coleridge concerning his treatment of other of Lamb's sonnets, Lamb says: "That to Mrs. Siddons, now, you were welcome to improve, if it had been worth it; but I say unto you again, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Such a distinction drawn between the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons and the others supports the belief that Lamb had not for it a deeply parental feeling.

This was not the only occasion on which Lamb and Coleridge wrote a sonnet in partnership. Writing to Southey in December, 1794, Coleridge says: "Of the following sonnet, the four last lines were written by Lamb, a man of uncommon genius...."

SONNET

O gentle look, that didst my soul beguile, Why hast thou left me? Still in some fond dream Revisit my sad heart, auspicious smile! As falls on closing flowers the lunar beam; What time in sickly mood, at parting day I lay me down and think of happier years; Of joys, that glimmered in Hope's twilight ray, Then left me darkling in a vale of tears. O pleasant days of Hope—for ever flown! Could I recall one!—But that thought is vain, Availeth not Persuasion's sweetest tone To lure the fleet-winged travellers back again: Anon, they haste to everlasting night, Nor can a giant's arm arrest them in their flight.

Subsequently Coleridge rewrote the final couplet.

The same letter to Southey informs us that the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons was not Lamb's earliest poem, although it stands first in his poetical works; for Coleridge remarks: "Have you seen his [Lamb's] divine sonnet, 'O! I could laugh to hear the winter wind'?" (see page 5).

Lamb printed the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons twice—in 1796 and 1797.

Page 4. Was it some sweet device of Faery.

This sonnet passed through various vicissitudes. Lamb had sent it to Coleridge for his Poems on Various Subjects in 1796, and Coleridge proceeded to re-model it more in accordance with his own views. The following version, representing his modifications, was the one that found its way into print as Lamb's:—

Was it some sweet device of faery land That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade, And fancied wand'rings with a fair-hair'd maid? Have these things been? Or did the wizard wand Of Merlin wave, impregning vacant air, And kindle up the vision of a smile In those blue eyes, that seem'd to speak the while Such tender things, as might enforce Despair To drop the murth'ring knife, and let go by His fell resolve? Ah me! the lonely glade Still courts the footsteps of the fair-hair'd maid, Among whose locks the west-winds love to sigh; But I forlorn do wander, reckless where, And mid my wand'rings find no ANNA there! C.L.

Lamb naturally protested when the result came under his eyes. "I love my own feelings: they are dear to memory," he says in a letter in 1796, "though they now and then wake a sigh or a tear. 'Thinking on divers things foredone,' I charge you, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Later, when Coleridge's second edition was in preparation, Lamb wrote again (January 10, 1797): "I need not repeat my wishes to have my little sonnets printed verbatim my last way. In particular, I fear lest you should prefer printing my first sonnet [this one] as you have done more than once, 'Did the wand of Merlin wave?' It looks so like Mr. Merlin, the ingenious successor of the immortal Merlin, now living in good health and spirits, and flourishing in magical reputation in Oxford Street." The phrase "more than once" in the foregoing passage needs explanation. It refers to the little pamphlet of sonnets, entitled Sonnets from Various Authors, which Coleridge issued privately in 1796, and of which only one copy is now known to exist—that preserved in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington. The little pamphlet contains twenty-eight sonnets in all, of which three are by Bowles, four by Southey, four by Charles Lloyd, four by Coleridge, four by Lamb, and others by various writers: all of which were chosen for their suitability to be bound up with the sonnets of Bowles. Lamb's sonnets were: "We were two pretty babes" (see page 9), "Was it some sweet device" (printed with Coleridge's alterations), "When last I roved" (see page 8), and "O! I could laugh" (see page 5).

