A Book of English Literature

As a

ROBIN HOOD

404. Lucan.

sped. Byron, and his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN 484. 264. The Pilgrim of Eternity. Byron. 496. A mermaid was a favorite device for the

Shelley is thinking of Childe Harold's sign-board of an old English tavern. Pilgrimage.

The “ Mermaid Tavern ” to which Keats 268, 9. Ierne sent the sweetest lyrist, refers was the gathering place of the most etc. Ireland sent Tom Moore.

famous Elizabethan wits and dramatists. matter of fact, neither Byron nor Moore was particularly affected by the death of Keats. 271. One frail Form. Shelley himself.

33. Gone the merry morris din. A 276. Actæon-like. Actæon, in punish

" morris dance "-probably from “ Moorment for having seen Diana in the bath,

ish dance"-was an outdoor revel in was turned into a stag and torn by his

which the performers wore grotesque cosown dogs.

tumes and bells. 307. What softer voice. Leigh Hunt.

34. The song of Gamelyn. A pseudo486. 325. Live thou! The author of an excep

Chaucerian tale of outlawry is called tionally brutal attack on Keats in the

“ The Tale of Gamelyn.” Keats uses Quarterly Review. Compare Byron's

the phrase as synonymous with the outtwo stanzas beginning “ Who killed John

door life of Robin Hood. Keats?”

36. Grene shawe.” Green wood. 343. Peace, peace! he is not dead. With the conception of immortality set forth

THE EVE OF ST. AGNES in the remaining stanzas

one should

496. The twenty-first of January is St. Agnes's compare Lycidas, ll. 165-185.

Day; the evening of the twentieth is "the 486. 399. Chatterton. Cf. note to Words

Eve of St. Agnes.” The superstition worth's Resolution and Independence, around which the poem centers is made 1. 43, p. 407.

sufficiently clear in the course of the story. 401. Sidney. Died at the age of thirty- | 498. 115. The holy loom, etc. On St. Agnes's two.

day, during the celebration of the mass, A Latin poet, forced by two lambs might be offered to the church Nero to commit suicide at the age of

(cf. l. 71). The nuns afterwards spun and twenty-six.

wove the wool. 487. 439. Slope of green access. The Protest- 499. 171. Since Merlin paid his Demon, etc. ant cemetery.

Merlin, the famous wizard and prophet

of Arthurian romance, was the son of a KEATS

demon, and became himself the victim of magic. See Tennyson's Merlin and Vivien.

174. Tambour frame. An embroidery 490. This poem appeared in Keats's 1817

frame shaped like a tambour, or drum. volume. It is a somewhat formless collection of Keats's own ideas concerning

500. 241. Clasped like a missal, etc. Clasped

probably modifies soul; in the two followpoetry and its joys; the selection here

ing lines her soul is likened to a rose that reprinted shows Keats protesting against

is shut. The line means, then, that her the formalism of the 18th century, and

soul was clasped as tightly in sleep as a particularly against those critics who traced their ancestry back to Boileau.

prayer-book would be by a Christian in

a land of Pagans. ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 492. 4. Lethe. One of the four rivers of Hades;

602. Keats planned to write an epic dealing whoever drank of its waters became oblivious of all the past.

with the overthrow of Saturn by Jupiter.

When the poem was published in 1820, 7. Dryad. A tree nymph. 13. Flora. Goddess of the flowers.

however, only two books and a fragment

of a third had been written. 14. Provençal song. The lyrics of Pro

603. 23. There came one. Thea, sister of 16. Hippocrene. The fountain of the

Hyperion.

30. Ixion's wheel. Ixion was chained for Muses on Mt. Helicon.

all eternity to a revolving wheel. 32. Bacchus and his pards. Leopards are often represented as drawing the car

504. 147. The rebel three. Jupiter, Neptune,

and Pluto. of Bacchus.

166. Hyperion. When the action of the poem commences, the victory of Jupiter

is incomplete. Hyperion is still god of the 493. 7. Tempe, Arcady. Here used simply to

indicate places of beauty and carefree 506. 246. Tellus. Goddess of the earth. life. Tempe was a valley in Thessaly.

