Holidays Kept at Christ's Hospital

Jan. 25. St. Paul's conversion.
*30. King Charles's martyrdom.
Feb. 2. Candlemas Day.
24. St. Matthias.
Shrove Tuesday.
Ash Wednesday.
March 25. Lady Day.
April 23. St. George.
25. St. Mark.
May 1. St. Philip and St. James.
*29. Restoration of King
Charles II.
Ascension Day.
Whit Monday.
Whit Tuesday.
June 11. St. Barnabas.
24. St. John Baptist.
29. St. Peter.
July 25. St. James.
Thursday after St.
James. (Nurses' Holiday.)
Aug. 24. St. Bartholomew.
Sept. *2. London burnt.
*21. St. Matthew.
29. St. Michael.
Oct. 18. St. Luke.
*23. King Edward VI. born.
28. St. Simon and St. Jude.
Nov. 1. All Saints.
*5. Gunpowder Plot.
*9. Lord Mayor's Day.
*17. Queen Elizabeth's birthday.
30. St. Andrew.
Dec. 21. St. Thomas.

Also the birthdays of the King and Queen, and the Prince and Princess of Wales: and the King's accession, proclamation, and coronation.

In addition to the generous allowance of holidays above given the boys had every alternate Wednesday for a whole day; eleven days at Easter, four weeks in the summer, and fifteen days at Christmas. In 1837 the holiday system was remodelled. Compare Lamb's other remarks on his whole-day rambles in "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" (Vol. I.) and in the essays in the present volume entitled "Amicus Redivivus" and "Newspapers."

Page 16, line 14. The Tower. Blue-coat boys still have this right of free entrance to the Tower; but the lions are no more. They were transferred to the Zoological Gardens in 1831.

Page 16, line 16. L.'s governor. Meaning Samuel Salt, M.P.; but it was actually his friend Mr. Timothy Yeats who signed Lamb's paper. More accurately, Lamb's father lived under Salt's roof.

Page 16, line 7 from foot. H——. According to Lamb's Key this was Hodges; but in the British Museum copy of Elia, first edition, some one has written Huggins. It is immaterial. Nevis and St. Kitt's (St. Christopher's) are islands in the British West Indies. Tobin would be James Webbe Tobin, of Nevis, who died in 1814, the brother of the playwright John Tobin, author of "The Honeymoon."

Page 17, line 2. A young ass. The general opinion at Christ's Hospital is that Lamb invented this incident; and yet it has the air of being true.

Page 17, line 18. L.'s admired Perry. John Perry, steward from 1761 to 1785, mentioned in Lamb's earlier essay.

Page 17, foot. Gags. Still current slang.

Page 17, foot. ——. No name in the Key. The quotation is an adaptation of:—

It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh
Which some did die to look on.

"Antony and Cleopatra," Act I., Scene 4, lines 67-68.

It is perhaps worth remarking that in David Copperfield Dickens has a school incident of a similar character.

Page 18, line 14 from foot. Mr. Hathaway. Matthias Hathaway, steward from 1790 to 1813.

Page 19, line 8. I was a hypochondriac lad. Here Lamb drops the
Coleridge mask and speaks as himself.

Page 20, line 15. Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert. Bamber
Gascoigne, M.P. (1725-1791), of Bifrons, in Essex. Of Peter Aubert
I can find nothing, except that the assistant secretary of the East
India Company at the time Lamb wrote this essay was Peter Auber,
afterwards full secretary. His name here may be a joke.

Page 20, line 6 from foot. Matthew Field. The Rev. Matthew Feilde, also vicar of Ugley and curate of Berden. For the Rev. James Boyer see below.

Page 21, line 18. "Peter Wilkins," etc. The Adventures of Peter Wilkins, by Robert Paltock, 1751, is still read; but The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle, 1736, has had its day. It was a blend of unconvincing travel and some rather free narrative: a piece of sheer hackwork to meet a certain market. See Lamb's sonnet to Stothard, Vol. IV. The Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy I have not seen. Canon Ainger describes it as a rather foolish romance, showing how a Blue-coat boy marries a rich lady of rank. The sub-title is "Memoirs of the Life and Happy Adventures of Mr. Benjamin Templeman; formerly a Scholar in Christ's Hospital. By an Orphanotropian," 1770.

