The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4 - Poems and Plays
Lamb, Mary, 1764-1847;Lamb, Charles, 1775-1834
English
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THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
IV. POEMS AND PLAYS
[Illustration: Charles Lamb (aged 23)
From a drawing by Robert Hancock]
POEMS AND PLAYS
BY
CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
INTRODUCTION
The earliest poem in this volume bears the date 1794, when Lamb was
nineteen, the latest 1834, the year of his death; so that it covers an
even longer period of his life than Vol. I.--the "Miscellaneous Prose."
The chronological order which was strictly observed in that volume has
been only partly observed in the following pages--since it seemed better
to keep the plays together and to make a separate section of Lamb's
epigrams. These, therefore, will be found to be outside the general
scheme. Such of Lamb's later poems as he did not himself collect in
volume form will also be found to be out of their chronological
position, partly because it has seemed to me best to give prominence to
those verses which Lamb himself reprinted, and partly because there is
often no indication of the year in which the poem was written.
Another difficulty has been the frequency with which Lamb reprinted some
of his earlier poetry. The text of many of his earliest and best poems
was not fixed until 1818, twenty years or so after their composition. It
had to be decided whether to print these poems in their true order as
they were first published--in Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_,
1796; in Charles Lloyd's _ems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer_, 1796;
in Coleridge's _Poems_, second edition, 1797; in _Blank Verse_ by
Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb, 1798; and in John Woodvil, 1802--with
all their early readings; or whether to disregard chronological
sequence, and wait until the time of the _Works_--1818--had come, and
print them all together then. I decided, in the interests of their
biographical value, to print them in the order as they first appeared,
particularly as Crabb Robinson tells us that Lamb once said of the
arrangement of a poet's works: "There is only one good order--and that
is the order in which they were written--that is a history of the poet's
mind." It then had to be decided whether to print them in their first
shape, which, unless I repeated them later, would mean the relegation of
Lamb's final text to the Notes, or to print them, at the expense of a
slight infringement upon the chronological scheme, in their final 1818
state, and relegate all earlier readings to the Notes. After much
deliberation I decided that to print them in their final 1818 state was
best, and this therefore I did in the large edition of 1903, to which
the student is referred for all variorum readings, fuller notes and many
illustrations, and have repeated here. In order, however, that the
scheme of Lamb's 1818 edition of his _Works_ might be preserved, I have
indicated in the text the position in the _Works_ occupied by all the
poems that in the present volume have been printed earlier.
The chronological order, in so far as it has been followed, emphasises
the dividing line between Lamb's poetry and his verse. As he grew older
his poetry, for the most part, passed into his prose. His best and
truest poems, with few exceptions, belong to the years before, say,
1805, when he was thirty. After this, following a long interval of
silence, came the brief satirical outburst of 1812, in _The Examiner_,
and the longer one, in 1820, in _The Champion_; then, after another
interval, during which he was busy as Elia, came the period of album
verses, which lasted to the end. The impulse to write personal prose,
which was quickened in Lamb by the _London Magazine_ in 1820, seems to
have taken the place of his old ambition to be a poet. In his later and
more mechanical period there were, however, occasional inspirations, as
when he wrote the sonnet on "Work," in 1819; on "Leisure," in 1821; the
lines in his own Album, in 1827, and, pre-eminently, the poem "On an
Infant Dying as Soon as Born," in 1827.
This volume contains, with the exception of the verse for children,
which will be found in Vol. III. of this edition, all the accessible
poetical work of Charles and Mary Lamb that is known to exist and
several poems not to be found in the large edition. There are probably
still many copies of album verses which have not yet seen the light. In
the _London Magazine_, April, 1824, is a story entitled "The Bride of
Modern Italy," which has for motto the following couplet:--
My heart is fixt:
This is the sixt.--_Elia_.
but the rest of what seems to be a pleasant catalogue is missing. In a
letter to Coleridge, December 2, 1796, Lamb refers to a poem which has
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