The present sonnet belongs to the series of four love sonnets which is completed by the one that follows, "Methinks, how dainty sweet it were," and those on page 8 beginning, "When last I roved" and "A timid grace." Anna is believed to have been Ann Simmons, who lived at Blenheims, a group of cottages near Blakesware, the house where Mrs. Field, Lamb's grandmother, was housekeeper. Mrs. Field died in 1792, after which time Lamb's long visits to that part of the country probably ceased. He was then seventeen. Nothing is known of Lamb's attachment beyond these sonnets, the fact that when he lost his reason for a short time in 1795-1796 he attributed the cause to some person unmentioned who is conjectured to have been Anna, and the occasional references in the Ella essays to "Alice W——" and to his old passion for her (see "Dream Children" in particular, in Vol. II). The death of Mrs. Lamb in September, 1796, and the duty of caring for and nursing his sister Mary, which then devolved upon Charles, put an end to any dreams of private happiness that he may have been indulging; and his little romance was over. How deep his passion was we are not likely ever to know; but Lamb thenceforward made very light of it, except in the pensive recollections in the essays twenty-five years later. In November, 1796, when sending Coleridge poems for his second edition, he says: "Do not entitle any of my things Love Sonnets, as I told you to call 'em; 'twill only make me look little in my own eyes; for it is a passion of which I retain nothing.... Thank God, the folly has left me for ever. Not even a review of my love verses renews one wayward wish in me...." Again, in November, 1796, in another letter to Coleridge, about his poems in the 1797 edition, Lamb says: "Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those 'merrier days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a mother's fondness for her school-boy." Lamb printed this sonnet three times—in 1796, 1797 and 1818.

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Page 5. Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd.

When this sonnet was printed by Coleridge in 1796 the sestet was made to run thus:—

But ah! sweet scenes of fancied bliss, adieu! On rose-leaf beds amid your faery bowers I all too long have lost the dreamy hours! Beseems it now the sterner Muse to woo, If haply she her golden meed impart, To realise the vision of the heart.

Lamb remonstrated: "I had rather have seen what I wrote myself, though they bear no comparison with your exquisite lines—

"On rose-leaf'd beds, amid your faery bowers, etc.

I love my sonnets because they are the reflected images of my Own feelings at different times." This sonnet was printed by Lamb three times—in 1796, 1797 and 1798.

Page 5. O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind,

This sonnet, written probably at Margate, was entitled, in 1796, "Written at Midnight, by the Seaside, after a Voyage." The last lines then ran:—

And almost wish'd it were no crime to die! How Reason reel'd! What gloomy transports rose! Till the rude dashings rock'd them to repose.

The couplet was Coleridge's, and Lamb protested (June 10, 1796), describing them as good lines, but adding that they "must spoil the whole with me who know it is only a fiction of yours and that the rude dashings did in fact not rock me to repose."

When reprinted in 1797, the final couplet was omitted, asterisks standing instead. The present sonnet was probably the earliest of Lamb's printed poems. In the Elia essay "The Old Margate Hoy," Lamb states that the first time he saw the sea was on a visit to Margate as a boy, by water—probably the voyage that suggested this sonnet. Lamb printed the sonnet three times—in 1796, 1797 and 1818.

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Page 6. LLOYD'S POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PRISCILLA FARMER, 1796.

Charles Lloyd (1775-1839), the son of Charles Lloyd, of Birmingham (a cultured and philanthropical Quaker banker), joined Coleridge at Bristol late in 1796 as his private pupil, and moved with the family to Nether Stowey. Priscilla Farmer was Lloyd's maternal grandmother, to whom he was much attached, and on her death he composed the sonnets that form this costly quarto, published for Lloyd by Coleridge's friend, Joseph Cottle, of Bristol, in the winter of 1796.

Page 6. The Grandame.

Lamb sent these lines in their first state to Coleridge in June, 1796, at, which time they were, I conjecture, part of a long blank-verse poem which he was then meditating, and of which "Childhood," "Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects," and "The Sabbath Bells" (see pages 9 and 10) were probably other portions. The poem was never finished. On June 13, 1796, he writes to Coleridge:—

"Of the blank verses I spoke of, the following lines are the only tolerably complete ones I have writ out of not more than one hundred and fifty. That I get on slowly you may fairly impute to want of practice in composition, when I declare to you that (the few verses which you have seen excepted) I have not writ fifty lines since I left school. It may not be amiss to remark that my grandmother (on whom the verses are written) lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or sixty last years of her life—that she was a woman of exemplary piety and goodness—and for many years before her death was terribly afflicted with a cancer in her breast, which she bore with true Christian patience. You may think that I have not kept enough apart the ideas of her heavenly and her earthly master; but recollect I have designedly given into her own way of feeling; and if she had a failing 'twas that she respected her master's family too much, not reverenced her Maker too little. The lines begin imperfectly, as I may probably connect 'em if I finish at all: and if I do, Biggs shall print 'em (in a more economical way than you yours), for, Sonnets and all, they won't make a thousand lines as I propose completing 'em, and the substance must be wire-drawn."

