The Sun.
London, England, 1866-07-17 00:00:00

keep it till I see you again, for I'm in no hurry. Chatty
Bryant (Chateaubriand) is well, I hope. I think I have no
more news ; only give both our loves (' all three,' says
Dash) to Mrs. Patmore, and bid her get well, as I am at
present, bating qualms, and the grief incident to losing a
valuable relation."
Can anything be more ridiculous ?—particularly in
the irrelevancies ! As a compilation) the volume,
into which this letter of Lamb's has been (happily)
quoted, is altogether deligb tfully acceptable, and
no less delightfully readable all through. As a col-
lection of reminiscenses of Charles Lamb., it is more-
over worthy of preservation. It is a book of
Eliana. And it is none the less interesting as such,
because of the sprinkling of illustrations to be found
sparsely scattered among the letterpress. The
frontispiece, for example, is a ludicrous facsimile of
that absurd caricature-likeness of Charles Lamb,
" scratched on copper Irons life in 1825 by his
friend Brook Pulliam," the original being now in
the possession of Mr. J. C. Rotten of Piccadilly.
Opposite p. 128, again, there is another facsimile—
but this time it is a facsimile of Elia's handwriting.
Two other engraved portraits of Charles Lamb,
there arc in the volume besides the caricature fron-
tispiece. Opposite p. 28 there is a comely plump
profile of him as he appeased in 170 G. Opposite
p. 170 there is another profile of him, of a later date,
with a noble head and face—a face, that in our eyes is
nothing less than acquilinely handsome. The fault of
the book—for one great fault it has, and a fault that
we are especially anxious to particularise, because
it is one that might very readily be eliminated from
a subsequent edition— is the result apparently of
either the exceeding haste or the excessive careless-
ness with which the materials accumulated by Mr.
Percy Fitzgerald, have been afterwards by him
grouped or strung together. The fault we allude
to, is one of perpetual repetition. What we read on
one page we read (often in precisely the same
terms) upon another, and another, and
another. For example, not content with
giving on p. iv., as a motto, Leigh Hunt's remark
about the kissing of the folio (already specified) Mr.
Fitzgerald must needs tell us again as soon
afterwards as on p. 11, "That was a very charming
trait of Charles Lamb found in one of Hunt's
Indicators,' and worth whole pages of descrip-
tion: 'thought how natural it was in Charles Lamb
to give a kiss,'" &c.,—the game words all over again.
Similarly— having remarked in Preface, p. vi, " S o
with Lamb. His is a character about :which we
should love to know everything. There the species
is nearly the genus." Mr. Fitzgerald must take oc-
casion no later on than p. 2 to observe, " of writ-
ings so unique of their kind, where the species, as
he himself said of a book, is the whole genus"—
and, not content even with that enforcement of the
same text, he must actually reiterate it at p. 25.—
"It (the original edition of Elia) was scarce in 1834
when Lamb was alive, and even then the species
was almost the genus.' " At p. 2, again, we read
of Lamb's folios—" 'My midnight darlings,' as ho
called them so pathetically—' those huge armfuls.'"
