illegality completed my confidence. With K. we rejoiced over his successful plays, and tried to be indifferent over the others. He has humanity enough to remember with pleasure, that on the latter occasion we mustered up (some of us at least) as great an appetite at supper as if two plays had succeeded at once. It is more than we could have looked for, had a critic written them, instead of a poet. But somehow these poetical observers see farther into niceties of us than your metaphysical. With regard to myself, the fact was (and I shall do myself no harm to confess it very likely he knows it already) that my appetite was really great and craving. On livelier occasions, if my lungs have not been well exercised, I will not swear that I could eat the wing of a chicken. My heart is up and dancing, and objects to the passage of anything grosser than a pint of wine. * * Lamb moved from No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, to Russell Street, Covent Garden, in the autumn of 1817. "We have left the Temple," writes Mary Lamb to Miss Wordsworth. "Our rooms were dirty and out of repair, and the inconveniences of living in chambers became every year more irksome, and so, at last, we mustered up resolution enough to leave the old place, that so long has sheltered us; and here we are, living at a brazier's shop, No. 20, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, a place all alive with noise and bustle; Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front, and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least; strange that it does not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of the window, and listening to the calling up of the carriages, and the squabbles of the coachmen and link-boys. It is the oddest scene to look down upon." Lamb himself was equally well pleased with their new abode, declaring that they were in the individual spot he liked best in all London. Here he wrote the best of the Essays of Elia. In 1823 he left the city, with its theatres and book-stalls, and took a cottage in Colebrook Rowe, Islington. It was George Dyer who walked into the New River, and thus gave Elia a subject for the fine humorous paper entitled Amicus Redivivus. Perhaps a word or two on some of the initials in the above reminiscence of Lamb's Thursday evening suppers will not be wholly superfluous. Of course C. L. is Charles Lamb, and W. H., William Hazlitt, and Captain B. is Cap All that part of the metropolis which may now be called the centre of it, is classic ground: from Fleet Street, where Johnson and Goldsmith lived, Gerrard Street, Soho, which contains the residence of Dryden. It includes the chief places of resort, during 66 tain Burney, and M. B., Martin Burney, whose dirty hands were so provocative of Lamb's wit. The captain, according to Crabb Robinson, was a fine, noble creature, gentle with a rough exterior, as became the associate of Captain Cook in his voyages round the world, and the literary historian of all these acts of circumnavigation." The three A.'s were Thomas Allsop, Thomas Alsager, and William Ayrton, of the Italian Opera. Lamb said Ayrton was "a wit and devilish good fellow." K. stands for James Sheridan Knowles, the dramatist, author of Virginius. R. is John Rickman, clerk of the House of Commons. 'His manners," writes Southey of Rickman, "are stoical: they are like the husk of the cocoa-nut, and his inner nature is like the milk within its kernel. When I go to London I am always his guest. He gives me but half his hand, but his whole heart—and there is not that thing in the world which he thinks would serve or gratify me that he does not do for me, unless it be something which he thinks I can as well do myself." George Dyer introduced Lamb to Rickman. Lamb was so delighted with the man that he wrote a long letter about him to Manning. "He is," says Elia, exultingly, "a most pleasant hand; a fine, rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn apes ; — himself hugely literate, oppressively full of information in all stuff of conversation, from matter of fact to Xenophon and Plato- can talk Greek with Porson, politics with Thelwall, conjecture with George Dyer, nonsense with me, and anything with anybody; a great farmer. somewhat concerned in an agricultural magazine -reads no poetry but Shakespeare, very intimate with Southey, but never reads his poetry, relishes George Dyer, thoroughly penetrates into the ridiculous wherever found, understands the first time (a great desideratum in common minds) you need never twice speak to him: does not want explanations, translations, limitations, as Professor Godwin does when you make an assertion ; up to anything; down to anything; whatever sapit hominem. A perfect man. All this farrago, which must perplex you to read, and has put me to a little trouble to select, only proves how impossible it is to describe a pleasant hand. You must see Rickman to know him, for he is a species in one; a new class; an exotic; any slip of which