When Charles Lloyd joined Coleridge later in the year, and was preparing his Poems in Memory of Priscilla Farmer, Coleridge obtained Lamb's permission for "The Grandame" to be included with them. The lines were introduced by Lloyd in these words: "The following beautiful fragment was written by CHARLES LAMB, of the India-House.—Its subject being the same with that of my Poems, I was solicitous to have it printed with them: and I am indebted to a Friend of the Author's for the permission."

The poem differed then very slightly from its present form. When the book was sent to Lamb he remarked (in December, 1796) on "the odd coincidence of two young men, in one age, carolling their grandmothers.... I cannot but smile to see my Granny so gayly deck'd forth [the book was expensively produced by Lloyd], tho', I think, whoever altered 'thy' praises to 'her' praises—'thy' honoured memory to 'her' honoured memory [lines 27 and 28], did wrong—they best exprest my feelings. There is a pensive state of recollection, in which the mind is disposed to apostrophise the departed objects of its attachment; and, breaking loose from grammatical precision, changes from the 1st to the 3rd, and from the 3rd to the 1st person, just as the random fancy or feeling directs."

Mrs. Mary Field, nee Bruton, Lamb's maternal grandmother, was housekeeper at Blakesware house, near Widford, the seat of the Plumer family for very many years, during the latter part of her life being left in sole charge, for William Plumer had moved to his other seat, Gilston, a few miles distant (see "Blakesmoor in H—— shire," and notes, Vol. II). Lamb and his brother and sister visited their grandmother at Blakesware as though in her own house. Mrs. Field died of cancer in the breast, July 31, 1792, aged seventy-nine, and was buried in Widford churchyard.

Approached from the east the churchyard seems to be anything but on the hilltop, for one descends to it; but it stands on a ridge, and seen from the north, or, as at the old Blakesware house, from the west, it appears to crown an eminence. The present spire, though slender and tapering, is not that which Lamb used to see. Mrs. Field's plain stone, whose legibility was not long since threatened by overhanging branches, has now been saved from danger and may still be read. It merely records the name "Mary Feild" (a mistake of the stone-cutter) and the bare dates.

This poem was printed by Lamb three times—in 1796 (in Lloyd's book), in 1797 (with Coleridge) and in 1818.

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Page 8. COLERIDGE'S POEMS, 1797.

Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects, 1796, went into a second edition in 1797 under the title, Poems by S.T. Coleridge, Second Edition, to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd. Coleridge invented a motto from Groscollius for the title-page, bearing upon this poetical partnership: "Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitiae et similium junctarumque Camoenarum; quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas!" "Double is the bond which binds us—friendship, and a kindred taste in poetry. Would that neither death nor lapse of time could dissolve it!"

Lamb's contributions were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: "There were inserted in my former Edition, a few Sonnets of my Friend and old School-fellow, CHARLES LAMB. He has now communicated to me a complete Collection of all his Poems; quae qui non prorsus amet, illum omnes et Virtutes et Veneres odore." (Which things, whoever is not unreservedly in love with, is detested by all the Virtues and the Graces.) Lamb's poems came last in the book, an arrangement insisted upon in a letter from him to Coleridge in November, 1796:—"Do you publish with Lloyd, or without him? In either case my little portion may come last; and after the fashion of orders to a country correspondent, I will give directions how I should like to have 'em done. The title-page to stand thus:—

POEMS

BY

CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE

Under this leaf the following motto, which, for want of room, I put over leaf, I desire you to insert, whether you like it or no. May not a gentleman choose what arms, mottoes, or armorial bearings the Herald will give him leave, without consulting his republican friend, who might advise none? May not a publican put up the sign of the Saracen's Head, even though his undiscerning neighbour should prefer, as more genteel, the Cat and Gridiron?

"[MOTTO]

"This Beauty, in the blossom of my Youth, When my first fire knew no adulterate incense, Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness, In the best language my true tongue could tell me, And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me, I sued and served. Long did I love this Lady.

"Massinger."

