The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-07-31
Charles Lambs "Confessions of . Drunk
 ard"

ard"
 An interesting manuscript of Charles Lambs has recently come Into my pos- session which I have reason 10 believe has been lost sight of for many years. viz. his essay entitled "The Confess sions of Drunkard." Eight years af- ter its first appearance in print an at tack was made upon the author, based upon this essay, causing him considera- ble annoyance, and In all probability a regret that he ever penned 1t. It led. in the words of one of his biogra phers, to This apearance for the first and only time of his life before the public as an assailant." In 1874 Basil Montagu pub llshed collected volume entitled Some Enquiries Into the Effects of Fermented Liquors" by Water Drinker. To this volume Lamb con- tributed his Confessions of a Drunk ard" Eight years later, in reviewing work by Dr. John Reid ("Essays on Nervous Affections'), the Quarterly Re- view April, lS22), took occasion to quote from the Lamb contribution to MT. Basil Montagus 8 volume. and to add some very unkind remarks to the effect that these were the feelings and expe- rlence of the author CElia'). The ap- pearance of this article was deply felt by Lamb, and in the London Magazine for August, 1882, he republished the Confessions of Drunkard" in full. with the following defence: Many are the sayings of Ella. fit is our intention occasionally to revive tract or two that shall seem worthy. We have been induced in the first instance to re- print a thing which he put forth in a friends volume, some years since, en- titled the Confessions of Drunkard," seeing that Messieurs the Quarterly Re viewers have chosen to embellish their last dry pages with fruitful quotations therefrom, adding from their peculiar brains the gratuitous affirmation that they have reason to believe that the de- scriber Gin his delineations of drunk ard forsoothD partly sate for his own picture The truth is, that our friend has been reading among the Essays of a contemporary. who has perversely been confounded with him. paper in which Edax Cor the Great Eater) hu- morously complaineth of an inordinate appetite; and 1t struck him that bet ter paper of deeper interest and wider usefulness-might be made out of the imagined experience of Great Drink CT
 Accordingly he sate to work and with that mock fervor and counterfeit earnestness, with which he Is apt to over-realize his descriptions he had given us-a frightful picture indeed but no more resembling the man Ella than the fictitious Edax may be sup posed to identify itself with MT. L., its author.
 Tt is indeed a compound extracted out of his long observations of the ef- feet of drinking upon all the world about him, and this accumulated mass of misery he has centered Gas is the GUS tom with judicious essayists) in sin gle figure. We deny not that portion of his own experience may have passed into the picture (as who, that is not a wash fellow. but must at some time have felt the after-operations of a too generous cup?) but then how height ened-how exaggerated-how little within the sense of the review, where part in their slandarous usage must be understood to stand for the whole-but it is useless to eXpostulate with this quarterly slime, brood of Nilus, watery heads with hearts of jelly, spawned un- der the sign of Aquarius, incapable of Bacchus and therefore cold, washy, spiteful, bloodless-Elia shall string them one day and show their colors- or rather how colorless and vapid the whole fry-When he putteth forth his long promise, but unaccountably hith- erto delayed Confessions of Water Drinker.'"
 The Confessions of Drunkard" was not included in the Essays of Ella" when they were gathered into two vol umes, and in the, complete edition of Lambs works it appears under "Mis- cellaneous Writings"
 The original manuscript fills eight cen pages and a half, 12 mo. size, and is bound at the end of copy of the works of Charles Lamb. ? vols London, 18l8 These two volumes of themselves are of considerable interest, being presen- tation set from the author to his friend Barron Field. Each volume contains the book-plate of Barron Field, and the text has been enriched with many man. uscript explanations and additions, pre- sumably by the hand of Dr. Field Francis P. Harper in the July Athe- naeum.
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