307. Cælus. God of the heavens.

SLEEP AND POETRY

HYPERION

vence.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

sun.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER 507. George Chapman (15592-1634) published

his translation of Homer in 1598 and
1609. Keats first read it in 1816.
II. Stout Cortez. Historical accuracy
would compel the substitution of Balboa
for Cortez.

BRIGHT STAR

508. Usually known as Keats's “ last sonnet,”

written while he was en route to Italy.

CAMPBELL

YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND

15. Blake. Oliver Cromwell's most successful admiral. He died at sea in 1657. Nelson. The victor of Trafalgar.

MOORE THE HARP THAT ONCE THROUGH TARA'S HALLS 609. Tara was formerly an Irish capital city.

614. 240. He ate strange flesh. See Antony

and Cleopatra, I. iv. 67. 616. 316. A hypochondriac lad. True of Lamb

himself.
353. Auto da fe.

The name given to executions, usually by burning, under the Spanish Inquisition; literally, “act of faith.”

OH, BREATHE NOT HIS NAME The famous Irish rebel was executed in 1803 because of treasonable correspondence with Napoleon, and armed rebellion against the crown.

WOLFE

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE Sir John Moore, an English general in charge of an army in the Peninsular War, was shot at Corunna, Spain, in January, 1809. At his own request he was buried within the ramparts of the town.

LAMB

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 612. The essay purports to be written by a

student of Christ's Hospital who feels
that Lamb's earlier essay, Recollections,
etc., is too flattering an account of life
at the institution.
37. Banyan ... days. Days on which
no meat was served.
39. Double-refined. Sugar.

44. Caro equina. Horseflesh. 513. 54. Griskin. Lean loin of pork.

62. The Tishbite. Elijah.
73. I was a poor friendless boy. True of
Coleridge, for whom Lamb is speaking in
the two paragraphs beginning here.
94. Sweet Calne in Wiltshire. Cole-
ridge's house was really at Ottery St.

Mary, Devonshire. 614. 187. Upon the leads. On the lead-covered

355.“ Watchet weeds.” Blue uniform. 616. 378. Ultima Supplicia. Last punish

ments.
395. San Benito. A special robe worn by
the condemned at the auto da fe.
419. An accidence. A primer containing
the rudiments of grammar.
446. Insolent Greece, etc. From Ben
Jonson's lines to Shakespeare.
461. Rousseau. Both Rousseau and
Locke believed in letting a child follow

his own natural impulses.
617. 487. Helot . . . Spartans. Spartan par-

ents were accustomed to teach their
children sobriety by calling their atten-
tion to drunken Helots, who were slaves.
496. The Samite. The Greek philosopher
Pythagoras, whose pupils were obliged
to listen in silence to his lectures for five
years before they could ask questions.
497. Goshen. That rich and fertile part
of Egypt inhabited by the Israelites be-
fore the captivity.
503. Gideon's miracle. The method by
which Gideon tested God's promise to
deliver the Midianites into his hand: a
fleece left on the ground over night was
drenched by the dew, while the ground
about it was dry. See Judges, vi.
518. Ululantes.

The howlers; e. g., in
Tartarus, hell.
523. Scrannel pipes. Quoted from Lyc-
idas, l. 124.
525. Flaccus's quibble. A pun in one of
Horace's satires (I. vii) on rex as king, and

as a surname.

roof.
191. Caligula's minion. A horse which
Caligula named first consul.

526. Tristis severitas in vultu. Gloomy
sternness in his face; applied to a rascal
in Terence's Andria..
527. Inspicere in patinas. Look into
your saucepans; the advice of a slave to
scullions, parodying some serious counsel
given by a father to his son, in Terence's
Adelphi.
535. Caxon. Slang term for wig.

559. Rabidus furor. Rabid rage.
618. 585. Literary life. Coleridge's Biographia

Literaria.
588. The Country Spectator. A nagazine
edited by T. F. Middleton in 1792-3;
see below, l. 629.
600. Grecian. The two best scholars
among the senior boys of Christ's Hospi-
tal were called Grecians, and received
scholarships at Cambridge University.
617. Fasces. Bundles of rods, with axes
in their centers, symbolic of the authority
of Roman magistrates; here, the birch
rod.

famous Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who twice ran away from school, once

turning chimney sweep. 623. 232. Defiliations. Instances of parents

being deprived of their children.
242. Ascanius.