"THE DEDICATION THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS, CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING IN LIFE'S MORE VACANT HOURS, PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY LOVE IN IDLENESS; ARE, WITH ALL A BROTHER'S FONDNESS, INSCRIBED TO MARY ANN LAMB, THE AUTHOR'S BEST FRIEND AND SISTER"

The dedication was printed as Lamb wished, in the form I have followed above, and the book appeared.

Page 8. When last I roved these winding wood-walks green,

This was sent to Coleridge on June 1, 1796, in a letter containing also the sonnets, "The Lord of Life," page 16; "A timid grace," page 8; and "We were two pretty babes," page 9. It was written, said Lamb, "on revisiting a spot, where the scene was laid of my 1st sonnet"—"Was it some sweet device," page 4. Lamb printed this sonnet twice—in 1797 and 1818. Page 8. A timid grace sits trembling in her eye.

This, the last of the four love sonnets (see note on page 310), seems to be a survival of a discarded effort, for Lamb tells Coleridge, in the letter referred to in the preceding note, that it "retains a few lines from a sonnet of mine, which you once remarked had no 'body of thought' in it." Lamb printed this sonnet twice—in 1797 and 1818.

Page 9. If from my lips some angry accents fell,

Lamb sent this sonnet, which is addressed to his sister, to Coleridge in May, 1796. "The Sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry, but you will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my prison-house [an asylum] in one of my lucid Intervals." It is dated 1795 in Coleridge's Poems. Lamb printed the sonnet twice—in 1797 and 1818.

Page 9. We were two pretty babes, the youngest she.

First printed in the Monthly Magazine, July, 1796. "The next and last [wrote Lamb in the letter to Coleridge referred to in the notes on page 310] I value most of all. 'Twas composed close upon the heels of the last ['A timid grace,' page 8], in that very wood I had in mind when I wrote 'Methinks how dainty sweet' [page 5]." It is dated 1795 in Coleridge's Poems. In the same letter Lamb adds:—"Since writing it, I have found in a poem by Hamilton of Bangour [William Hamilton, 1704-1754, the Scotch poet, of Bangour, Linlithgowshire] these 2 lines to happiness:—

"Nun sober and devout, where art thou fled, To hide in shades thy meek contented head.

Lines eminently beautiful, but I do not remember having re'd 'em previously, for the credit of my 10th and 11th lines. Parnell [Thomas Parnell, 1679-1718] has 2 lines (which probably suggested the above) to Contentment

"Whither ah whither art Thou fled, To hide thy meek contented head.

"Cowley's exquisite Elegy on the death of his friend Harvey suggested the phrase of 'we two'

"Was there a tree [about] that did not know The love betwixt us two?—"

When Coleridge printed the sonnet in the pamphlet described on page 310, he appended to the eleventh line the following note:—

Innocence, which, while we possess it, is playful as a babe, becomes AWFUL when it has departed from us. This is the sentiment of the line —a fine sentiment and nobly expressed.

Lamb printed this sonnet twice—in 1797 and 1818.

Page 9. Childhood.

See note to "The Grandame," page 312. The "turf-clad slope" in line 4 was probably at Blakesware. It is difficult to re-create the scene, for the new house stands a quarter of a mile west of the old one, the site of which is hidden by grass and trees. Where once were gardens is now meadow land.

Lamb printed this poem twice—in 1797 and 1818.

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Page 10. The Sabbath Bells.

Lamb printed this poem twice—in 1797 and 1818. Church bells seem always to have had charms for him (see the reference in John Woodvil, page 197, and in Susan Yates' story in Mrs. Leicester's School in Vol. III.). See note to "The Grandame."

Page 10. Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects.

In the letter of December 5, 1796, quoted below, Lamb remarks concerning this poem: "I beg you to alter the words 'pain and want,' to 'pain and grief' (line 10), this last being a more familiar and ear-satisfying combination. Do it, I beg of you." But the alteration either was not made, or was cancelled later. The reference in lines 6, 7 and 8 is to Revelation xxii. 1, 2. See note to "The Grandame." Lamb printed this poem twice—in 1797 and 1818.

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Page 11. The Tomb of Douglas.

