The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... And shudder'd; for the overwhelming voice Of huge Enceladus swallow'd it in wrath: The ponderous syllables, like sullen waves In the half-glutted hollows of reef-rocks, Came booming thus, while still upon his arm He lean'd; not rising, from supreme contempt. Book II., lines 300-308. There is so little doubt in my own mind that this is Lamb's reviewthat I have placed it in the body of this book and not in the Appendix. The internal evidence is very strong, particularly at the end, and in the use of such phrases as "joint strengths " and "younger impressibilities." But there is external evidence too. Leigh Hunt, writing of Keats, in his Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, 18SJ8, says: --I remember Charles Lamb's delight and admiration on reading this work Lamia; how pleased he was with the designation of Mercury as the "star of Lethe" (rising, as it were, and glittering, as he came upon that pale region); with the fine daring anticipation in that passage of the second poem, --"So the two brothers and their murdered man, Rode past fair Florence;" and with the description, at once delicate and gorgeous, of Agnes i.e., Madeline, praying beneath the painted window. The only scrap of evidence against the theory that Lamb wrote this article is the reference (page 202, line '27) to his reading Boccaccio in the original; for Lamb did not learn Italian until much later in life. But such embroideries were characteristic of him. Lamb did not know Keats well. He had met him only a few times, the historic occasion being the dinner at Haydon's, in December, 1817, when the Comptroller of Stamps was present. But he admired his work (he told Crabb Robinson he considered it next to Wordsworth's), and he hated the treatment that Keats received from certain...