Son of Æneas; in the first book of the Æneid (1. 695.ff.) we are told how on one occasion Venus lulled

him to sleep.
624. 283. Incunabula. Cradle.

290. Jem White. A schoolfellow of
Lamb's at Christ's Hospital.
299. The fair of St. Bartholomew. Held
in Smithfield, one of the poorer districts
of London, originally on St. Bartholo-
mew's Day, August 24; later, when the
calendar was revised, on September 3. It
became the occasion of great disorder and
scandal, and was abolished in 1855. Ben
Jonson wrote a comedy of this title, deal-
ing with the humors of the Fair, and
severely satirizing the Puritans.
312. Quoited. Thrown, as a quoit would
be.
335. Rochester. The Earl of Rochester
(1647-1680), one of the courtiers of
Charles II, noted for his riotous excesses.
341. Old dame Ursula. Lamb so names
the woman after one of the characters in
Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, mentioned
above, a fat pig-woman,-i. e., woman
who sold roast pig, -indescribably coarse
of behavior.
345. Whereat the universal host
brightness. A paraphrase of Paradise
Lost, I. 541-543; see p. 161.
360. Kissing-crust. The soft part of the
crust of a loaf where it has touched an-

other in baking. 626. 388. Golden lads, etc. From Cymbeline,

IV. ii.

DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG

618. 636. Regni novitas. The newness of the

kingdom.
639. Jewel or Hooker, English bishops
and writers of the sixteenth century;
Hooker was author of the Laws of Eccle-
siastical Polity.
664. Mirandula. Pico della Mirandola,
Italian philosopher of the fifteenth cen-
tury, one of the leading scholars of the
Renaissance.
666. Jamblichus, Plotinus. Neo-Pla-
tonic philosophers of the fourth and third
centuries A. D.
674. Fuller. Thomas Fuller, author of
The Worthies of England, 1662. Lamb
adapts Fuller's description of the trials
of wit between Shakespeare and Ben
Jonson, substituting Coleridge for Jonson,

and C. V. Leg. for Shakespeare. 619. 695. Nireus formosus. Handsome Nireus;

Homer called Nireus the handsomest of
all the Greek host before Troy.
709. Sizars. University students who
received free board; formerly they per-
formed certain menial duties in return
for the financial assistance.

DREAM CHILDREN

621. 221. John L. Lamb's brother John, who

died shortly before this essay was written.

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY SWEEPERS 5. Nigritude. Blackness. 9. Professional notes. Their call of “ Sweep! Sweep!” 19. Sport their cloth. Wear a garb of black, like a clergyman.

28. Fauces Averni. The jaws of hell. 622. 53. Kibed. Chilblained.

56. Tester. Sixpence.
59. 'Yclept. Called.
71. The only Salopian house. The only
shop devoted to the sale of saloop, or
sassafras tea.
88. Fuliginous. Sooty.
137. Covent Garden. The fruit and

vegetable market of London. 623. 165. Westward. I. e., homeward from

work, for Lamb lived in the Temple,
west from Cheapside.
181. Hogarth. William Hogarth (1697-
1764), the famous eighteenth century
painter of London life. The March to
Finchley, one of his most animated pieces
of work, depicts a company of soldiers
marching through a crowd in the utmost
confusion; one of the figures in the fore-
ground is that of a sweep, with just
such a grin as Lamb describes, except
that he is grinning not at the pie-man,
but at a soldier who is stealing milk from
a milkmaid.
208. A sable cloud, etc. Adapted from
Comus, l. 221 f.
229. The young Montagu. Edward Wort-
ley Montagu (1713-1776), son of the

The Chinese manuscript, and the volume ascribed to Confucius, are inventions of Lamb, who, however, obtained the suggestion for the essay from his friend Thomas Manning, who had travelled in

China. 627. 188. Locke. John Locke (1632–1704), au

thor of the Essay concerning Human Un-
derstanding.
209. Mundus edibilis. World of edibles.
211. Princeps obsoniorum. Chief of
tidbits.
217. Amor immunditiæ. Love of filth.
253. Radiant jellies . . . shooting stars.
There was a popular superstition that if a
shooting star could be found fallen on the
ground it would turn out to be nothing but
a mass of jelly.
262. Conversation. Behavior.
264. Ere sin, etc. One of Lamb's most
exquisite touches of humor; the quota-
tion is from Coleridge's Epitaph on an
Infant.
273. Sapors. Flavors.