Page 22, footnote. I have not discovered a copy of Matthew Feilde's play.

Page 23, line 17 from foot. Squinting W——. Not identifiable.

Page 23, line 7 from foot. Coleridge, in his literary life. Coleridge speaks in the Biographia Literaria of having had the "inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time a very severe master, the Reverend James Bowyer [Boyer]," and goes on to attribute to that master's discrimination and thoroughness much of his own classical knowledge and early interest in poetry and criticism. Coleridge gives this example of Boyer's impatient humour:—

In our own English compositions (at least for the last three years of our school education), he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words. Lute, harp and lyre, Muse, Muses and inspirations, Pegasus, Parnassus and Hippocrene, were all an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost hear him now exclaiming, "Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, muse? Your nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh, aye! the cloister pump, I suppose!"

Touching Boyer's cruelty, Coleridge adds that his "severities, even now, not seldom furnish the dreams by which the blind fancy would fain interpret to the mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep."

In Table Talk Coleridge tells another story of Boyer. "The discipline at Christ's Hospital in my time," he says, "was ultra-Spartan; all domestic ties were to be put aside. 'Boy!' I remember Bowyer saying to me once when I was crying the first day of my return after the holidays, 'Boy! the school is your father! Boy! the school is your mother! Boy! the school is your brother! the school is your sister! the school is your first cousin, and your second cousin, and all the rest of your relations! Let's have no more crying!'"

Leigh Hunt in his autobiography also has reminiscences of Boyer and
Feilde.

James Boyer or Bowyer was born in 1736, was admitted to the school in 1744, and passed to Balliol. He resigned his Upper Grammar Mastership in 1799, and probably retired to the rectory of Gainscolne to which he had been appointed by the school committee six years earlier. They also gave him £500 and a staff.

Page 23, line 6 from foot. Author of the Country Spectator. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton (1769-1822), afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, who was at school with Lamb and Coleridge. In the little statuette group which is called the Coleridge Memorial, subscribed for in 1872, on the centenary of Coleridge's birth, and held in rotation by the ward in which most prizes have been gained in the year, Middleton is the tallest figure. It is reproduced in my large edition. The story which it celebrates is to the effect that Middleton found Coleridge reading Virgil in the playground and asked him if he were learning a lesson. Coleridge replied that he was "reading for pleasure," an answer which Middleton reported to Boyer, and which led to Boyer taking special notice of him. The Country Spectator was a magazine conducted by Middleton in 1792-1793.

Page 23, line 3 from foot. C——. Coleridge again.

Page 24, line 4. Lancelot Pepys Stevens. Rightly spelled Stephens, afterwards Under Grammar Master at the school.

Page 24, line 6. Dr. T——e. Arthur William Trollope (1768-1827), who succeeded Boyer as Upper Grammar Master. He resigned in 1826.

Page 24, line 21. Th——. Sir Edward Thornton (1766-1852), diplomatist, who was sent as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Lower Saxony, to Sweden, to Denmark and other courts, afterwards becoming minister to Portugal.

Page 24, line 23. Middleton. See note above. The treatise was The
Doctrine of the Greek Article as applied to the Criticism and the
Illustration of the New Testament, 1808. It was directed chiefly
against Granville Sharpe. Middleton was the first Bishop of Calcutta.

Page 24, line 8 from foot. Richards. This was George Richards (1767-1837). His poem on "Aboriginal Britons," which won a prize given in 1791 by Earl Harcourt, is mentioned favourably in Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Richards became vicar of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields and a Governor of Christ's Hospital. He founded a gold medal for Latin hexameters.

Page 24, foot. S—— … M——. According to the Key "Scott, died in
Bedlam," and "Maunde, dismiss'd school."

Page 24, foot. "Finding some of Edward's race." From Prior's Carmen
Seculare for 1700:—

Finding some of Stuart's race
Unhappy, pass their annals by.

