Page 37 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Elective English–I

Notes to the second edition of the Poems showed significant growth as a poet. These poems included
The Tomb of Douglas and A Vision of Repentance. Because of a temporary fall-out with Coleridge,
Lamb’s poems were to be excluded in the third edition of the Poems. As it turned out, a third
edition never emerged and instead Coleridge’s next publication was the monumentally influential
Lyrical Ballads co-published with Wordsworth. Lamb, on the other hand, published a book
entitled Blank Verse with Charles Lloyd, the mentally unstable son of the founder of Lloyd’s
Bank. Lamb’s most famous poem was written at this time entitled The Old Familiar Faces.
Like most of Lamb’s poems it is particularly sentimental but it is still remembered and widely
read, often included in Poetic Collections. Of particular interest to Lambarians is the opening
verse of the original version of The Old Familiar Faces which is concerned with Lamb’s
mother. It was a verse that Lamb chose to remove from the edition of his Collected Work
published in 1818.
I had a mother, but she died, and left me, Died prematurely in a day of horrors—All, all are gone, the
old familiar faces.
From a fairly young age Lamb desired to be a poet but never gained the success that he had
hoped. Lamb lived under the poetic shadow of his friend Coleridge. In the final years of the
18th century Lamb began to work on prose with the novella entitled Rosamund Gray, a story
of a young girl who was thought to be inspired by Ann Simmonds, with whom Charles Lamb
was thought to be in love. Although the story is not particularly successful as a narrative
because of Lamb’s poor sense of plot, it was well thought of by Lamb’s contemporaries and
led Shelley to observe “what a lovely thing is Rosamund Gray! How much knowledge of the
sweetest part of our nature in it!”
In the first years of the 19th century Lamb began his fruitful literary cooperation with his
sister Mary. Together they wrote at least three books for William Godwin’s Juvenile Library.
The most successful of these was of course Tales From Shakespeare which ran through two
editions for Godwin and has now been published dozens of times in countless editions, many
of them illustrated. Lamb also contributed a footnote to Shakespearean studies at this time
with his essay “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare,” in which he argues that Shakespeare should
be read rather than performed in order to gain the proper effect of his dramatic genius. Beside
contributing to Shakespeare studies with his book Tales From Shakespeare, Lamb also contributed
to the popularization of Shakespeare’s contemporaries with his book Specimens of the English
Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare.
Although he did not write his first Elia essay until 1820, Lamb’s gradual perfection of the
essay form for which he eventually became famous began as early 1802 in a series of open
letters to Leigh Hunt’s Reflector. The most famous of these is called “The Londoner” in which
Lamb famously derides the contemporary fascination with nature and the countryside.

3.3 Dream Children : A Reverie

Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their
imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never
saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about, me the other evening to hear about
their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger
than that in which they and papa lived) which had been the scene—so at least it was generally
believed in that part of the country—of the tragic incidents which they had lately become
familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story
of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the
chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts, till a foolish
rich Person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no

32 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY