The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 67, May, 1863

Various

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• Publié par: orzou
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 22
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, Atlantic Monthly,
Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863, by Various
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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May,
1863
Author: Various
Release Date: July 26, 2004 [eBook #13026]
Language: English
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 11,
ISSUE 67, MAY, 1863***
E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya
Allen, and Project Gutenberg Distributed
Proofreaders from page scans provided by Cornell
UniversityTHE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND
POLITICS.
VOL. XI.—MAY, 1863.—NO. LXVII.
CHARLES LAMB'S
UNCOLLECTED
WRITINGS.
I.
What Southey says of Cottle's shop is true of the
little bookstore in a certain old town of New
England, which I used to frequent years ago, and
where I got my first peep into Chaucer, and
Spenser, and Fuller, and Sir Thomas Browne, and
other renowned old authors, from whom I nowderive so much pleasure and solacement. 'Twas a
place where sundry lovers of good books used to
meet and descant eloquently and enthusiastically
upon the merits and demerits of their favorite
authors. I, then a young man, with a most
praiseworthy desire of reading "books that are
books," but with a most lamentable ignorance of
even the names of the principal English authors,
was both a pleased and a benefited listener to the
conversations of these bookish men. Hawthorne
says that to hear the old Inspector (whom he has
immortalized in the quaint and genial introduction
to the "Scarlet Letter") expatiate on fish, poultry,
and butcher's-meat, and the most eligible methods
of preparing the same for the table, was as
appetizing as a pickle or an oyster; and to hear
these literary gourmands talk with such gusto of
this writer's delightful style, or of that one's
delicious humor, or t' other's brilliant wit and
merciless satire, gave one a taste and a relish for
the authors so lovingly and heartily commended.
Certainly, after hearing the genial, scholarly,
gentlemanly lawyer S—— sweetly discourse on the
old English divines,—or bluff, burly, good-natured,
wit-loving Master R—— declaim, in his loud, bold,
enthusiastic manner, on the old English dramatists,
—or queer, quaint, golden-hearted Dr. D—— mildly
and modestly, yet most pertinently, express
himself about Old Burton and Old Fuller,—or wise,
thoughtful, ingenious Squire M—— ably, if not very
eloquently, hold forth on Shakspeare and Milton, I
had (who but a dunce or dunderhead would not
have had?) a "greedy great desire" to look into the
works of"Such famous men, such worthies of the earth."
And after listening to the stout, brawny, two-fisted,
whole-soled, big-hearted, large-brained Parson A
——, as he talked in his wise and winsome manner
about Charles Lamed and his writings, I could not
refrain from forthwith procuring and reading Elia's
famous and immortal essays. Since then I have
been a constant reader of Elia, and a most zealous
admirer of Charles Lamb the author and Charles
Lamb the man. Thackeray, you remember,
somewhere mentions a youthful admirer of
Dickens, who, when she is happy, reads "Nicholas
Nickleby,"—when she is unhappy, reads "Nicholas
Nickleby,"—when she is in bed, reads "Nicholas
Nickleby,"—when she has nothing to do, reads
"Nicholas Nickleby,"—and when she has finished
the book, reads "Nicholas Nickleby": and so do I
read and re-read the essays and letters of Charles
Lamb; and the oftener I read them, the better I like
then, the higher I value them. Indeed, I live upon
the essays of Elia, as Hazlitt did upon "Tristram
Shandy," as a sort of food that simulates with my
natural disposition.
And yet, despite all my love and admiration of
Charles Lamb,—nay, rather in consequence of it,
—I must blame him of what Mr. Barron Field was
please to eulogize him for,—writing so little.
Undoubtedly in most authors suppression in writing
would be a virtue. In Lamb it was a fault. There are
a score or two of subjects which he, "no less from
temerity than felicity of his pen," should have
written upon,—subjects on which he had thoughtand ruminated for years, and which he, and none
but he, could do justice to. He who loved and
admired before or since, such sterling old writers
as Burton, Browne, Fuller, and Walton, should
have given us an article on each of those worthies
and their inditing. Chaucer and Spenser, though
proud and happy in having had such an
appreciating reader of there writings as Elia was,
when denizen of this earth, would, methinks, have
given him a warmer, heartier, gladder welcome to
heaven, if he had done for them what he did for
Hogarth and the old dramatists,—pointed out to
the would "with a finger of fire" the truth and beauty
contained in their works. Instead of writing only two
volumes of essays, Elia should have written a
dozen. He had read, heard, thought, and seen
enough to furnish matter for twice that number. He
himself confesseth, in a letter written a year or two
before his death, that he felt as if he had a
thousand essays swelling within him. Oh that Elia,
like Mr. Spectator, had printed himself out before
he died!
But notwithstanding Lamb's fame and popularity,
notwithstanding all readers of his inimitable essays
lament that one who wrote so delightfully as Elia
did should have written so little, their has not yet be
published a complete collection of his writings. The
standard edition of his works, edited by Talfourd, is
far from being complete. Surely the author of "Ion"
was unwise in not publishing all of Lamb's
productions. Carlyle said he wanted to know all
about Margaret Fuller, even to the color of her
stocking. And the admirers of Elia wanted topossess every scrap and fragment of his inditing.
They cannot let oblivion have the lease "notelet" or
"essaykin" of his. For, however inferior to his best
productions these uncollected articles may be, they
must contain more or less of Lamb's humor,
sense, and observation. Somewhat of his delightful
individuality must be stamped upon them. In brief,
they cannot but contain much that would amuse
and entertain all admirers of their author. For
myself, I would rather read the poorest of these
uncollected essays of Elia than the best
productions of some of the most popular of
modern authors. "The king's chaff is as good as
other people's corn," saith the old proverb. "There
is a pleasure arising from the very bagatelles of
men renowned for their knowledge and genius,"
says Goldsmith; "and we receive with veneration
those pieces, after they are dead, which would
lessen them in our estimation while living: sensible
that we shall enjoy them no more, we treasure up,
as precious relics, every saying and word that has
escaped them; but their writings, of every kind, we
deem inestimable."
For years I have been hopefully and patiently
waiting for somebody to collect and publish these
scattered and all but forgotten articles of Lamb's;
but at last, seeing no likelihood of its being done at
present, if ever in my day, and fearing that I might
else never have an opportunity of perusing these
strangely neglected writings of my favorite author, I
commenced the task of searching out and
discovering them myself for mine own delectation.
And after a deal of fruitless and aimless labor, (for,unlike Johannes Scotus Erigena, in his quest of a
treatise of Aristotle, I had no oracle to consult,)
after spending as many days in turning over the
leaves of I know not how many volumes of old,
dusty, musty, fusty periodicals as Mr. Vernon ran
miles after a butterfly, I was amply rewarded for all
my pains. For I not only found all of Lamb's
uncollected writings that are spoken of in his "Life
and Letters," but a goodly number of articles from
his pen which neither he nor his biographer has
ever alluded to. As I read these (to me) new
essays of Elia, I could not but feel somewhat
indignant that such excellent productions of such
an excellent writer should have been "underkept
and down supprest" so long. I was as much
ravished with these new-found essays of Lamb's
as good old Nicholas Gerbelius (see Burton's
"Anatomy of Melancholy," Partition II., Section 2,
Member 4) was with a few Greek authors restored
to light. If I had had one or two loving, enthusiastic
admirers of Charles Lamb to enjoy with me the
delight of perusing these uncollected Elias, I should
have been "all felicity up to the brim." For with me,
as with Michael de Montaigne and Hans Andersen,
there is no pleasure without communication.
And therefore, partly to please myself, and