Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66 No.406, August 1849

We will not weaken so admirable a remark by repeating it in a worse phraseology of our own. We wish the Serjeant always wrote in the same clear, forcible, and unaffected manner. With respect to this seizure which Lamb, in an early part of his life, had experienced, there is a reference in one of his letters too curious to pass unnoticed. Writing to Coleridge, he says – "At some future time I will amuse you with an account, as full as my memory will permit, of the strange turns my frenzy took. I look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of envy, for, while it lasted, I had many, many hours of pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad! All now seems to me vapid, or comparatively so."

The residue of Lamb's life is uneventful. The publication of a book – a journey into Cumberland – his final liberation from office, are the chief incidents. These it is not necessary to arrange in chronological order: they can be alluded to as occasion requires. But we will pursue a little further our notice of Mr Talfourd's biographical labours, that we may clear our way as we proceed.

We have seen that Lamb, in the first agony of his grief, rudely threw aside his poetry, and his scheme of publishing conjointly with Coleridge. Poetry and schemes of publication are not, however, so easily dismissed. As his mind subsided into a calmer state, they were naturally resumed. The literary partnership was extended, and Lloyd was admitted to associate his labours in the forthcoming volume. "At length," says Mr Talfourd, "the small volume containing the poems of Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lamb, was published by Mr Cottle at Bristol. It excited little attention." We do not wonder at this, if the lucubrations of Mr Lloyd had any conspicuous place in the volume. How the other two poets – how Coleridge especially, could have consented to this literary partnership, with so singularly inept and absurd a writer, would be past explaining, if it were not for some hint that we receive that Charles Lloyd was the son of a wealthy banker, and might, therefore, be the fittest person to transact that part of the business which occurs between the author and the publisher. Here we have a striking instance of Mr Talfourd's misplaced amiability of criticism. "Lloyd," he says, "wrote pleasing verses, and with great facility – a facility fatal to excellence; but his mind was chiefly remarkable for the fine power of analysis which distinguishes his 'London,' and other of his later compositions. In this power of discriminating and distinguishing – carried to a pitch almost of painfulness – Lloyd has scarcely been equalled; and his poems, though rugged in point of versification, will be found, by those who will read them with the calm attention they require, replete with critical and moral suggestions of the highest value." Very grateful to Mr Serjeant Talfourd will any reader feel who shall be induced, by his recommendation, to peruse, or attempt to peruse, Mr Lloyd's poem of "London!" We were. "Fine power of analysis!" Why, it is one stream of mud – of theologic mud. "Rugged in point of versification!" There is no trace of verse, and the style is an outlandish garb, such as no man has ever seen elsewhere, either in prose or verse. Poor Lloyd was a lunatic patient! – on him no one would be severe; but why should an intelligent Serjeant, unless prompted by a sly malice against all mankind, persuade us to read his execrable stuff? The following is a fair specimen of the drug, and is, indeed, taken as the book opened. We add the two last lines of the preceding stanza, to give all possible help to the elucidation of the one we quote. The italics are all Mr Lloyd's: —

"If you affirm grace irresistible,You must deny all liberty of will."But you reply, grace irresistibleOur creed admits not. I am sorry for't.Enough, or not enough, to bind the free will,Grace must be. Not enough? The dose falls short.This is of cause the prime condition stillThat it be operative. Yet divines exhortUs to deem grace sole source of all salvation,And if we're damned, blame but its application."

But divinity of this kind, it may be said, though well calculated to display "the power of discriminating and distinguishing, carried to a pitch almost of painfulness," is not exactly favourable to flowing verse. Here is a specimen where a lady is the subject, and the verse should be smooth then, if ever.

"I well remember her years, five-and-twenty,(Ah! now my muse is got into a gallop,)Longer perhaps! But time sufficient, plentyOf treasured offices of love to call up.She was then, as I recollect, quite dainty,And delicate, and seemed a fair envelopeOf virgin sweetness and angelic goodness;That fate should treat her with such reckless rudeness!"