Lamb alters Stuart to Edward because Edward VI. founded Christ's
Hospital.

Page 25, line 12. C.V. Le G——. Charles Valentine Le Grice (1773-1858), whom we meet also in the essay on "Grace Before Meat." Le Grice, in his description of Lamb as a schoolboy in Talfourd's Memorials, remarked: "I never heard his name mentioned without the addition of Charles, although, as there was no other boy of the name of Lamb, the addition was unnecessary; but there was an implied kindness in it, and it was a proof that his gentle manners excited that kindness."

Page 25, line 20. Allen. Robert Allen, whom we meet again in the essay on "Newspapers." After a varied and not fortunate career he died of apoplexy in 1805.

Page 25, line 8 from foot. The junior Le G——. Samuel Le Grice became a soldier and died in the West Indies. Lamb wrote of him to Coleridge in 1796, after the tragedy at his home, at a time when friends were badly needed, "Sam Le Grice who was then in town was with me the first 3 or 4 days, and was as a brother to me, gave up every hour of his time to the very hurting of his health and spirits, in constant attendance and humouring my poor father."

Page 25, line 8 from foot. F——. Joseph Favell, afterwards Captain, who had a commission from the Duke of York—as had Sam Le Grice—and was killed in the Peninsula, at Salamanca, 1812. Lamb states in the essay on "Poor Relations," where Favell figures as "W.," that he met his death at St. Sebastian. Both Sam Le Grice and Favell were to have accompanied Coleridge and Southey to the Susquehanna as Pantisocrats.

Page 26, line 1. Fr——. Frederick William Franklin, master of the
Hertford branch of the school from 1801 to 1827. He died in 1836.

Page 26, line 2. Marmaduke T——. Marmaduke Thompson, to whom Lamb dedicated Rosamund Gray in 1798.

Page 26, line 3. Catalogue of Grecians. Lamb was at Christ's Hospital from 1782 to 1789, and his list is not quite complete. He himself never was a Grecian; that is to say, one of the picked scholars on the grammar side of the school, two of whom were sent up to Cambridge with a hospital exhibition every year, on the understanding that they should take orders. Lamb was one of the Deputy-Grecians from whom the Grecians were chosen, but his stammer standing in his way and a Church career being out of the question, he never became a full Grecian. Writing to George Dyer, who had been a Grecian, in 1831, Lamb says: "I don't know how it is, but I keep my rank in fancy still since school days. I can never forget I was a deputy Grecian!… Alas! what am I now? What is a Leadenhall clerk, or India pensioner, to a deputy Grecian? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer!"

Lamb's memory is preserved at Christ's Hospital by a medal which is given for the best English essays. It was first struck in 1875, the centenary of his birth.

Page 26. THE TWO RACES OF MEN.

London Magazine, December, 1820.

Writing to Wordsworth in April of 1816, Lamb says:—"I have not bound the poems yet. I wait till people have done borrowing them. I think I shall get a chain and chain them to my shelves, more Bodleiano, and people may come and read them at chain's length. For of those who borrow, some read slow; some mean to read but don't read; and some neither read nor meant to read, but borrow to leave you an opinion of their sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing friends the justice to say that there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation in them. When they borrow my money they never fail to make use of it."

Probably the germ of the essay is to be found in this passage, as Lamb never forgot his thoughts.

Page 26, line 17 of essay. Brinsley. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the dramatist and a great spendthrift. He died in 1816. Lamb knew him slightly.

Page 26, line 9 from foot. Beyond Tooke. That is, beyond the philological theories of The Diversions of Purley by John Home Tooke (1736-1812).

Page 27, line 22. Ralph Bigod. John Fenwick, an unlucky friend of the Lambs, an anticipatory Micawber, of whom we know too little, and seem likely to find out little more. Lamb mentions him again in the essay on "Chimney Sweepers," and in that on "Newspapers," in his capacity as editor of The Albion, for which Lamb wrote its extinguishing epigram in the summer of 1801. There are references to the Fenwicks in Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart and in Lamb's letters; but nothing very informing. After financial embarrassments in England they emigrated to America.