The play on which this poem was founded was the tragedy of "Douglas" by John Home (1722-1808), produced in 1756. Young Norval, or Douglas, the hero, after killing the false Glenalvon, is slain by his stepfather, Lord Randolph, unknowing who he is. On hearing of Norval's death his mother, Lady Randolph, throws herself from a precipice. In the letter to Coleridge of December 5, 1796, quoted above, Lamb also copied out "The Tomb of Douglas," prefixing these remarks:—"I would also wish to retain the following if only to perpetuate the memory of so exquisite a pleasure as I have often received at the performance of the tragedy of Douglas, when Mrs. Siddons has been the Lady Randolph.... To understand the following, if you are not acquainted with the play, you should know that on the death of Douglas his mother threw herself down a rock; and that at that time Scotland was busy in repelling the Danes."

Coleridge told Southey that Lamb during his derangement at the end of 1795 and beginning of 1796 believed himself at one time to be Young Norval.

Lamb printed this poem, which differs curiously in character from all his other poetical works, only once—in 1797.

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Page 12. To Charles Lloyd.

Lamb copied these lines in a letter to Coleridge on January 18, 1797, remarking:—"You have learned by this time, with surprise, no doubt, that Lloyd is with me in town. The emotions I felt on his coming so unlooked for are not ill expressed in what follows, and what if you do not object to them as too personal, and to the world obscure, or otherwise wanting in worth I should wish to make a part of our little volume."

It must be remembered, in reading the poem, that Lamb was still in the shadow of the tragedy in which he lost his mother, and, for a while, his sister, and which had ruined his home. For other lines to Charles Lloyd see page 21. This poem was printed by Lamb twice—in 1797 and 1818.

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Page 13. A Vision of Repentance.

Writing to Coleridge on June 13, 1797, Lamb says of this Spenserian exercise:—"You speak slightingly. Surely the longer stanzas were pretty tolerable; at least there was one good line in it [line 5]:

"Thick-shaded trees, with dark green leaf rich clad.

To adopt your own expression, I call this a 'rich' line, a fine full line. And some others I thought even beautiful." Lamb printed the poem twice—in 1797 and 1818.

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Page 16. POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-1798, AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB.

Page 16. Sonnet: The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed.

The Monthly Magazine, December, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb.

Lamb sent the first draft of this sonnet to Coleridge in 1796, saying that it was composed "during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in last Summer." "The last line," he adds, "is a copy of Bowles's 'to the green hamlet in the peaceful plain.' Your ears are not so very fastidious—many people would not like words so prosaic and familiar in a sonnet as Islington and Hertfordshire." We must take Lamb's word for it; but the late W.J. Craig found for the last line a nearer parallel than Bowles'. In William Vallans' "Tale of the Two Swannes" (1590), which is quoted in Leland's Itinerary, Hearne's edition, is the phrase: "The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire." Lamb quotes his own line in the Elia essay "My Relations."

This sonnet is perhaps the only occasion on which Lamb, even in play, wrote anything against his beloved city.

It may be noted here that this was Lamb's last contribution to the Monthly Magazine, which had printed in the preceding number, November, 1797, Coleridge's satirical sonnets, signed Nehemiah Higginbottom, in which Lamb and Lloyd were ridiculed, and which had perhaps some bearing on the coolness that for a while was to subsist between Coleridge and Lamb (see Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, 1898, pages 44-47).

Page 16. To the Poet Cowper.

The Monthly Magazine, December, 1796. Signed C. Lamb.

Lamb wrote these lines certainly as early as July, 1796, for he sends them to Coleridge on the 6th of that month, adding:—

"I fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as exprest above, (perhaps scarcely just), but the poor Gentleman has just recovered from his Lunacies, and that begets pity, and pity love, and love admiration, and then it goes hard with People but they lie!"

Lamb admired Cowper greatly in those days—particularly his "Crazy Kate" ("Task," Book I., 534-556). "I have been reading 'The Task' with fresh delight," he says on December 5, 1796. "I am glad you love Cowper. I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that man my friend, who should be offended with the 'divine chit-chat of Cowper.'" And again a little later, "I do so love him."

Page 17. Lines addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol, in the Summer of 1796.

The Monthly Magazine, January, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb.

Lamb sent the lines in their original state to Coleridge in the letter of July 5, 1796, immediately before the words "Let us prose," at the head of that document as it is now preserved.