The poor man seems to have had not the least appreciation of the power of language, so as to distinguish between the ludicrous and the pathetic. He must have read "Hudibras" with tears, not of laughter, in his eyes, and hence drawn his notion of tenderness of diction as well as harmony of verse. The most surprising thing about Lloyd is, that such a man should have chosen for his literary task to translate – Alfieri! And although he has performed the task very far from well, he has accomplished it in a manner that could not have been anticipated from his original compositions.

After this specimen of Mr Talfourd's laudatory criticism, we need not be astonished at any amount of eulogy he bestows on such names as Hazlitt and others, which really have a certain claim on the respect of all men. And yet, even after this, we felt some slight surprise at hearing Mr Talfourd speak of "the splendid reputation" of Mr Harrison Ainsworth! Would Mr Talfourd have such a reputation, if it were offered him? Would he not rather have remained in complete obscurity than be distinguished by such "splendours" as the authorship of Jack Sheppard would have invested him with? Why should he throw about this indiscriminate praise, and make his good word of no possible value? Splendid reputation! Can trash be anything but trash, because a multitude of the idle and the ignorant, whom it exactly suits, read and admire? By-and-by they grow ashamed of their idol, when they find they have him all to themselves, and that sensible people are smiling at their enthusiasm; they then discard him for some new, untried, and unconvicted favourite. Such is the natural history of these splendid reputations.

The second volume of the "Final Memorials" is in great part occupied with sketches of the literary friends and companions of Lamb. These Mr Talfourd introduces by a somewhat bold parallel between the banquets at the lordly halls of Holland House and the suppers in the dark and elevated chambers in the Inner Temple, whither Lamb had removed. We are by no means scandalised at such a comparison. Wit may flow, and wisdom too, as freely in the garret as in the saloon. To eat off plate, to be served assiduously by liveried attendants, may not give any more real zest to colloquial pleasure, to good hearty talking, than to attack without ceremony "the cold beef flanked with heaps of smoking potatoes, which Becky has just brought in." Nor do we know that claret in the flagon of beautifully cut glass, may be a more potent inspiration of wit than "the foaming pots of porter from the best tap in Fleet Street." We are not at all astonished that such a parallel should be drawn; what surprises us is, that, being in the humour to draw such comparisons, the Sergeant could find only one place in all London which could be brought into this species of contrast, and of rivalry, with Holland House. "Two circles of rare social enjoyment, differing as widely as possible in all external circumstances —but each superior in its kind to all others, were at the same time generously opened to men of letters." We, who have been admitted to neither, have perhaps no right to an opinion; but, judging by the bill of fare presented to us, we shrewdly suspect there were very many circles where we should have preferred the intellectual repast to that set out in Inner Temple Lane. We doubt not the Serjeant himself has assembled round his own table a society that we should greatly more have coveted the pleasure of joining. We have the name of Godwin, it is true, but Godwin never opened his mouth; – played whist all the evening. Had he not written his book? why should he talk? We have Hazlitt, – but by all accounts he was rarely in a tolerable humour, perpetually raving, with admirable consistency, in praise of republics and Bonaparte. Coleridge was too rarely a visitor to be counted in the list; and certain we are that we should have no delight in hearing Charles Lloyd "reason of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," to Leigh Hunt. Some actors are named, of whose conversational powers we know nothing, and presume nothing very extraordinary. Lamb's "burly jovial brother, the Ajax Telamon of clerks," and a Captain Burney, of whom we are elsewhere told that he liked Shakspeare "because he was so much of a gentleman," promise little on the score of intellectual conversation; neither should we be particularly anxious to sit opposite a certain M. B., of whom Lamb said, "M., if dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!"