And no further on than p. 24 we have those
same folios alluded to all over again as " a
good armful notion." At p. 3we have mention
of " dear silly old angel Fuller—at p. 74
we have mention again of the " golden works
of the dear, fine, silly old angel Fuller"—and
yet again at p. 166 of Fuller—the dear, foolish old
angel !" 7 vice we have mention of Elia's sitting
on a doorstep with a friend's little girl to see Punch
performed—the friend's little girl, at first men-
tioned thus vaguely, being explained on the re-
petition of the story at p. 213 to have been a
daughter of Sheridan Knowles. Thrice we have
reproachful reference made to the later editions of
Burton's Anatomy as mere winding sheets—at p. 6
" Old Burton in a winding sheet of the latest
edition"—at p. 25 (about old Burton) " What need
was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic
old great man to expose them in a winding sheet of
the newest fashion"--at p. 200, " What need was
there"—&c., &c.—all over again ! Nay, not less
than Four distinct times do we find mention made,
literally usque ad nauseam, of Charles Lamb's dis-
taste. for the octavo editions of Beaumont and
Fletcher-Ist, at p. 6, where we find him ex-
pressing his humorous repugnance to the octavo
editions of Beaumont and Fletcher-2dly, at p. 21,
"I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in folio;
the octavo editions are painful to look at"—after-
wards, at p. 74, "' I have no sympathy with them,'
he might have added, as he did in the instance of
of the octavo Beaumont and Fletcher"—and after-
wards, actually the fourth time, at p. 200, " I can-
not read Beaumont and Fletcher but in folio. The
octavo editions are painful to look at." Until No
become—and no wonder—heartily sick of read-
ing identically the same thing over and over again
in identically the same words. The book
wants careful revision, in fact,—and, while
that revision is being accorded to it for the
Second Edition (the appearance of which, it is to be
hoped, may not long be delayed), we would strenu-
ously urge upon Mr. Fitzgerald the advisability of
obliterating, together with these and all similar blurrs
and blots in the way of repetition, the whole of the
comparison instituted by him between the " Essays
of Elia" and the " Essays by Boz." Exquisite and
inimitable, as our beloved Elia is—" unique and de-
lightful" as this latest celebrant of his genius has hap-
pily designated him—it is simply ridiculous to insti-
tute any direct comparison whatever between him
and the greatest of all our English Humorists,
between Elia and Boz, between Charles Lamb
and Charles Dickens. The " Essays of Elia"
were Lamb's opus magnum. The " Essays by Boz"
were a mere off-shoot of the redundant and multi-
form genius of Dickens. They were the mere pre-
liminary manifestations of that (in his day, also, but
in a far larger sense) " unique and delightful"
genius—the mere tuning of the instruments, so to
speak, that were afterwards to gather so much
strength and compass to themselves in their more
highly-elaborated and artistic performances. The
comparison here alluded to, in point of fact, is
quite out of place, and is, besides that, intrinsically
in itself (we can't help saying it) simply ridiculous•
Other wise than in these exceptional instances ill
the way of errors of taste, of judgment, and of
executive skill on the part of the writer of this,
on the whole, delightful volume about Charles
Lamb, his Friends, his Haunts, and his Books,
the work has a charm or fascination of its own•
We close it reluctantly—putting it by very carefullY
on our book-shelves for after reference.

The Tragedy of Charles Lamb's Life.
From a charming paper in the newly-pnblished-
number of the Edinburgh Review—[published sub-
sequently to our writing the foregoing criticism]--
from a paper in this new number of the Edinburgh
commenting, by anticipation, upon Barry Cornwall's
" Memoir of Charles Lamb," a memoir not lei
published, it is true, though already announced a°
finished and preparing for immediate publication
we extract the following painfully interesting parti-
culars. Before giving them, however, we" would
premise, as especially interesting to the general
reader, that the scene of the dreadful tragedy thus
referred to was one of the houses on the left band
side going from Holborn down Little Queen-street,
if we remember rightly, at No. 7 :
" The story of his great misfortune is now for the pr!
time wholly told. All whom it would affect are gone, at";
there is no further ground for reticence. About the end
1795, three years after he obtained his appointment, 1313
motlier was ill and bed-ridden, his father almost fatuous'
and he himself the inmate of the asylum at Heaton, where:,
as he wrote to Coleridge, his head ran upon him, as much
almost as on another person who was the more immediate
cause of my frenzy.' Who this was is unknown ; she r9'
mains only the 'Alice W.' of his poems, the object out
of !
passion which might have blossomed into happy fruit
for the incidents of the next year. He returned home sane;
and the family life went on as usual till the September °,
1796. On the 23d of that month his sister Mary, who had
been for some time ill and moody, was seized just befo.re
dinner with a burst of madness. She seized a case-krafe
lying on the table, pursued a little girl (her apprentice)
round the room, hurled about the dinner forks so as :
wound her father in thu forehead, and, before Charles
could snatch the knife from her hand, she had stabbed ber
mother to the heart. The sad publicity of a trial Wtt:
somehow avoided. After the inquest Mary Lamb was 10.
moved to an asylum. She rapidly recovered her seal
and the question came what was then to be done. It sere,
to have been easier then than it now is to obtain the liberty
of a dangerous lunatic, for no opposition to her reles°s
seems to have been made by the authorities. When b:
coming sane, Mary said, she know she must go to Bet
idiom for life : oue of her brothers would have it ill