166
NOTES . AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vm. AUG. 24, MOI.
any account of or from a brother whose name
was Charles Speke Pulteney since the year
1780 or thereabouts." Application has been
made to the College of Surgeons, but they
cannot trace anything relative to Charles
Speke Pulteney, and I have no knowledge as
to where he went abroad.
W. J. GADSDEN. 17, Middle Lane, Crouch End.
CHARLES LAMB AS A JOURNALIST.
(9 th S. viii. 60, 85, 125.)
I PROCEED to examine the " revised " chronology of the letters in what the Quarterly critic of October, 1900 good, easy man ! is pleased to term " Canon Ainger's really satis- factory and practically final edition of Lamb." Canon Ainger's design, both in 1888 and 1900, has been, he tells us, to print the letters, so far as their dates are discoverable, in chrono- logical order an undertaking of no great difficulty, provided one possesses an average intelligence, a habit of attention, and some little knowledge of the history of Lamb's chief correspondents. But just here in this last qualification it is that Canon Ainger appears to be wanting. He seems, in fact, to have no exact knowledge of the " doings and done-untos" even of Coleridge, Southey, or Wordsworth, his references to whom are vague and not seldom inaccurate. Hence he is unable fitly to utilize the internal evidence of date, in which so many of these letters abound.
1. Take, for instance, the letter to Coleridge which Canon Ainger, following all former editors, marks "No date end of 1800." Now, in the first place, this description is untrue ; the letter is fully dated, though the date is cryptic. Rallying Coleridge on his lofty dismissal of his literary worshippers as "mere shadows,"* Lamb concludes his letter thus, " Farewell, dear Substance. Take no umbrage at anything I have written. C. LAMB, Umbra " Then comes the date, " Land of Shadows. Shadow Month the 16th or 17th, 1800." The contents of the letter prove that by " Shadow Month " here we are to under- stand April. The date of the letter then is
- Coleridge was apt to repeat himself some-
times after a long interval. On 25 January, 1808 e ' wr , lte ? * Ma , r y Morgan and Charlotte Brent :
Of the lady and her poetical daughter I had never before heard even the name. Oh these are shadows ! and all my literary admirers and flatterers pass over my heart as the images of clouds over [a] dull sea. bo far from being retained, they are scarcely made visible there. "-'Letters of S. T. C.,' 1895 p. 526.
16 or 17 April, 1800, and its proper place in
the series is on p. 178, vol. i. just before
No. Ivii. instead of at the end of the letters
of 1800, on p. 12, vol. ii., ed. 1900, where it
stands at present.
How do we know this 1 ? The letter was addressed to Grasmere (see the reference to it in letter Ixix., vol. i. p. 206, ed. 1900) along with a MS. copy of Lamb's play, which, writes Lamb to Coleridge, " I beg you to present in my name, with my respect and love, to Wordsworth and his sister." Presently he adds, " Our loves and respects to your host and hostess. Our dearest love to Coleridge." There are no loves to Mrs. Coleridge or Hart- ley, but lower down Lamb writes, "Pray send us word of Mrs. C. and little David Hart- ley, your little reality." Coleridge then was staying, without wife or child, in the Words- worths' cottage at Grasmere. This circum- stance alone suffices to identify the visit as that which Coleridge, having first dispatched Mrs. Coleridge and Hartley to the Roskillys', Kempsford Rectory, in Gloucestershire to remain there a month and then proceed to Bristol himself started from London on 1 April to pay his friends at Dove Cottage. If corroboration be wanted we find it in abundance. Lamb writes :
" Take no thought about your proof-sheets. They
shall be done as if Woodfall himself did them
Write your German as plain as sunshine, for that must correct itself. You know I am homo unius linguae, : in English illiterate, a dunce, a ninny."
(A little sample, this last, of Robert Burton, on whom, in April, 1800, Lamb's thoughts were running.) The reference here is to the translation of Schiller's * Wallenstein,' on which Coleridge was engaged during his visit to the Wordsworths, which was printed by G. Woodfall, 22, Paternoster Row, and pub- lished by Longmans (two parts in one) on 7 June, 1800. Fragments of German are cited in several of the notes (see part i. pp. 24, 74, 88, 96, &c.). On 21 April Coleridge writes from Grasmere to Josiah Wedgwood : " To-morrow I send off the last sheet of my
translation of Schiller." On 4 May he
left Grasmere to rejoin his wife and son at Bristol. All which proves conclusively that the letter before us must have been written in April, 1800. The copy of ' John Woodvil ' which accompanied it as a gift to the Words- worths (see the reference in Dorothy's Journal under 4 October, 1800) was, I repeat, a MS. copy. The play was not published until January, 1802, though Canon Ainger, with persistent error, still gives the date of publication as 1801 (note on Burton frag- ments, 'Poems, Plays,' &c,, ed. 1900, vol. iii).