After this singular parallel, we are shown round a gallery of portraits. First we have George Dyer, who appears to be the counterpart of our old friend Dominie Sampson. But, indeed, we hold George Dyer to be a sort of myth, a fabulous person, the creation of Charles Lamb's imagination, and imposed as a reality on his friends. Such an absurdity as he is here represented to be could not have been bred, could not have existed, in these times, and in London. If we are to credit the stories told of him, his walking in broad day into the canal at Islington was one of the wisest things he did, or could possibly have done. Lamb tells him, in the strictest confidence, that the "Waverley Novels" are the works of Lord Castlereagh, just returned from the Congress of Sovereigns at Vienna! Off he runs, nor stops till he reaches Maida Hill, where he deposits his news in the ears of Leigh Hunt, who, "as a public man," he thinks ought to be possessed of the great fact. At another time Lamb gravely inquires of him, "Whether it was true, as was commonly reported, that he was to be made a lord?" "Oh dear, no! Mr Lamb," he responds with great earnestness, "I could not think of such a thing: it is not true, I assure you." "I thought not," replies the wit, "and I contradict it wherever I go; but the government will not ask your consent – they may raise you to the peerage without your even knowing it." "I hope not, Mr Lamb; indeed, indeed, I hope not; it would not suit me at all," repeats our modern Dominie, and goes away musing on the possibility of strange honours descending, whether he will or not, upon his brow. It goes to our heart to disturb a good story, but such a man as the George Dyer here represented never could have existed.

We have rather a long account of Godwin, with some remarks not very satisfactory upon his intellectual character. That Mr Godwin was taciturn, that he conversed, when he did talk, upon trivial subjects, and in a small precise manner, and that he was especially fond of sleeping after dinner – all this we can easily understand. Mr Godwin's mental activity was absorbed in his authorship, and he was a very voluminous author. But we cannot so easily understand Mr Talfourd's explanations, nor why these habits should have any peculiar connexion with the intellectual qualities of the author of Caleb Williams, and a host of novels, as well as of the Political Justice, of the Life of Chaucer, and the History of the Commonwealth. Such habits are rather the result of a man's temperament, and the manner of life which circumstances have thrown him into, than of his intellectual powers. Profound metaphysicians have been very vivacious talkers, and light and humorous writers very taciturn men. Mr Talfourd finds that Godwin had no imagination, was all abstract reason, and thus accounts for his having no desire to address his fellowmen but through the press. The passage is too long to quote, and would be very tedious. We must leave him in quiet possession of his own theory of the matter.

It was new to us, and may be to our readers, to hear that Godwin supported himself "by a shop in Skinner Street, where, under the auspices of 'Mr J. Godwin & Co.,' the prettiest and wisest books for children issued, which old-fashioned parents presented to their children, without suspecting that the graceful lessons of piety and goodness which charmed away the selfishness of infancy, were published, and sometimes revised, and now and then written, by a philosopher whom they would scarcely venture to name!" We admire the good sense which induced him to adhere to so humble an occupation, if he found it needful for his support. But what follows is not quite so admirable. He was a great borrower; or, in the phrase of Mr Talfourd, "he met the exigencies of business with the trusting simplicity which marked his course; he asked his friends for aid without scruple, considering that their means were justly the due of one who toiled in thought for their inward life, and had little time to provide for his own outward existence, and took their excuses when offered without doubt or offence." And then the Serjeant proceeds to relate, in a tone of the most touching simplicity, his own personal experience upon this matter. "The very next day after I had been honoured and delighted by an introduction to him at Lamb's chambers, I was made still more proud and happy by his appearance at my own on such an errand, which my poverty, not my will, rendered abortive. After some pleasant chat on indifferent matters, he carelessly observed that he had a little bill for £150 falling due on the morrow, which he had forgotten till that morning, and desired the loan of the necessary amount for a few weeks. At first, in eager hopes of being able thus to oblige one whom I regarded with admiration akin to awe, I began to consider whether it was possible for me to raise such a sum; but, alas! a moment's reflection sufficed to convince me that the hope was vain, and I was obliged, with much confusion, to assure my distinguished visitor how glad I should have been to serve him, but that I was only just starting as a special pleader, was obliged to write for magazines to help me on, and had not such a sum in the world. 'Oh dear!' said the philosopher, 'I thought you were a young gentleman of fortune – don't mention it, don't mention it – I shall do very well elsewhere!' And then, in the most gracious manner, reverted to our former topics, and sat in my small room for half-an-hour, as if to convince me that my want of fortune made no difference in his esteem." How very gracious! The most shameless borrower coming to raise money from a young gentleman of fortune, to meet "a little bill which he had forgotten till that morning," would hardly, on finding his mistake, have made an abrupt departure. He would have coolly beat a retreat, as the philosopher did. We never hear, by the way, that he returned "to my small room" at any other time, for half-an-hour's chat. But how very interesting it is to see the learned Serjeant, whose briefs have made him acquainted with every trick and turn of commercial craft, retaining this sweet and pristine simplicity!

