The remarks in the Quarterly Review, to which Lamb very naturally objected, and which are believed to have been written by Dr. Robert Gooch (1784-1830), a friend of Southey, had occurred in an article, in the number for April, 1822, on Reid's Essays on Hypochondriasis and other Nervous Affections. There, in a passage introducing quotations from Lamb's "Confessions of a Drunkard," the reviewer says:— In a collection of tracts "On the Effects of Spirituous Liquors," by an eminent living barrister, there is a paper entitled the Confessions of a Drunkard," which affords a fearful picture of the consequences of intemperance, and which we have reason to know is a true tale. It was, we may suppose, as a kind of challenge to this statement that Lamb authorised the republication of his "Confessions." It cannot be denied, however, that the circumstantiality of the story gave a handle to the Quarterly's theory. For example, twelve years before, 1813 (when the essay was probably first written), Lamb had completed his twenty-sixth year. He was known to have an impediment in his speech. He was known also to have been in bondage to tobacco. The two sets of friends (see pp. 134 and 135) correspond to Fenwick, Fell & Co., and the Burney whist players. If a portion of the "Confessions" was true, it was more likely to be true in 1812-1813 than at any time in Lamb's life. He was then between thirty-seven and thirty-nine, a critical age. He had apparently abandoned most of his literary ambition and was beginning the least productive period of his life; if a man is at all given to seeking alcoholic stimulant he resorts to it more when his ambition sleeps than when it is lively. In 1812-1813 Lamb was hard worked at the East India House; and with the failure of The Reflector, to which he was an important contributor, immediately behind him, the failure of John Woodvil (in which he had believed) more remotely behind him, his children's book vein dry, and little but office routine and disappointment to look forward to, he may conceivably have indulged now and then, after a festive night with his friends, in some such gloomy thoughts as are expressed in this essay. Crabb Robinson, indeed, who saw much of Lamb at this season, records in his unpublished Diary that the "Confessions" seemed to him sadly true. Robinson, however, had not enough imagination to know Lamb very well, and we may discount such an impression; but the fact remains that among Lamb's friends there was one who, wishing him all happiness, looked on the "Confessions" in this way. Yet whatever proportion of truth may have been in the "Confessions" when they were written (possibly when Mary Lamb was ill and hope was with Lamb at its lowest) quickly disappeared. We may feel confident of that. Lamb remained to the end conscious of the stimulating effect of wine and spirits and too easily influenced by them, as are so many persons of sensitive habit and quick imagination: that is all. As Talfourd wrote: Drinking with him [Lamb], except so far as it cooled a feverish thirst, was not a sensual but an intellectual pleasure; it lighted up his fading fancy, enriched his humour, and impelled the struggling thought or beautiful image into day. VOL. I.-28 One of the best proofs of the untruth of the "Confessions" is urged by Charles Robert Leslie, the painter, and it becomes particularly cogent when we remember the case of Tommy Bye, described by Lamb in two of his letters, who was reduced to a paltry income at the East India House as a punishment for insobriety. Leslie wrote in his Autobiographical Recollections, 1860: I have noticed that Lamb sometimes did himself injustice by his odd sayings and actions, and he now and then did the same by his writings. His "Confessions of a Drunkard" greatly exaggerate any habits of excess he may ever have indulged. The regularity of his attendance at the India House, and the liberal manner in which he was rewarded for that attendance, proved that he never could have been a drunkard. Well, indeed, would it be for the world if such extraordinary virtues as he possessed were often found in company with so very few faults. In all modern editions of Lamb the "Confessions of a Drunkard" are included with the Last Essays of Elia. But Lamb did not himself originally place them there. Apparently his intention was not to reprint them after their appearance in the London Magazine in 1822. When, however, the Last Essays of Elia was published, in 1833, the paper called "A Death-Bed (see Vol. II., page 246) was objected to by Mrs. Randal Norris, as bearing too publicly upon her poverty. When, therefore, the next edition was preparing, “A Death-Bed was taken out, and the "Confessions" put in its place, but whether Lamb made the substitution, or whether it was decided upon after his death, I do not know. Page 136, line 17. Joseph Andrews. Page 136, line 18. Adams. Parson Adams in Fielding's novel Piscator. Piscator's breakfast, in The Com 66 plete Angler, was a pipe. For the delicate room, Piscatoribus Sacra," see Chapter I. of Cotton's continuation. Lamb alludes to it again in the Elia essay "Old China," Vol. II., page 250. Page 136, last paragraph. on the opposite page. The print after Correggio. See plate Page 137, quotation. "To suffer wet damnation From Cyril Tourneur's "Revenger's Tragedy," Act III., Scene 5. Vindici, gazing upon the skull of his dead lady, says :— Methinks this mouth should make a swearer tremble; A drunkard clasp his teeth, and not undo 'em, the passage in his Specimens, 1808. Lamb uses Lamb gave Page 137, line 20. The body of this death. See Romans VII. 24. Page 138, line 37. I stumble upon dark mountains. the same phrase in a letter to Taylor in 1821, concerning the want of faith expressed in the Elia essay "New Year's Eve." Page 138. Footnote. Poor M. Probably George Morland, who died a drunkard in 1804. In The Life of George Morland, by George Dawe (Lamb's "Royal Academician"), we read: "When he [Morland] arose in the morning his hand trembled so as to render him incapable of guiding the pencil, until he had recruited his spirits with his fatal remedy." Page 139. RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. This article was first printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1813, and in the supplement for that year, under the title "On Christ's Hospital and the Character of the Christ's Hospital Boys." In that place it had the following opening, which, having lost its timeliness, was discarded when in 1818 the essay was printed in the Works :— "A great deal has been said about the Governors of this Hospital abusing their right of presentation, by presenting the children of opulent parents to the Institution. This may have been the case in an instance or two; and what wonder, in an establishment consisting, in town and country, of upwards of a thousand boys! But I believe there is no great danger of an abuse of this sort ever becoming very general. There is an old quality in human nature, which will perpetually present an adequate preventive to this evil. While the coarse blue coat and the yellow hose shall continue to be the costume of the school, (and never may modern refinement innovate upon the venerable fashion!) the sons of the Aristocracy of this country, cleric or laic, will not often be obtruded upon this seminary. "I own, I wish there was more room for such complaints. I cannot but think that a sprinkling of the sons of respectable parents among them has an admirable tendency to liberalize the whole mass; and that to the great proportion of Clergymen's children in particular which are to be found among them it is owing, that the foundation has not long since degenerated into a mere Charity-school, as it must do, upon the plan so hotly recommended by some reformists, or recruiting its ranks from the offspring of none but the very lowest of the people. "I am not learned enough in the history of the Hospital to say by what steps it may have departed from the letter of its original charter; but believing it, as it is at present constituted, to be a great practical benefit, I am not anxious to revert to first principles, to overturn a positive good, under pretence of restoring something which existed in the days of Edward the Sixth, when the face of every thing around us was as different as can be from the present. Since that time the opportunities of instruction to the very lowest classes (of as much instruction as may be beneficial and not pernicious to them) have multiplied beyond what the prophetic spirit of the first suggester of this charity could have predicted, or the wishes of that holy man have even aspired to. There are parochial schools, and Bell's and Lancaster's, with their arms open to receive every son of ignorance, 1 "1 Bishop Ridley, in a Sermon preached before King Edward the Sixth." |