The Sun.
London, England, 1848-09-08 00:00:00

PIIVAL LITERATUR.
MEMORIALS OF CHAE
RLES LAMB
A. 2 Vols. By Thomas Noon Talfourd.
'Mt the mystery which had enveloped the
Veer of poor Charles Lamb is explained. The
terl en and appalling revelations of a British Quer-
-0.,Y Reviewer compelled Sergeant Talfourd to break
and the death of Mary Lamb, the gentle but
doomed sister of Elia, justified him in so doing.
611 e final memorials of the oddest, quaintest, delight•
Zest, sweetest, noblest, best of essayists, lie before
Feat iThey reveal Charles Lamb in a new character.
fr,7et as had been our admiration for his genus—so
e'eat, so true, so earnest, so unalloyed, indeed, that
etl
u,ua,a fancied it impossible to view through a more
t°°fing medium the memory of a dead man whom
eyes had never beheld in the flesh—we
nevertheless acknowledge at once that what our
What Was is as nothing compared to
volumes
it is, now that we have read the two enthralling
//:,11,Ines from the pen of Thomas Noon Talfourd.
rennnerto we had loved Charles Lamb—now we reve-
sZe him. Hitherto we had loved him for his
ies.'torn so sweet, for his wit so genuine and guile-
for his humour so fantastic, for his nature so
and manly and yet so innocent and childlike
or the deep affection that beamed and sparkled out
ro the wrinkled beauty of his " old, old face."
iie". We reverence him as we reverence the great
io,le hearts of antiquity—because in the meek and
devotion,
life of this man we recognise a patience, and a
titcti") and a self-sacrifice, and a magnani-
mity such as have rarely, if ever before, been
ti:nessed since the world first " spun along
wor, grooves of change." To give in a few
14" the sad tragedy which fell like a
tra-
gedy upon the house of Lamb a tra-
srj More dire than ever flitted through the
,enztY brain of poor Nat Lee—to recount in a few
kiting
the calamity which descended with such a
Png horror upon the humble roof• tree of Charles
eneln°) which for the time being pulverized his
tier,gY, darkened his intellect, and tore up his red
kroe''ing heart-strings by the roots ; to tell all this,
roll to recount, moreover, the sublime resolve which
tremendous
like a divine virtue out of the very midst of this
agony, imparting a holiness, and a fra-
brance
and an imperishable beauty to the memory
of Lamb, required, indeed, the collected powers
the Poetry, oratory, and elevated nature. And
bozsoe powers have been dedicated to this
si le effort by the genius of Thomas Noon Talfourd.
tern). plicity, it is true, forms the principal charac-
tmlstie of the work, but it is a simplicity as
ei:ron as an organ-strain, as touching as a psalm, as
Otnent as a canticle. e are grateful to Sergeant
fo'rourd for these two books—we are grateful to him
the tone of masculine and honest pathos in which
YP are written—we are grateful to him for that ap-
r eelation of the dear dead, which sheds new light
IT°ll his own fame and new honour on his manhood.
dlielver since the lips of Milton breathed forth the
beece,t monody of Lycidas has a more exquisite tribute
laid upon the tomb of brother-man by the sor-
ge,,"lng hand of friendship. The story told by
Ist,„geant Talfourd, through the medium of old menu-
at letters never before printed, is brief but
st 411. This incident is detailed in a few pages. It
kteurred on Thursday, the 22d of September, 1796,
ti v 7, Little Queen-street, Holborn. At that
it must be remembered that Charles Lamb re-
ttided there in lodgings with his father, his mother,
bin his sister. The father, who, according to the
llarPher, was then rapidly " sinking into dotage,"
e,„small annuity as a pensioner of the old Bencher,
the
Charles himself drew a miserable salary
ater7,,the East India House as a clerk of three years
tlie-rlf?—and that constituted the entire income of
k: 41114. At the period we have already mentioned
Os Lamb is described as being " worn down
tio a state of extreme nervous misery, by atten-
to needlework by day, and to her
eeLner by night "—her mother having been for a
inlls?erable time ill and bedridden. Insanity was
,t," family, and here is the result of this " extreme
Tcychus misery " upon the mind of Mary Lamb.
ke e„llarrative is copied by Sergeant Talfourd from
emes of Monday, September the 26th, 1796, with
rely
this comment, that Charles Lamb, and not
the
1111 landlord, was the one who took the knife from the
ieonscious hand
Friday afternoon, the corener and a jury sat on
die body of a lady in the neighbourhood of Holborn, who
pree 'n consequence of a wound from her daughter the
theeding day. It appeared, by the evidence adduced,
iwhile the family were preparing for dinner, the
oNlng lady si ized a case-knife lying on the table, and a
menacing manner pursued a little girl, her appren-
to f' I°llnd the room. On the calls of her infirm.mother
thr?ri.bear, she renounced her first object, and, with loud
qoil,sein approached her parent. The child, by her cries,
likte`7 brought up the landlord of the house, but too
lifei The dreadful scene presented to him the mother
3,et'ess pierced to the heart, on a chair, her daughter
wildly standing over her with the fatal knife, and
man, her father, weeping by her side, himself
bleeding at the forehead from the effects of a severe
in'n"!, he received from one of the forks she had been
madly hurling about the room.
„otlFor a few days prior to this, the family had observed
se e symptoms
of insanity in her, which had so much
e„Seased on the Wednesday evening, that her brother,
"'V the next morning, went to Dr. Pitcairn, but that
gentleman was not at home.
" It seems the young lady had been once before de-
ranged.
The jury, of course, brought in their verdict—
setsacye
similar account of this catastrophe appeared in the
Annual Register and other periodicals, but all of them
anonymously like the foregoing. The truth was never
generally known to the public until now, and was
rail/ understood, indeed, by a. very few of the
ea intimate of the Lambs' acquaintances. Here
When
was the calamity which befel Charles Lamb
4`aeb he was scarcely tweaty-two years of age--such
he
as might well have spread a gloom over
t,e whole futurity of one less bravely constituted
r''"art himself in intellect and disposition. But Lamb
Ilse heroically above the desolation of his household.
was that desolation which became, as it were, a
black, wave lifting him up to the very heavens. That
efe.; _,l°, in no measure, exaggerate the moral dignity
„,;(4amb is demonstrated by his life of very nearly
TiLY. winters. What are the outlines of that life ?
sa.e,Y are few, but 0 how eloquent ! We have
ai that Charles was barely twenty-two when his
%te!, in a paroxysm of lunacy, plunged a knife into
twa nosom of their mother. He was barely twenty-
tite.---he was deeply in love with a young lady living
I,(.,slington—he was a subordinate clerk in the East
Nbm,la House, with a poor pittance of a salary for
C'ell he had to drudge severely—away early and
the
late. Charles Lamb recognised on the instant
le alternative forced upon him by the catastrophe
e,,,c,ve mentioned, and he bowed down his head reve-
tCually to the sacrifice. lie dedicated himself
thenceforth body and mind to the support and conso-
-1.4 tiOn of his sister. When nearly all the world
zie..oiled from her, he clung to her with unchanged
v`irtion. When the old father was laid in his grave,
en Mary Lamb was restored to consciousness by
medicalworked
treatment, Charles gave her a home, and
irked hard for her during many long years, and
flowered upon her the blessing of his fraternal love
4,11 be resigned his own pure spirit into the hands
"r,,0,1 in the December of 1814. Beyond all this—
the only means of of aiding the sister whose perfect
Lncleence be was the first to recognise—Charles
thatllh gave up all thoughts of his early love ! If
re was not greatness of heart in all this, we know
f ',
the meaning of the English language. To us it
heroism
as the noblest realisation of what is called the
Irlisni of domestic life. The career of this India
bOuse clerk presents to ourmind a loftier and sublimer
whose
than those of a dozen emperors and tetrarchs
And
names we could string together in a catalogue.
i'ed looking back upon the records of that illus-
trious but unostentatious life, we can listen with a
-crt of exultation to the voice of Talfourd when he
Inner
to mind the evenings passed by him at No. 4,
'.ihner Temple-lane, we can rejoice when he compares
those evenings with the, evenings spent in the library
of Holland House, we can sympathise in the love
Coleridge bore during thirty-seven years towards the
brother and sister when he made that beautiful entry
lu his Sibylline Leazyes

