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Prose

Notes Of all the essayists it is perhaps Lamb who is the most autobiographic. His own life is for him
“such stuff as essays are made on.” He could easily say what Montaigne had said before him-”I
myself am the subject of my book.” The change from objectivity to subjectivity in the English essay
was, by and large, initiated by Abraham Cowley who wrote such essays as the one entitled. “Of
Myself.” Lamb with other romantic essayists completed this change. Walter Pater observes in
Appreciations; “With him, as with Montaigne, the desire of self-portraiture is below all mere
superficial tendencies, the real motive in ‘writing at all, desire closely connected with intimacy,
that modern subjectivity which may be called the Montaignesque element in literature. In his each
and every essay we feel the vein of his subjectivity.” His essays are, as it were, so many bits of
autobiography by piecing which together we can arrive at a pretty authentic picture of his life,
both external and internal. It is really impossible to think of an essayist who is more personal than
Lamb. His essays reveal him fully-in all his whims, prejudices, past associations, and experiences.
“Night Fears” shows us Lamb as a timid, superstitious boy. “Christ’s Hospital” reveals his
unpalatable experiences as a schoolboy. We are introduced to the various members of his family
in numerous essays like “My Relations’ “The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,” and “Poor
Relations.” We read of the days of his adolescence in “Mackery End in Hertfordshire.” His
tenderness towards his sister Mary is revealed by “Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist.” His
professional life is recalled in “The South-Sea House” and “The, Superannuated Man.” His
sentimental memories full of pathos find expression in “Dream Children.” His prejudices come to
the fore in “Imperfect Sympathies” and “The Confessions of a Drunkard.” His gourmandise finds
a humours utterence in “A Dissertation upon Roast Pig,” “Grace before Meat,” and elsewhere.
What else is left then? Very little, except an indulgence in self-pity at the stark tragedy of his life.
Nowhere does he seem to be shedding tears at the fits of madness to which his siter Mary Bridget
of the essays) was often subject and in one of which she knifed his mother to death. The frustration
of his erotic career (Lamb remained in a state of lifelong bachelorhood imposed by himself to
enable him to nurse his demented sister), however, is touched upon here and there. In “Dream
Children,” for instance, his unfruitful attachment with Ann Simmons is referred to. She got married
and her children had to “call Bartrum father.” Lamb is engaged in a reverie about “his children”
who would have possibly been born had he been married to Alice W-n (Ann Simmons). When the
reverie is gone this is what he finds: “...and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated
in my bachelor arm-chair where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget [his sister Mary]
unchanged by my side...but John L (his brother John Lamb) was gone for ever.” How touching!
Lamb’s excessive occupation with himself may lead one to assume that he is too selfish or egocentric,
or that he is vulgar or inartistic. Far from that, Egotism with Lamb sheds its usual offensive
accoutrements. The following specific points may be noted in this connexion:
1. His egotism is free from vulgarity. Well does Compton-Rickett observe: “There is no touch of
vulgarity in these intimacies; for all their frank unreserve we feel the delicate refinement of the
man’s spiritual nature. Lamb omits no essential, he does not sentimentalise, and does not
brutalise his memories. He poetises them, preserving them for us in art that can differentiate
between genuine reality and crude realism.”
2. His artistic sense of discrimination-selection and rejection-has also to be taken into account.
David Daiches maintains: “The writer’s own character is always there, flaunted before the
reader, but it is carefully prepared and controlled before it is exhibited.”
3. Though Lamb is an egotist yet he is not self-assertive. He talks about himself not because he
thinks himself to be important but because he thinks himself to be the only object he knows
intimately. Thus his egotism is born of a sense of humility rather than hauteur. Samuel C.
Chew observes: “Like all the romantics he is self-revelatory, but there is nothing in him of the
‘egotistical-sublime.’ Experience had made him too clear-sighted to take any individual, least
of all himself, too seriously. The admissions of his own weaknesses, follies, and prejudices are
so many humorous warnings to his readers.”

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