healing, when erysipelas in the head came on, and he sank beneath the disease, happily without pain. On Friday evening Mr. Ryle, of the India House, who had been appointed co-executor with me of his will some years before, called on me, and informed me that he was in danger. I went over to Edmonton on the following morning, and found him very weak, and nearly insensible to things passing around him. Now and then a few words were audible, from which it seemed that his mind, in its feebleness, was intent on kind and hospitable thoughts. Mr. Childs had sent a present of a turkey, instead of the suggested pig; and the broken sentences which could be heard, were of some meeting of friends to partake of it. I do not think he knew me; and having vainly tried to engage his attention, I quitted him, not believing his death so near at hand. In less than an hour afterwards, his voice gradually grew fainter, as he still murmured the names of Moxon, Procter, and some other old friends, and he sank into death as placidly as into sleep,' on the 27th of December,2 1834. On the following Saturday his remains were laid in a deep grave in Edmonton churchyard, made in a spot which, about a fortnight before, he had pointed out to his sister, on an afternoon wintry walk, as the place where he wished to be buried. 1 [In Robinson's "Diary," 1869, iii., p. 57, occurs a very interesting letter from Talfourd to Robinson, 31 December, 1834, respecting Lamb's last moments and his changed appearance after death.] 66 2 [It is singular that he should have gone, after all, in that season which he had been accustomed so long to dread. In one letter he says: Vanity will return with sunshine. Till when, pardon my neglects, and impute it to the wintry solstice." And again elsewhere:- In winter, this intolerable disinclination to dying to give its mildest name -does more especially haunt and beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a sweltering sky, death is almost problematic. At those times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immortality. Then we expand and burgeon. Then are we as strong again, as valiant again, as wise again, and a great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to the insubstantial, wait upon that master feeling; cold, numbness, dreams, perplexity, moonlight itself, with its shadowy and spectral appearances, that cold ghost of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that innutritious one denounced in the Canticles :-I am none of her minions-I hold with the Persian.” A cold hypocritical May gets its full measure of malediction in his first extant note to Novello in 1826.] 1 So died, in the sixtieth year of his age, one of the most remarkable and amiable men who have ever lived. Few of his numerous friends were aware of his illness before they heard of his death; and, until that illness seized him, he had appeared so little changed by time, so likely to continue for several years, and he was so intimately associated with every-day engagements and feelings, that the news was as strange as it was mournful. When the first sad surprise was over, several of his friends strove to do justice to their own recollections of him; and articles upon his character and writings, all written out of the heart, appeared from Mr. Procter in the "Athenæum," from Mr. Forster in the "New Monthly Magazine," from Mr. Patmore in the "Court Magazine," and from Mr. Moxon in Leigh Hunt's "London Journal," besides others whose authors are unknown to me; and subsequently many affectionate allusions, from pens which his own had inspired, have been gleaned out in various passages of almost every periodical work of reputation. The "Recollections of Coleridge" by Mr. Allsop also breathed the spirit of admiration for his elevated genius, which the author-one whom Lamb held in the highest esteem for himself and for his devotion to Coleridge-had for years expressed both in his words and in deeds. But it is not possible for the subtlest characteristic power, even when animated by the warmest 1 ["If ever there was a man in whom the elements' were delightfully, although strangely mixed-in whom the minor foibles and finer virtues of our nature were bound up together intimately-inextricably, it was surely he. They were deep-rooted, and twined together, beyond all chance of separation. Yet these foibles were, for the most part, so small, and were grafted so curiously upon a strong, original mind, that we would scarcely have desired them away. They were a sort of fretwork, which let in light, and showed the form and order of his character. 