I was duly installed as a sort of sub-Editor of the London Magazine. It would be affectation to say, that engraving was resigned with regret. There is always something mechanical about the artmoreover, it is as unwholesome as wearisome to sit copper-fastened to a board, with a cantle scooped out to accommodate your stomach, if you have one, painfully ruling, ruling, and still ruling lines straight or crooked, by the long hundred to the square inch, at the doubly-hazardous risk which Wordsworth so deprecates, of "growing double." So farewell Woollett! Strange! Bartolozzi! I have said, my vanity did not rashly plunge me into authorship; but no sooner was there a legitimate opening than I jumped at it, à la Grimaldi, head foremost, and was speedily behind the scenes. To judge by my zeal and delight in my new pursuit, the bowl had at last found its natural bias.* Not content with taking articles, like candidates for holy orders-with rejecting articles like the Belgians-I dreamt articles, thought articles, wrote articles, which were all inserted by the editor, of course with the concurrence of his deputy. The more irksome parts of authorship, such as the correction of the press, were to me labors of love. I received a revise from Mr. Baldwin's Mr. Parker, as if it had been a proof of his regard; forgave him all his slips, and really thought that printers' devils were not so black as they are painted. But my top-gallant glory was in 66 our Contributors!" How I used to look forward to Elia! and backward for Hazlitt, and all round for Edward Herbert, and how I used to look up to Allan Cunningham! for at that time the London had a goodly list of writers-a rare company. It is now defunct, and perhaps no ex-periodical might so appropri ately be apostrophized with the Irish funereal question—“Arrah, * There was a dash of ink in my blood. My father wrote two novels, and my brother was decidedly of a literary turn, to the great disquietude for a time of an anxious parent. She suspected him, on the strength of several amatory poems of a very desponding cast, of being the victim of a hopeless attachment; so he was caught, closeted, and catechised, and after a deal of delicate and tender sounding, he confessed, not with the anticipated sighs and tears, but a very unexpected burst of laughter, that he had been guilty of translating some fragments of Petrarch. honey, why did you die?" Had not you an editor, and elegant prose writers, and beautiful poets, and broths of boys for criticism and classics, and wits and humorists.-Elia, Cary, Procter, Cunningham, Bowring, Barton, Hazlitt, Elton, Hartley Coleridge, Talfourd, Soane, Horace Smith, Reynolds, Poole, Clare, and Thomas Benyon, with a power besides. Hadn't you Lions' Heads with Traditional Tales? Hadn't you an Opium Eater, and a Dwarf, and a Giant, and a Learned Lamb, and a Green Man? Had not you a regular Drama, and a Musical Report, and a Report of Agriculture, and an Obituary and a Price Current, and a current price, of only half-a-crown? Arrah, why did you die? Why, somehow the contributors fell away-the concern went into other hands-worst of all, a new editor tried to put the Belles Lettres in Utilitarian envelopes; whereupon, the circulation of the Miscellany, like that of poor Le Fevre, got slower, slower, slower,-and slower still-and then stopped for ever! It was a sorry scattering of those old Londoners! Some went out of the country: one (Clare) went into it. Lamb retreated to Colebrooke. Mr. Cary presented himself to the British Museum. Reynolds and Barry took to engrossing when they should pen a stanza, and Thomas Benyon gave up litera ture. It is with mingled feelings of pride, pleasure, and pain, that I revert to those old times, when the writers I had long known and admired in spirit were present to me in the flesh-when I had the delight of listening to their wit and wisdom from their own lips, of gazing on their faces, and grasping their right hands. Familiar figures rise before me, familiar voices ring in my ears, and, alas! amongst them are shapes that I must never see, sounds that I can never hear, again. Before my departure from England, I was one of the few who saw the grave close over the remains of one whom to know as a friend was to love as a relation. Never did a better soul go to a better world! Never perhaps (giving the lie direct to the common imputation of envy, malice, and hatred, amongst the brotherhood), never did an author descend-to quote his favorite Sir T. Browneinto "the land of the mole and the pismire" so hung with golden opinions, and honored and regretted with such sincere eulogies and elegies, by his contemporaries. To HIM, the first of these, my reminiscences, is eminently due, for I lost in him not only a dear and kind friend, but an invaluable critic; one whom, were such literary adoptions in modern use, I might well name, as Cotton called Walton, my "father." To borrow the earnest language of old Jean Bertaut, as Englished by Mr. Cary "Thou, chiefly, noble spirit, for whose loss Just grief and mourning all our hearts engross, Did'st hope some fruitage from those buds of mine; The far-off summit by thy friendly speech. * May gracious Heaven, O honor of our age! Nor let it only for vain fortune stand, That I have seen thy visage-touch'd thy hand!” I was sitting one morning beside our Editor, busily correcting proofs, when a visitor was announced, whose name, grumbled by a low ventriloquial voice, like Tom Pipes calling from the hold through the hatchway, did not resound distinctly on my tympanum. However, the door opened, and