I am proud to put in my garden pot." A "pleasant hand" truly: but how different from Southey's stoical-mannered man! Is this description of Rickman true in all its particulars, or was Lamb hoaxing the "learned Trismegist"? - ED. * It was "the fifth," says Mr. Malone, "in coming from Little Newport Street, and is now numbered 43. Behind, his apartments looked into the gardens of Leicester House." [We copy this interesting passage relating to Covent Garden from a curious the three periods, in which poetry and wit were allied with familiar life; - Dryden's period, with Etherege, Wycherley, Rochester, and others; -the time of Steele and Addison, Garth, Vanbrugh, Congreve, &c., and that of the two authors above mentioned, who left us just before the French revolution. In the Strand, opposite Beaufort Buildings, walking at a very quick pace for a man of his years, I once saw Cumberland, the last survivor of Retaliation. His appearance was gentlemanly (suited to his old character), and his face. earnest and thoughtful. I would have accosted him, and thanked him for a criticism he wrote on a performance of mine; but besides carrying a certain habit of independence at that time to a pitch of martyrdom, I felt as if it would be an impertinence in so young a man to bring himself into contact on such an occasion with an associate of Goldsmith and Johnson. The performance, to say the truth, was very crude and young, and not worth his praises: nor could I conceal from myself, that a panegyric bestowed on him in the course of it had warmed the heart of the old author. But his criticism was delightful, containing some excellent gossip upon Quin, Garrick, and others. It appeared in the London Review, a work letter by Thomas Grignion, addressed to Tom Dibdin, and published in a little volume entitled Fly Leaves, or Scraps and Sketches: - "You will see by my plan of 1691, that Covent Garden was then in the emporium of the arts and sciences, and the residence of the chief nobility of the kingdom. My late dear grandfather's cordial friend, the celebrated Barton Booth, lived in Charles Street, No. 4; Colley Cibber lived in No. 3; and Easty's Hotel was Mr. Garrick's: Mrs. Oldfield lived in Southampton Street. Wilkes built the house in Bow Street, next door but one to the theatre; Garrick and Macklin lodged in it. I thought this information respecting our truly classic ground might not be uninteresting to you."- ED.] which did not continue long, probably because the reviewers put their names to it. To be praised by one of the heroes of Retaliation appeared to me a piece of good fortune beyond all others; too good even for my vanity to take without drawback. I have spoken of the laugh of Mrs. Jordan. There is a delightful little poem by Clement Marot, On the Laugh of Madame D'Albret, which seems to record a similar quintessence of glee, cordiality, and lightness. It reminded me of her the moment I read it. DU RIS DE MADAME D'ALBRET. Elle ha tres bien ceste gorge d'albastre, Elle en pourroit les chemins et les lieux, Ou elle passe, a plaisir inciter: Et si ennuy me venoit contrister, Tant que par mort fusta ma vie abbatue, Yes. that fair neck, too beautiful by half, Those eyes, that voice, that bloom, all do her honor: Is what, in my mind, sits the best upon her. Good God! 'twould make the very streets and ways And kill me in the lap of too much leisure, No. III. PICCADILLY AND THE WEST END. Lo stately streets; lo! squares that court the breeze. -THOMSON. F I had health, and my friends were all comfortable, and the world as happy as it might be, and I could transport everybody where I pleased as well as myself, and books were as plentiful as blackberries, and a thousand other things (as somebody said) were a thousand other things, the pleasure I should take in writing these papers would be inconceivable. As it is, it is no mean consolation. The house I generally write in being large, I contrive to dismiss certain little scholars I have into a distant play-room, and get an hour to myself after breakfast, uninterrupted: - the sound of a wood fire is crackling in my ears; - and with a fresh pen and a fair sheet of paper, I begin.* But I am fancying myself in Italy: and forget I am in London, at the West End of the town. By the West End of the town, I understand Piccadilly, the squares, and their neighborhood, as far as the Regent's Park. The other parks ought to be included: but I must treat of them another time. * In Elia's letter to Southey, Leigh Hunt's "little scholars " are affectionately mentioned. Here is the passage:-"Leigh Hunt is now in Italy; on his departure to which land with much regret I took my leave of him and of his little family-seven of them, sit, with their mother and as kind a set of little people, as affectionate children, as ever blessed a parent. Had you seen them, sir, I think you could not have looked upon them as so many little Jonases, but rather ED. as pledges of the vessel's safety, that was to bear such a freight of love.” — |