Page 29, line 12. Comberbatch. Coleridge, who had enlisted as a young man in the 15th Light Dragoons as Silas Titus Comberback.

Page 29, line 16. Bloomsbury. Lamb was then in rooms at 20 Great
Russell Street (now Russell Street), Covent Garden, which is not in
Bloomsbury.

Page 29, line 27. Should he go on acting. The Letters contain references to this habit of Coleridge's. Writing to him in 1809 Lamb says, referring among other loans to the volume of Dodsley with Vittoria Corombona ("The White Devil," by John Webster) in it:—"While I think on it, Coleridge, I fetch'd away my books which you had at the Courier Office, and found all but a third volume of the old plays, containing the 'White Devil, 'Green's 'Tu Quoque,' and the 'Honest Whore,' perhaps the most valuable volume of them all—that I could not find. Pray, if you can, remember what you did with it, or where you took it out with you a walking perhaps; send me word, for, to use the old plea, it spoils a set. I found two other volumes (you had three), the Arcadia and Daniel, enriched with manuscript notes. I wish every book I have were so noted. They have thoroughly converted me to relish Daniel, or to say I relish him, for after all, I believe I did relish him."

And several years later (probably in 1820) we find him addressing Coleridge with reference to Luther's Table Talk:—"Why will you make your visits, which should give pleasure, matter of regret to your friends? You never come but you take away some folio, that is part of my existence. With a great deal of difficulty I was made to comprehend the extent of my loss. My maid, Becky, brought me a dirty bit of paper, which contained her description of some book which Mr. Coleridge had taken away. It was Luster's Tables, which, for some time, I could not make out. 'What! has he carried away any of the tables, Becky?' 'No, it wasn't any tables, but it was a book that he called Luster's Tables.' I was obliged to search personally among my shelves, and a huge fissure suddenly disclosed to me the true nature of the damage I had sustained."

Allsop tells us that Lamb once said of Coleridge: "He sets his mark upon whatever he reads; it is henceforth sacred. His spirit seems to have breathed upon it; and, if not for its author, yet for his sake, we admire it."

Page 30, line 1. John Buncle. Most of Lamb's books are in America; Lamb's copy of John Buncle, with an introductory note written in by Coleridge, was sold, with other books from his library, in New York in 1848. The Life of John Buncle, Esq., a book highly praised by Hazlitt, was by Thomas Amory (1691?-1788), published, Part I. in 1756 and Part II. in 1766. A condensed reprint was issued in 1823 entitled The Spirit of Buncle, in which, Mr. W.C. Hazlitt suggests, Lamb may have had a hand with William Hazlitt.

Page 30, line 19. Spiteful K. James Kenney (1780-1849), the dramatist, then resident at Versailles, where Lamb and his sister visited him in 1822. He married Louisa Mercier, daughter of Louis Sebastian Mercier, the French critic, and widow of Lamb's earlier friend, Thomas Holcroft. One of their two sons was named Charles Lamb Kenney (1821-1881). Lamb recovered Margaret of Newcastle's Letters (folio, 1664), which is among the books in America, as is also the Fulke Greville (small folio, 1633).

Page 31, line 4. S.T.C…. annotations. Lamb's copy of Daniel's Poetical Works, two volumes, 1718, and of Browne's Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, folio, 1658, both with marginalia by himself and Coleridge, are in existence, but I cannot say where: probably in America. Lamb's copy of Beaumont and Fletcher, with Coleridge's notes (see "Old China"), is, however, safe in the British Museum. His Fulke Greville, as I have said, is in America, but I fancy it has nothing of Coleridge in it, nor has his Burton—quarto, 1621—which still exists.

Coleridge's notes in the Beaumont and Fletcher folio are not numerous, but usually ample and seriously critical. At the foot of a page of the "Siege of Corinth," on which he had written two notes (one, "O flat! flat! flat! Sole! Flounder! Place! all stinking! stinkingly flat!"), he added:—

N.B.—I shall not be long here, Charles!—I gone, you will not mind my having spoiled a book in order to leave a Relic.