THE INDICATOR. There he arriving round about doth'ffie, SPENSER. No. LXIX.-WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31st, 1821. THE WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB. [WE repeat in our present number a criticism in the Examiner on the works of this author. He is not so much known as he is admired; but if to be admired, and more, by those who are better known, have any thing of the old laudatory desideratum in it, we know no man who possesses a more enviable share of praise. The truth is, that Mr. Lamb in general has performed his services to the literary word so anonymously, and in his most trivial subjects has such a delicate and extreme sense of all that is human, that common readers have not been aware of half his merits, nor great numbers of his existence. When his writings were collected by the bookseller, people of taste were asking, who this Mr. Charles Lamb was that had written so well. They were answered, the man who set the critics right about the old English Dramatists, and whom some of them shewed at once their ingratitude and their false pretensions by abusing-Besides the works here alluded to, Mr. Lamb is the author of an interesting prose abridgment of the Odyssey under the title of the Adventures of Ulysses, and has helped his sister in other little works for children (equally fit for those "of a larger growth"), especially one called Mrs. Leicester's School. We believe we are taking no greater liberty with him than our motives will warrant, when we add that he sometimes writes in the London Magazine under the signature of ELIA,] There is a spirit in Mr. Lamb's productions, which is in itself so anti-critical and tends so much to reconcile us to all that is in the world, that the effect is almost neutralizing to every thing but complacency and a quiet admiration. We must even plainly confess, that one thing which gave a Laputan flap to our delay in speaking of these volumes, was the meeting with a flimsy criticism in an orthodox review, which mistook the exquisite simplicity and apprehensiveness of Mr. Lamb's genius for want of power; and went vainly brushing away at some of the solidest things in his work, under the notion of its being chaff. That the poetical part of Mr. Lamb's volumes (and as this comes first, we will make the first half of our criticism upon it) is not so striking as the critical, we allow. And there are several reasons for it;-first, because criticism inevitably explains itself more to the reader; whereas poetry, especially such as Mr. Lamb's, often gives him too much credit for the apprehensiveness in which it deals itself;--second, because Mr. Lamb's criticism is obviously of a most original cast, and directly informs the reader of a number of things which he did not know before; whereas the poetry, for the reason just mentioned, leaves him rather to gather them;-third, because the author's VOL. II. genius, though in fact of an anti-critical nature (his very criticisms chiefly tending to overthrow the critical spirit) is also less busied with creating new things, which is the business of poetry, than with inculcating a charitable and patient content with old, which is a part of humanity-fourth and last, because from an excess of this content, of love for the old poets, and of diffidence in recommending to others what has such infinite recommendations of its own, he has really, in three or four instances, written pure common-places on subjects deeply seated in our common humanity, such as the recollections of childhood (vol. 1. p. 71.), the poem that follows it, and one or two of the sonnets. But he who cannot see, that the extreme old simplicity of style in The Three Friends is a part and constituent recommendation of the very virtue of the subject ;-that the homely versification of the Ballad noticing the Difference of Rich and Poor has the same spirit of inward reference, that the little Robert Burton-like effusion, called Hypochondriacus, has all the quick mixture of jest and earnest belong ing to such melancholy, and that the Farewell to Tobacco, is a piece of exuberant pleasantry, equally witty and poetical, in which the style of the old poets becomes proper to a wit overflowing as theirs, such a man may be fit enough to set up for a critic once a month, but we are sure he has not an idea in his head once a quarter. From this last poem, which is an old friend of ours, and passages of which used to be, and are still, often in our mouth like a favourite tune, we must indulge ourselves in a few extracts. It opens in this pleasant manner, agitato: May the Babylonish curse Strait confound my stammering verse, If I can a passage see In this word-perplexity, Or a fit expression find, Or a language to my mind, (Still the phrase is wide or scant) To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! Or in any terms relate Half my love, or half my hate: For I hate, yet love, thee so, More from a mistress than a weed. [But want of room, as well as a further design which we have upon this poem, must prevent us from repeating the rest of our passages from it.] There is something very touching as well as vivid in the poem that stands first, entitled Hester. The object of it is a female Quaker who died young, and who appears to have been of a spirit that broke through the cold shell of her sect. She was of a nature so sprightly and strong, that the poet, for some time, says he could not If the Quakers appear to be the only real Christians extant, they are such only in a negative sense. We allude to them, of course, in general. They deny themselves a good deal, but they allow others little; and this, we suspect, is Christianity wrong side outwards. A Quaker will not be outrageous, and will not get drunk; he will also prevent his wife from copying the beauties of God's creation in the colours of her dress; and God's gift of music he holds to be very small; but next to a hypocrite (and we by no means intend to confound the two), he would be the last man in the world to forgive a woman taken in adultery, or to be present at an avowed feast, or to refer a money-getter to "the lilies of the valley which toil not," or to patronize the waste of a box of precious ointment for the sake of a sentiment. If a true Christian means any thing, it means, we suspect, something which would startle all the commonly received notions and establishments out of their wits; and is made up of a mixture of Platonism in speculation, and a community of good