It was

628. 312. Villatic. Of the village; the quota

tion is from Samson Agonistes.
378. Intenerating and dulcifying. Making
tender and sweet. The use of such long,
highsounding words of Latin derivation,
with reference to a subject so common-
place, has much to do with the flavor of the
essay.
387. St. Omer's. A French Jesuit col-
lege, where, of course, Lamb never at-

tended school.
629. 404. Shalot. A kind of onion.

my condition overwhelmed me. like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three, i. e., to have three times as much real time-time that is my own, in it! I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holidays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys; their conscious fugitiveness; the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all is holiday, there are no holidays. I can sit at home, in rain or shine, without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master, as it has been irksome to have had a master. “I eat, drink, and sleep sound as ever. I lay no anxious schemes for going hither and thither, but take things as they occur. Yesterday I excursioned twenty miles; to-day I write a few letters. Pleasuring was for fugitive playdays; mine are fugitive only in the sense that life is fugitive. Freedom and life coexistent!"

HAZLITT

THE FIGHT

THE SUPERANNUATED MAN One of the most autobiographically exact of Lamb's essays. Lamb was a clerk in the service of the East India Company for thirty-three years, resigning his post in March, 1825, on a pension of twothirds his regular salary. Sera tamen, etc. Quoted from Virgil's first eclogue: Liberty, though late, yet looked upon,

or visited, me. 630. 162. Boldero Lacy. Fictitious

ix: 20:

633. 24. The Fancy. Sportsmen, especially

prize-fighters.
78. Alter idem. A second self.
89. Lines from Spenser. From Muio-

polmos, I. 209 ff. 634. 104. One of the mails. One of the mail

coaches.
180. The Brentford Jehu. See 2 Kings,

The driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth

furiously.” 636. 268. Follows so the ever-running sun.

“ Follows so the ever-running year, With profitable labor.” Henry V, IV. i.

293. 636. 348. The vein of Gilpin. See Cowper's

John Gilpin's Ride.
359. Frank us. Send us down on a pass.
388. A lusty man. Canterbury Tales,
Prologue, l. 167; p. 3.
405. Standing like gray-hounds.
" I see you stand like gray-hounds in the

slips,
Straining upon the start.” Henry V,

names under which Lamb conceals the directors of the East India Company.

164. Esto perpetua. Be thou eternal. 631. 241. A Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard.

The Vestal Virgin, or the Roman Ladies;
Howard was brother-in-law of Dryden,
and did some dramatic work in collabora-
tion with him.
286. Gresham. Sir Thomas Gresham
(d. 1579), a wealthy London merchant
who founded the Royal Exchange and
became Lord Mayor. Whittington. Sir
Richard, better known as Dick, Whitting-
ton, whose rise from poverty to the Lord
Mayorship is familiar from

nursery
rhymes.
298. Aquinas. St. Thomas Aquinas,
Italian philosopher of the thirteenth
century; his writings filled seventeen

volumes. 632. 310. Carthusian. The Carthusian order

of monks was founded by St. Bruno c. 1084, at La Grande Chartreuse (Latin Carthusia); the Carthusian rule was strict. 333. Elgin marbles.

Parts of the pediments and frieze of the Parthenon, brought to England by Lord Elgin and placed in the British Museum. 361. Cantle. Slice. 392. Cum dignitate. From Cicero's phrase, otium cum dignitate-ease with dignity. 397. Opus operatum est. The work has been done. On the sixth of April, 1825, Lamb wrote to his friend Wordsworth, Here I am then, after thirty-three years' slavery, sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock this finest of all April mornings, a freed man, with 441£ a year for the remainder of my life. “I came home FOREVER on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of

III. i. 31.

411. Oaken towel. Staff or club.
415. A firebrand like Bardolph's. Bar-
dolph is one of the characters in Henry IV
whom Falstaff is forever twitting about
his red nose; e. g.: “O thou art a per-
petual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-
light. Thou hast

' saved me a thousand
marks in links and torches, walking in
the night betwixt tavern and tavern."
(III. iii.)

in 1519.

V. v.

a cover.

V.173 ff.

637. 437. Hogarth. See note on The Praise of 647. 490. The Bodleian. The University Chimney Sweepers, p. 523, I. 181.

library at Oxford. 443. Cobbett.