'We knew him, Horatio'-and having known him, it seems idle to say how truly and deeply we deplore his loss. Who, in truth, that had been his intimate, could speak of him but with affection and reverence? His prejudices, which were rather humours than grave opinions, his weak. nesses, which never hurt one human being except himself-may sometimes have been talked of-by strangers. But it was the pride of his friends, that they had opportunities of seeing deeper into his heart, and could feel and avouch for his many virtues. As a man, he was gentle-sincere-benevolent-modest-charitable towards others-beyond most men. In the large sense of the word, he was eminently humane."-PROCTER.] personal regard, to give to those who never had the privilege of his companionship an idea of what Lamb was. There was an apparent contradiction in him, which seemed an inconsistency between thoughts closely associated, and which was in reality nothing but the contradiction of his genius and his fortune, fantastically exhibiting itself in different aspects, which close intimacy could alone appreciate. He would startle you with the finest perception of truth, separating by a phrase the real from a tissue of conventional falsehoods, and the next moment, by some whimsical invention, make you "doubt truth to be a liar." He would touch the inmost pulse of profound affection, and then break off in some jest, which would seem profane ears polite," but carry as profound a meaning to those who had the right key, as his most pathetic suggestions; and where he loved and doted most, he would vent the overflowing of his feelings in words that looked like rudeness. He touches on this strange resource of love in his "Farewell to Tobacco," in a passage which may explain some startling freedoms with those he himself loved most dearly. "Irony all, and feign'd abuse, Such as perplext lovers use, That exceeding comeliness Which their fancies doth so strike, They borrow language of dislike; Borders so upon excess, That they do not rightly wot 6 to Thus, in the very excess of affection to his sister, whom he loved above all else on earth, he would sometimes address to her some words of seeming reproach, yet so tinged with a humorous irony that none but an entire stranger could mistake his drift. His anxiety for her health, even in his most convivial moments, was unceasing. If, in company, he perceived she looked languid, he would repeatedly ask her, "Mary, does your head ache ?" "Don't you feel unwell?" and would be satisfied by none of her gentle assurances, that his fears were groundless. He was always afraid of her sensibilities being too deeply engaged, and if in her presence any painful accident or history was discussed, he would turn the conversation with some desperate joke. Miss Betham, author of the "Lay of Marie," which Lamb esteemed one of the most graceful and truly feminine works in a literature rich in female genius, has reminded me of the trait in some recollections of Lamb, with which she has furnished me; she relates that once, when she was speaking to Miss Lamb of Charles, and in her earnestness Miss Lamb had laid her hand kindly on the eulogist's shoulder, he came up hastily and interrupted them, saying, "Come, come, we must not talk sentimentally," and took up the conversation in his gayest strain. A CHAPTER XXII. LAST DINNER AT TALFOURD'S-LAMB'S READING, HABITS, AND OPINIONS-WORDSWORTH'S EPITAPH. SHORT time only before Lamb's fatal illness, he yielded to my urgent importunity, and met a small party of his friends at dinner at my house, where we had provided for him some of the few articles of food which now seemed to hit his fancy, and among them the hare, which had supplanted pig in his just esteem, with the hope of exciting his very delicate appetite. We were not disappointed; he ate with a relish not usual with him of late years, and passed the evening in his happiest mood. Among the four or five who met him on this occasion, the last on which I saw him in health, were Mr. Barron Field, Mr. Procter, and Mr. Forster. Mr. Field, in a memoir of Lamb in the " Annual Biography and Obituary" of 1836, has brought this evening vividly to recollection; and I have a melancholy satisfaction in quoting a passage from it as he has recorded it. After justly eulogizing Lamb's sense of "The Virtue of Suppression in Writing," Mr. Field proceeds : · 6 "We remember, at the very last supper we ate with him, he quoted a passage from Prior's Henry and Emma,' illustrative of this discipline; and yet he said that he loved Prior as much as any man, but that his 'Henry and Emma' was a vapid paraphrase of the old poem of 'The Nutbrown Maid.' For example, at the dénouement of the ballad Prior makes Henry rant out to his devoted Emma In me behold the potent Edgar's heir, Let Loire confess, for she has felt his sword, And so on for a dozen couplets-heroic, as they are called. |