"Another minstrel" was Coleridge. Chatterton was the mysterious youth of line 16. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was baptised at St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol; he was the nephew of the sexton; he brooded for many hours a day in the church; he copied his antique writing from the parchment in its muniment room; one of his later dreams was to be able to build a new spire; and a cenotaph to his memory was erected by public subscription in 1840 near the north-east angle of the churchyard. Chatterton went to London on April 24, 1770, aged seventeen and a half, and died there by his own hand on August 25 of the same year.

The poem originated in an invitation to Lamb from the Coleridges at Bristol, which he hoped to be able to accept; but to his request for the necessary holiday from the India House came refusal. Lamb went to Nether Stowey, however, in the following summer and met Wordsworth there.

Lamb at one time wished these lines to be included among his poems in the second edition of Coleridge's Poems, 1797. Writing on January 18, 1797, Lamb says: "I shall be sorry if that volume comes out, as it necessarily must do, unless you print those very school boyish verses I sent you on not getting leave to come down to Bristol last summer." At the end of the letter he adds: "Yet I should feel ashamed that to you I wrote nothing better. But they are too personal, almost trifling and obscure withal."

* * * * *

Page 18. Sonnet to a Friend.

The Monthly Magazine, October, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb.

Lamb sent this sonnet to Coleridge on January 2, 1797, remarking: "If the fraternal sentiment conveyed in the following lines will atone for the total want of any thing like merit or genius in it, I desire you will print it next after my other Sonnet to my Sister." The other sonnet was, "If from my lips some peevish accents fall," printed with Coleridge's Poems in 1797 (see page 9), concerning which book Lamb was writing in the above letter. Coleridge apparently decided against the present sonnet, for it was not printed in that book.

Writing to Coleridge again a week later concerning the present poem, Lamb said:—

"I am aware of the unpoetical caste of the 6 last lines of my last sonnet, and think myself unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into the book; only the sentiments of those 6 lines are thoroughly congenial to me in my state of mind, and I wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens of my affection to poor Mary."

It has to be borne in mind that only three months had elapsed since the death of Mrs. Lamb, and Mary was still in confinement.

Page 18. To a Young Lady. Signed C.L.

Monthly Magazine, March, 1797, afterwards copied into the Poetical Register for 1803, signed C.L. in both cases. We know these to be Lamb's from a letter to Coleridge of December 5, 1796. The identity of the young lady is not now known.

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Page 19. Living without God in the World.

The Annual Anthology, Vol. I., 1799.

Vol. I. of the Annual Anthology, edited by Southey for Joseph Cottle, was issued in September, 1799; and that was, I believe, this poem's first appearance as a whole. Early in 1799, however, Charles Lloyd had issued a pamphlet entitled Lines suggested by the Fast appointed on Wednesday, February 27, 1799 (Birmingham, 1799), in which, in a note, he quotes a passage from Lamb's poem, beginning, "some braver spirits" (line 23), and ending, "prey on carcasses" (line 36), with the prefatory remark: "I am happy in the opportunity afforded me of introducing the following striking extract from some lines, intended as a satire on the Godwinian jargon."

Writing to Southey concerning this poem, Lamb says:-"I can have no objection to you printing 'Mystery of God' [afterwards called 'Living without God in the World'] with my name, and all due acknowledgments for the honour and favour of the communication: indeed, 'tis a poem that can dishonour no name. Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto vanitas."

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Page 21. BLANK VERSE, BY CHARLES LLOYD AND CHARLES LAMB, 1798.

Charles Lloyd left Coleridge early in 1797, and was in the winter 1797-1798 living in London, sharing lodgings with James White (Lamb's friend and the author of Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff, 1796). It was then that the joint production of this volume was entered upon. Of the seven poems contributed by Lamb only "The Old Familiar Faces" (shorn of one stanza) and the lines "Composed at Midnight" were reprinted by him: on account, it may be assumed, of his wish not to revive in his sister, who would naturally read all that he published, any painful recollections. Not that she refused in after years to speak of her mother, but Lamb was, I think, sensitive for her and for himself and the family too. As a matter of fact the circumstances of Mrs. Lamb's death were known only to a very few of the Lambs' friends until after Charles' death. It must be remembered that when Blank Verse was originally published, in 1798, Mary Lamb was still living apart, nor was it known that she, would ever be herself again.