in came a stranger, a figure remarkable at a glance, with a fine head, on a small spare body, supported by two almost immaterial legs. He was clothed in sables, of a by-gone fashion, but there was something wanting, or something present about him, that certified he was neither a divine, nor a physician, nor a schoolmaster: from a certain neatness and sobriety in his dress, coupled with his sedate bearing, he might have been taken, but that such a costume would be anomalous, for a Quaker in black. He looked still more like (what he really was) a literary Modern Antique, a New-Old Author, a living Anachronism, contemporary at once with Burton the Elder, and Colman the Younger. Meanwhile he advanced with rather a peculiar gait, his walk was plantigrade, and with a cheerful "How d'ye," and one of the blandest, sweetest smiles that ever brightened a manly countenance, held out two fingers to the Editor. The two gentlemen in black soon fell into discourse; and whilst they conferred, the Lavater principle within me set to work upon the interesting specimen thus presented to its speculations. It was a striking intellectual face, full of wiry lines, physiognomical quips and cranks, that gave it great character. There was much earnestness about the brows, and a deal of speculation in the eyes, which were brown and bright, and "quick in turning;" the nose, a decided one, though of no established order; and there was a handsome smartness about the mouth. Altogether it was no common face -none of those willow-pattern ones, which nature turns out by thousands at her potteries ;-but more like a chance specimen of the Chinese ware, one to the set-unique, antique, quaint. No one who had once seen it, could pretend not to know it again. It was no face to lend its countenance to any confusion of persons in a Comedy of Errors. You might have sworn to it piecemeal,‚—a separate affidavit for every feature. In short, his face was as original as his figure; his figure as his character; his character as his writings; his writings the most original of the age. After the literary business had been settled, the Editor invited his contributor to dinner, adding 66 we shall have a hare-" "And-and-and-and many Friends !" The hesitation in the speech, and the readiness of the allusion, were alike characteristic of the individual, whom his familiars will perchance have recognized already as the delightful Essayist, the capital Critic, the pleasant Wit and Humorist, the delicate-minded and large-hearted Charles Lamb! He was shy like myself with strangers, so, that despite my yearnings, our first meeting scarcely amounted to an introduction. We were both at dinner, amongst the hare's many friends, but our acquaintance got no farther, in spite of a desperate attempt on my part to attract his notice. His complaint of the Decay of Beggars presented another chance: I wrote on coarse paper, and in ragged English, a letter of thanks to him as if from one of his mendicant clients, but it produced no effect. I had given up all hope, when one night, sitting sick and sad, in my bed-room, racked with the rheumatism, the door was suddenly opened, the well-known quaint figure in black walked in without any formality, and with a cheerful "Well, boy, how are you?" and the bland, sweet smile, extended the two fingers. They were eagerly clutched of course, and from that hour we were firm friends. Thus characteristically commenced my intimacy with C. Lamb. He had recently become my neighbor, and in a few days called again, to ask me to tea, "to meet Wordsworth.' In spite of any idle jests to the contrary, the name had a spell in it that drew me to Colebrooke Cottage* with more alacrity † than consisted with prudence, stiff joints, and a North wind. But I was willing to run, at least hobble, some risk, to be of a party in a parlor with the Author of Laodamia and Hartleap Well. As for his Betty Foy-bles, he is not the first man by many, who has met with a simple fracture through riding his theory-hack so far and so fast, that it broke down with him. If he has now and then put on a nightcap, so have his own nextdoor mountains. If he has babbled, sometimes, like an infant of two years old; he has also thought, and felt, and spoken, the beautiful fancies, and tender affections, and artless language, of the children who can say "We are seven." Along with food for babes, he has furnished strong meat for men. So I put on my great-coat, and in a few minutes found myself, for the first time, at a door, that opened to me as frankly as its master's heart; * A cottage of Ungentility, for it had neither double coach-house nor wings. Like its tenant, it stood alone. He said, glancing at the Paternoster one, that he did not like "the Row." There was a bit of a garden, in which, being, as he professed, "more fond of Men Sects than of Insects," he made probably his first and last observation in Entomology. He had been watching a spider on a gooseberry bush, entrapping a fly. "I never saw such a thing," he said. Directly he was caught in her fatal spinning, she darted down upon him, and in a minute turned him out, completely lapped in a shroud! It reminded me of the Fatal Sisters in Gray." 66 † A sort of rheumatic celerity, of which Sir W. Scott's favorite dramatiser seemed to have a very accurate notion. Those who remember "poor Terry's" deliberate delivery, will be able to account for the shout of laughter which once rang throughout the Adelphi green-room, at his emphatic manner of giving, from a manuscript play, the stage direction of " Enter with-a-lack-ri-ty!" |