William Cobbett (17661835), an English radical journalist, editor

ON FAMILIAR STYLE of Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, whose attacks on the government resulted

649. 112. Cum grano salis. With a grain of

salt. from time to time in his being imprisoned

176. Mr. Cobbett.

See note Tke and fined. 520. Alas! the Bristol man, etc. See

Fight, 1. 443. Cowper's The Task, II. 322:

660. 247. A well of native English undefiled. “Alas, Leviathan is not so tamed."

Adapted from Spenser's "Dan Chaucer, 638. 551. The Game Chicken.

The nom de

well of English undefyled,” Faerie Queene,

IV. ii. 32. guerre of Henry Pearce, a well-known English pugilist.

251. Erasmus's Colloquies. The Col. 585. Stone. An English weight, legally

loquia of Erasmus (1466-1536), appeared fourteen pounds. 640. 826. Sir Fopling Flutter. A fashionable

261. What do you read? etc. See Hamfop in Etherege's comedy, The Man of

let, II. ï. Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter,

272. Florilegium. Anth ogy; here rather 641. 889. Procul este profani. Æneid, VI.

a collection of big words. Tulippomania. 258. Stay far off, unholy ones.

Craze for tulips. 906. New Eloise. La Nouvelle Héloïse,

289. Sermo humi obrepens. Talk that by Rousseau; a sentimental romance

creeps on the ground. published in 1760.

661. 314. Fantoccini beings. Puppets.

315. That strut and fret, etc. Macbeth, ON GOING A JOURNEY

320. And on their pens, etc. Adapted 642. 30. May plume her feathers, etc. Comus, from Paradise Lost, IV. 988-9: 378 ff.

“And on his crest 36. A Tilbury. A two wheeled gig without

Sat Horror plumed."

395. Cowper's description. The Task, 643. 97. Sterne. The Rev. Laurence Sterne

(1713-1768), author of A Sentimental

Journey and Tristram Shandy. 644. 170. All-Foxden. Near Nether-Stowey,

DE QUINCEY Somersetshire, where Hazlitt visited his old friend C

CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-EATER (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) in 1798. “L---' 1.

The text here used is the briefer and Charles Lamb, a friend of both Hazlitt better known version which appeared in and Coleridge.

the London Magazine in 1821, and was 176. Here be woods as

green, etc.

reprinted in the first edition of 1822; an Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, I. iii.

expanded version was published in Seleco 238. Sancho. Sancho Panza, Don tions Grave and Gay, 1856. Quixote's esquire and servant in Cer- 652. 108. Archididascalus. Head master. vantes’ burlesque romance Don Quixote. 663. 180. I came to leave nihe Man 244. Procul este profani. See The Fight, chester Grammar School. note on l. 889.

216. Towers of

Manchester 646. 312. Gribelin's engravings. Simon Gri- Cathedral.

belin (1661-1733), an engraver of some 664. 293. Lustrum. Period of five years. ability, published in 1707 seven plates

315. νυχθήμερον.

A day of twentyof the cartoons of Raphael.

four hours. and Virginia, ... Camilla. 320. That moveth altogether, etc. From The former a pastoral novel by Bernadin Wordsworth's Resolution and Independde St. Pierre, published 1788; the latter, ence, l. 77. a novel by Madame D'Arblay (Fanny 666. 414. Anastasius. A novel, published Burney), published 1796, much inferior 1819, the hero of which was an opiumto her masterpiece Evelina.

eating Greek. 331. New Eloise.

See The Fight, note 416. Mithridates. The title of a dicon l. 906.

tionary of all languages, published by 646. 381. Where is he now? In 1822, when Johann Christoph Adelung. in 1806.

this essay was first published, Coleridge's Mithridates was renowned as a linguist; creative power was in eclipse, and his hence the title. whole constitution broken by ill health 667. 582. The Scriptures speak of. Revelaand the use of laudanum.

lion, xx: 12. 647. 472. Stonehenge. A prehistoric monu- 568. 646. A certain day in August. The Civil

ment in the shape of a roughly circular War may be said to have begun when group of huge monoliths, on Salisbury Charles I raised the royal standard at Plain, Wiltshire.

Nottingham, August 22, 1642.

204, is

325. Paul

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