The Serjeant, however, has a style of narrative which, though on the surface it displays the most good-natured simplicity, slyly insinuates to the more intelligent reader that he sees quite as far as another, and is by no means the dupe of his own amiability. Thus, in his description of Coleridge, (which would be too long a subject to enter into minutely,) he has the following passage, (perhaps the best in the description,) which, while it seems to echo to the full the unstinted applause so common with the admirers of that singular man, gives a quiet intimation to the reader that he was not altogether so blind as some of those admirers. "If his entranced hearers often were unable to perceive the bearings of his argument – too mighty for any grasp but his own – and sometimes reaching beyond his own – they understood 'a beauty in the words, if not the words;' and a wisdom and a piety in the illustrations, even when unable to connect them with the idea which he desired to illustrate." Mr Talfourd reveals here, we suspect, the true secret of the charm which Coleridge exercised in conversation. His hearers never seemed to have carried away anything distinct or serviceable from his long discourses. They understood "a beauty in the words, if not the words;" they felt a charm like that of listening to music, and, when the voice ceased, there was perhaps as little distinct impression left, as if it had really been a beautiful symphony they had heard.

There is only one more in this gallery of portraits before which we shall pause, and that only for a moment, to present a last specimen of the critical manner of Mr Talfourd. We are sorry the last should not be the best; and yet, as this sketch is a reprint, in an abridged form, of an essay affixed to the Literary Remains of Hazlitt, it may be considered as having received a more than usual share of the author's attention. It is thus that he analyses the mental constitution of one whom he appears to have studied and greatly admired – William Hazlitt. "He had as unquenchable a desire for truth as others have for wealth, or power, or fame: he pursued it with sturdy singleness of purpose, and enunciated it without favour or fear. But besides that love of truth, that sincerity in pursuing it, and that boldness in telling it, he had also a fervent aspiration after the beautiful, a vivid sense of pleasure, and an intense consciousness of his own individual being, which sometimes produced obstacles to the current of speculation, by which it was broken into dazzling eddies, or urged into devious windings. Acute, fervid, vigorous as his mind was, it wanted the one great central power of imagination, which brings all the other faculties into harmonious action, multiplies them into each other, makes truth visible in the forms of beauty, and substitutes intellectual vision for proof. Thus in him truth and beauty held divided empire. In him the spirit was willing but the flesh was strong, and when these contend it is not difficult to anticipate the result; 'for the power of beauty shall sooner transform honesty from what it is into a bawd, than the person of honesty shall transform beauty into its likeness.' This 'sometime paradox' was vividly exemplified in Hazlitt's personal history, his conversation, and his writings."3

Are we to gather from this most singular combination of words, that Hazlitt had a grain too much of sensuality in his composition, which diverted him from the search after truth? The expression, "the flesh was strong," and the quotation so curiously introduced from Shakspeare, seem to point this way. And then, again, are we to understand that this too much of sensuality was owing to a want of imagination? – that central power of imagination which is here described in a manner that no system of metaphysics we have studied enables us in the least to comprehend. We know something of Schelling's "intellectual intuition" transcending the ordinary scope of reason. Is this "intellectual vision, which the imagination substitutes for proof," of the same family? But indeed it would be idle insincerity to ask such questions. Sergeant Talfourd knows no more than we do what it means. The simple truth is, that here, as too frequently elsewhere, he aims at a certain subtlety of thought, and falls unfortunately upon no thought whatever – upon mere confusion of thought, which he attempts to hide by a quantity of somewhat faded phrase and rhetorical diction.