" Cu. AND MART LAND,
dear to my heart, yea
as it were, my heart."

eaxing in remembrance these solemn but exquisite
velations of the nature and the deeds of Charles
Lamb, a novel lustre is thrown over the glad dainti-
rss of his " Elian Essays," a terrible key is given to
acuteness as a commentator on our old dramatists,
'11(1 as additional melancholy is suffused through his
most celebrated verses—
" I have had playmates, I have had companions
In
my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
* • 0 •

I loved a love once, arrest among women ;
Cio6cd are her doors on me, I must not see her—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."
1( •
a mowing the deep under-current of woe which sad-
'led the inner heart of Lamb throughout life—that
depth of suffering which even the plummet of ima-
Pnation fails to fathom—we are startled by the exu-
berant drollery which was not only lavished upon his
raoTe pretentious literary efforts, but was continu.•
ally squandered upon his accidental correspon-
ebee. As, for example, in the letter addressed
,37 him to Wordsworth,' in acknowlodgment of
"No volumes of his poetry, where he says, rof
'3,P3 of the couplets—" It is a perfect summer amulet
Vat I tie round my legs to quicken the motion when
go out a-maying. (N. 8.) I don't often go out
a‘maYlog ;—Must is' the tense with me now." Or
Where he is anticipating the appearance of a pro-
mised poem called the " White Doe, and writes-
-4` I am sure it is superlative, or will be when drest,
2. e. printed. All things read raw to me in mann-
fcriPt ! " Or when he speaks -of "old, obscene,
beastly Peter Pindar i" or where he observes—" One