It was this little volume which gave Gillray an opportunity for introducing Lamb and Lloyd into his cartoon "The New Morality," published in the first number of The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine (which succeeded Canning's Anti-Jacobin), August 1, 1798. Canning's lines, "The New Morality," had been published in The Anti-Jacobin on July 9, 1798, containing the couplets:—

And ye five other wandering Bards that move In sweet accord of harmony and love, C——dge and S—th—y, L——d, and L——be and Co., Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux!

In the picture Gillray introduced "Coleridge" as a donkey offering a volume of "Dactylics," and Southey as another donkey, flourishing a volume of "Saphics." Behind them, seated side by side, poring over a manuscript entitled "Blank Verse, by Toad and Frog," are a toad and frog which the Key states to be Lloyd and Lamb. It was in reference to this picture that Godwin, on first meeting Lamb, asked him, "Pray, Mr. Lamb, are you toad or frog?"

Page 21. To Charles Lloyd.

The Monthly Magazine, October, 1797. Signed.

Lamb sent these lines to Coleridge in September, 1797, remarking: "The following I wrote when I had returned from Charles Lloyd, leaving him behind at Burton, with Southey. To understand some of it you must remember that at that time he was very much perplexed in mind." Lloyd throughout his life was given to religious speculations which now and then disturbed his mind to an alarming extent, affecting him not unlike the gloomy forebodings and fears that beset Cowper. On this particular occasion he was in difficulty also as to his engagement with Sophia Pemberton, with whom he was meditating elopement and a Scotch marriage.

Page 21. Written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral.

"This afternoon," Lamb wrote to Coleridge on February 13, 1797, "I attend the funeral of my poor old aunt, who died on Thursday. I own I am thankful that the good creature has ended all her days of suffering and infirmity. She was to me the 'cherisher of infancy.' ..." Lamb's Aunt Hetty was his father's sister. Her real name was Sarah Lamb. All that we know of her is found in this poem, in the Letters, in the passages in "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," and "My Relations;" in the story of "The Witch Aunt," in Mrs. Leicester's School, and in a reference in one of Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart, where, writing of her aunt and her mother,—"the best creatures in the world,"—she speaks of Miss Lamb as being "as unlike a gentlewoman as you can possibly imagine a good old woman to be;" contrasting her with Mrs. Lamb, "a perfect gentlewoman." The description in "The Witch Aunt" bears out Mary Lamb's letter.

After the tragedy of September, 1796, Aunt Hetty was taken into the house of a rich relative. This lady, however, seems to have been of too selfish and jealous a disposition (see Lamb's letter to Coleridge, December 9, 1796) to exert any real effort to make her guest comfortable or happy. Hence Aunt Hetty returned to her nephew.

"My poor old aunt [Lamb wrote to Coleridge on January 5, 1797], whom you have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at school; who used to toddle there to bring me fag [food], when I, school-boy like, only despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you went into the old grammar-school, opend her apron, and bring out her bason with some nice thing she had caused to be saved for me—the good old creature is now lying on her death bed.... She says, poor thing, she is glad to come home to die with me. I was always her favourite."

Line 24. One parent yet is left. John Lamb, who is described as he was in his prime, as Lovel, in the Elia essay on "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," died in 1799.

Line 27. A semblance most forlorn of what he was. Lamb uses this line as a quotation, slightly altered, in his account of Lovel.

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Page 22. Written a Year after the Events.

Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge in September, 1797, entitling it "Written a Twelvemonth after the Events," and adding, "Friday next, Coleridge, is the day on which my Mother died." Mrs. Lamb's death, at the hands of her daughter in a moment of frenzy, occurred on September 22, 1796. Lamb added that he wrote the poem at the office with "unusual celerity." "I expect you to like it better than anything of mine; Lloyd does, and I do myself." The version sent to Coleridge differs only in minor and unimportant points from that in Blank Verse.