If we refer to the original essay itself, we shall not be aiding ourselves or Mr Talfourd. The statement is fuller, and the confusion greater. In one point it relieves us – it relieves us entirely from the necessity of too deeply pondering the philosophic import of any phraseology our critic may adopt, for the phrase is changed merely to please the ear; and what at first has the air of definition proves to be merely a poetic colouring. He thus commences his essay: "As an author, Mr Hazlitt may be contemplated principally in three aspects – as a moral and political reasoner, as an observer of character and manners, and as a critic in literature and painting. It is in the first character only that he should be followed with caution." In the two others he is, of course, to be followed implicitly. Why he was not equally perfect as a moral and political reasoner, Mr Talfourd proceeds to explain. Mr Hazlitt had "a passionate desire for truth," and also "earnest aspirations for the beautiful." Now, continues our critic, "the vivid sense of beauty may, indeed, have fit home in the breast of the searcher after truth, but then he must also be endowed with the highest of all human faculties – the great mediatory and interfusing power of imagination, which presides supreme over the mind, brings all its powers and impulses into harmonious action, and becomes itself the single organ of all. At its touch, truth becomes visible in the shape of beauty; the fairest of material things become the living symbols of airy thought, and the mind apprehends the finest affinities of the world of sense and spirit 'in clear dream and solemn vision.'" This last expression conveys, we presume, all the meaning, or no-meaning, of the phrase afterwards adopted – the "intellectual vision which it substitutes for truth." Both are mere jingle. The rest of the passage is much the same as it stands in the Final Memorials. Somehow or other Mr Hazlitt is proved to have been defective as a reasoner, because he wanted imagination! – and imagination was wanted, not to enlarge his experience of mental phenomena, but to step between his love of truth and his sense of beauty. Did he ever divulge this discovery to his friend Hazlitt? – and how did the metaphysician receive it?

To one so generous towards others, it would be ungracious to use hard words. Indeed, to leave before an intelligent reader these specimens of "fine analysis," and "powers of discriminating and distinguishing," is quite severe enough punishment. We wish we could expunge them, with a host of similar ones, not only from our record, but from the works of the author himself.4

It is time that we turn from the biography to the writings of Charles Lamb – to Elia, the gentle humorist. Not that Charles Lamb is exclusively the humorist: far from it. His verse is, at all events, sufficient to demonstrate a poetic sensibility, and his prose writings display a subtlety of analysis and a delicacy of perception which were not always enlisted in the service of mirth, but which were often displayed in some refined criticism, or keen observation upon men and manners. Still it is as a humorist that he has chiefly attracted the attention of the reading public, and obtained his popularity and literary status. But the coarser lineaments of the humorist are not to be found in him. His is a gentle, refined, and refining humour, which never trespasses upon delicacy; which does not excite that common and almost brutal laughter, so easily raised at what are called the comic miseries of life – often no comedy to those who have to endure them. It is a humour which generally attains its end by investing what is lowly with an unexpected interest, not by degrading what is noble by allying it with mean and grotesque circumstance, (the miserable art of parody;) it is a humour, in short, which excites our laughter, not by stifling all reflection, but by awakening the mind to new trains of thought, and prompting to odd but kindly sympathies. It is a humour which a poet might indulge in, which a very nun might smile at, which a Fenelon would at times prepare himself mildly to admonish, but, on seeing from how clear a spirit it emanated, would, relaxing his brows again, let pass unreproved.

There is a great rage at present for the comic; and, to do justice to our own times, we think it may be said that wit was never more abundant – and certainly the pencil was never used with more genuine humour. But we cannot sympathise with, or much admire, that class of writers who seem to make the comic their exclusive study, who peer into everything merely to find matter of jest in it. Everything is no more comic than everything is solemn, in this mingled world of ours. These men, reversing the puritanical extravagance, would improve every incident into the occasion of a laugh. At length one extreme becomes as tedious as the other. We have, if we may trust to advertisements, for we never saw the production itself, a Comic History of England! and, amongst other editions of the learned commentator, A Comic Blackstone! We shall be threatened some day with a Comic Encyclopædia; or we shall have these comic gentry following the track round the whole world which Mrs Sommerville has lately taken, in her charming book on Physical Geography. They will go hopping and grinning after her, peeping down volcanoes, and punning upon coral reefs, and finding laughter in all things in this circumnavigable globe. Well, let them go grinning from pole to pole, and all along the tropics. We can wish them no worse punishment.