in practice, equally calculated to baffle the despisers of the ancient world, and the sharers Methodist, or an indifferent Churchman, talks of Christianity, we see in it nothing but vain nega. tion, or fanaticism, or worldliness. All these men send those who differ with them to the devil, and know no more about the finer aspis rations of one's nature than any bad passion or selfishness can. It is difficult, from his works, to collect whether Mr. Lamb is a professed Christian or not. The Calvinist would surely pronounce against him, because he decries eternal punishment; the Quaker, because he finds out something more than pardonable in the vehement passions; and all other Protestants, because at the sight of a picture by Leonardo da Vinci, he wishes to be a Catholic, that he may worship the Madonna. All this must be caveare to the Christian multitude. It is another version of the sentiment about the box of ointment. Yet the less Christian he may be thought to be in these matters, the finer spirit of religious feeling is there in the following lines on the same picture. They are a recognition, not of Catholic bigotry, but of the diviner aspirations of our being, under whatever devout shape they appear, and which always appear finest and most probable when connected with ideas of child-like innocence and joy. Filicaia or Tasso might have been proud of writing them; and, by the way, it would have done both of the present. When a Quaker, or a Filicaia and Tasso good, and made them less perturbed Christians, had they possessed what they would have called the Anti-christian tolerance in the rest of our author's works : LINES ON THE CELEBRATED PICTURE BY LEONARDO DA VINCI, CALLED THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS. While young John runs to greet The greater Infant's feet, The Mother standing by, with trembling passion Of devout admiration, Beholds the engaging mystic play, and pretty adoration; Nor knows as yet the full event Of those so low beginnings, From whence we date our winnings, But wonders at the intent Of those new rites, and what that strange child-worship meant. An angel doth abide, With such a perfect joy As no dim doubts alloy, An intuition, A glory, an amenity, Passing the dark condition Of blind, humanity, As if he surely knew All the blest wonders should ensue, Or he had lately left the upper sphere, And had read all the sovran schemes and divine riddles there. The tragedy of John Woodvil, which we think liable in some measuse to Mr. Coleridge's objection mentioned in the Dedication, of its being a little too over-antique in the style, gave rise, partly on that account, to less fortunate objection from the critics on its first appearance. People were not acquainted then as they are now with the older dramatists; and the critics, finding it a new production which was like none of their select common-places, confounded the oldness of the style and the manly and womanly simplicity of the sentiments with something hitherto unheard of, equally barbarous and mawkish. They have since learnt better, partly, perhaps chiefly, from the information of this very author; and it is doubtless a good deal owing to this circumstance, that some of them chuse to abstain from noticing this publication, the better natured from a feeling of aukwardness, and the malignant from having since turned commentators on old plays themselves. The tragedy of John Woodvil has this peculiarity,-that it is founded on a frailty of a very unheroic nature, and ends with no punishment to the offender but repentance. Yet so finely and hu manly is it managed, with such attractions of pleasantry and of pathos, that these circumstances become distinguishing features of its excellence; and the reader begins to regret that other poets have not known how to reconcile moral lessons, so familiar and useful, with the dignity of dramatic poetry. Sir Walter Woodvil, a gentleman of an ancient family, who had taken part against Charles the First, is obliged to hide himself at the Restoration. His son, left in possession of the family mansion, grows in the mean time riotous and dissipated, after the court fashion; and partly from his natural frankness, is excited during the fever of drunkenness to intrust the secret of his father's hiding-place with one Lovel, a bottle-companion and supposed friend. Sir Walter is in consequence sought out in Sherwood Forest by Lovel and another drinking associate, and during a violent parley between the two intruders and his faithful younger son Simon, breaks his heart without a word. This is as true a piece of pathos as we remember in tragedy. John Woodvil, after great wretchedness of mind, leaves the reader to suppose that he is restored to comparative peace, partly by the force of repentance, and pantly by the attentions of Margaret, an orphan ward of his late father, and a most noble creature, whose chanacter alone would serve to shew the generous delicacy of the author's genius. During his unhappy and noisy prosperity, John, though avowedly her lover, treats her with unceasing neglect, and under the peculiar circumstances of her situation she thinks it becoming a proper pride in her to go and seek out Sir Walter, and to unite her helping fortunes with him and his younger son. She does so, and only shews that John has treated her unhandsomely by turning away with a tear when the question is asked her, and then resuming her kindly aspect of society. After the catastrophe which happens to Sir Walter, she excuses John as well as she may, resolves at all events not To join the clamour of the world and again appears before him to shew him that sympathy in adversity, which he refused to cultivate in her, during prosperity. The best passages in this play are the pathetic ones; but as these depend a good deal on the context, and are more pervading than the others, we must content ourselves with selecting some lines of beautiful description. Simon Woodvil says that he loves all things that live From the crook'd worm to man's imperial form, Who paints a dancing shadow of his horns MARGARET. I myself love all these things, yet so as with a difference:--for example, some animals better than others, some men rather than other men; the nightingale before the cuckoo, the swift and graceful palfrey before the slow and asinine mule. Your humour goes to confound all qualities. What sports do you use in the forest? SIMON. Not many; some few, as thus:- Go eddying round; and small birds, how they fare, |