The second paragraph of the poem is very similar to a passage which Lamb had written in a letter to Coleridge on November 14, 1796:—

"Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those 'merrier days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a mother's fondness for her school-boy. What would I give to call her back to earth for one day!—on my knees to ask her pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to time, have given her gentle spirit pain!—and the day, my friend, I trust, will come. There will be 'time enough' for kind offices of love, if 'Heaven's eternal year' be ours. Here-after, her meek spirit shall not reproach me."

In the last paragraph of the poem is a hint of "The Old Familiar Faces," that was to follow it in the course of a few months.

Lines 52, 53. And one, above the rest. Probably Coleridge is meant.

Page 24. Written soon after the Preceding Poem.

The poem is addressed to Lamb's mother. Lamb seems to have sent a copy to Southey, although the letter containing it has not been perserved, for we find Southey passing it on to his friend C.W.W. Wynn on November 29, 1797, with a commendation: "I know that our tastes differ much in poetry, and yet I think you must like these lines by Charles Lamb."

The following passage in Rosamund Gray, which Lamb was writing at this time, is curiously like these poems in tone. It occurs in one of the letters from Elinor Clare to her friend—letters in which Lamb seems to describe sometimes his own feelings, and sometimes those of his sister, on their great sorrow:—

"Maria! shall not the meeting of blessed spirits, think you, be something like this?—I think, I could even now behold my mother without dread—I would ask pardon of her for all my past omissions of duty, for all the little asperities in my temper, which have so often grieved her gentle spirit when living. Maria! I think she would not turn away from me.

"Oftentimes a feeling, more vivid than memory, brings her before me—I see her sit in her old elbow chair—her arms folded upon her lap—a tear upon her cheek, that seems to upbraid her unkind daughter for some inattention—I wipe it away and kiss her honored lips.

"Maria! when I have been fancying all this, Allan will come in, with his poor eyes red with weeping, and taking me by the hand, destroy the vision in a moment.

"I am prating to you, my sweet cousin, but it is the prattle of the heart, which Maria loves. Besides, whom have I to talk to of these things but you—you have been my counsellor in times past, my companion, and sweet familiar friend. Bear with me a little—I mourn the 'cherishers of my infancy.'"

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Page 25. Written on Christmas Day, 1797.

Mary Lamb, to whom these lines were addressed, after seeming to be on the road to perfect recovery, had suddenly had a relapse necessitating a return to confinement from the lodging in which her brother had placed her.

Page 25. The Old Familiar Faces.

This, the best known of all Lamb's poems, was written in January, 1798, following, it is suggested, upon a fit of resentment against Charles Lloyd. Writing to Coleridge in that month Lamb tells of that little difference, adding, "but he has forgiven me." Mr. J.A. Rutter, who, through Canon Ainger, enunciated this theory, thinks that Lloyd may be the "friend" of the fourth stanza, and Coleridge the "friend" of the sixth. The old—but untenable—supposition was that it was Coleridge whom Lamb had left abruptly. On the other hand it might possibly have been James White, especially as he was of a resolutely high-spirited disposition.

In its 1798 form the poem began with this stanza:—

Where are they gone, the old familiar faces? I had a mother, but she died, and left me, Died prematurely in a day of horrors— All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

And the last stanza began with the word "For," and italicised the words

And some are taken from me.

I am inclined to think from this italicisation that it was Mary Lamb's new seizure that was the real impulse of the poem.

The poem was dated January, 1798. Lamb printed it twice—in 1798 and 1818.

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Page 26. Composed at Midnight.

On the appearance of Lamb's Works, 1818, Leigh Hunt printed in The Examiner (February 7 and 8, 1819) the passage beginning with line 32, entitling it "A HINT to the GREATER CRIMINALS who are so fond of declaiming against the crimes of the poor and uneducated, and in favour of the torments of prisons and prison-ships in this world, and worse in the next. Such a one, says the poet,

'on his couch Lolling, &c.'"

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Page 28. POEMS AT THE END OF JOHN WOODVIL, 1802.

The volume containing John Woodvil, 1802, which is placed in the present edition among Lamb's plays, on page 149, included also the "Fragments of Burton" (see Vol. I.) and two lyrics.

Page 28. Helen.

Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge on August 26, 1800, remarking:—"How do you like this little epigram? It is not my writing, nor had I any finger in it. If you concur with me in thinking it very elegant and very original, I shall be tempted to name the author to you. I will just hint that it is almost or quite a first attempt."