xt7qjq0stw34_2146 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/mets.xml https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474.dao.xml unknown archival material 1997ms474 English University of Kentucky The physical rights to the materials in this collection are held by the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. W. Hugh Peal manuscript collection Coleridge, Lamb and the Year 1834 by Edward Verrall Lucas text 43.94 Cubic Feet 86 boxes, 4 oversize boxes, 22 items Poor-Good Peal accession no. 11453. Coleridge, Lamb and the Year 1834 by Edward Verrall Lucas 2017 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7qjq0stw34/data/1997ms474/Box_20/Folder_94/Multipage7255.pdf undated section false xt7qjq0stw34_2146 xt7qjq0stw34 COLERIDGE, LAMB AND THE YEAR 1834.

WHEN, in 1835, James Hogg, the “ ttrick Shepherd,"
died, Wordsworth composed what he Called an “ Ex—
tempore Eflusion ” on his death—meaning by extempore
I know not what, for all inspiration is sudden and there
is every trace of polish in the lines—in which two of the
stanzas run thus :

Nor has the rolling year twice measured,
From sign to sign, its stedfast course

Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source ;

The rapt one, of the godlike forehead,

The heaven-eyed creature, sleeps in earth ;
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,

Has vanished from his lonely hearth.

It is to the honour and glory of the “ rapt one ” and the
” frolic and the gentle ” that the portraits in this room
have been assembled.

In the manuscript diary of Thomas Moule, the
antiquary and topographer, who died in 1851 and who
was in the habit of noting these annual losses, I find a
formidable list of the deaths of 1834, beginning with
Lord Grenville in January and ending with Charles
Lamb on December 27th. Between these extremes are
John Thelwall, the editor of The Champion, whose
portrait will be found in this room, George Cooke, the
engraver, Rudolph Ackermann, the printseller, Francis
Douce, F.S.A., Lord Wodehouse, the Rev. James
Dalloway, historian of Sussex, Lord Arundell, the
Countess of Antrim, Earl Bathurst, Monsieur de la
Fayette, Michael Angelo Taylor, the politician, S. T.
Coleridge, W. Crawshay, the ironmaster, William Black-
wood, the publisher, Thomas Telford, the engineer, the

 

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12th Earl of Derby, the Duke of Gloucester, James Heath,
the engraver, Thomas Park, the antiquary, Alexander
Chalmers, the Scottish writer, and Prince Hoare, the
actor. If, however, 1834 took so much away, it also
gave us much, including Lord Avebury, the banker and
naturalist, J. E. Boehm, the sculptor, William Morris,
the poet and decorator, Charles Santley, the singer, James
McNeill Whistler, George du Maurier, C, H. Spurgeon,
the preacher, and Frank R. Stockton and Artemus
Ward, the American humorists.

The present Centenary Exhibition not only marks the
close of the lives—one can hardly say careers in connection
with such unworldly men—of two of the most individual
and interesting figures in English literature, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, the romantic poet, metaphysician and
critic, and Charles Lamb, the author of the “ Elia”
essays, but it celebrates also one of the most notable
and enduring of friendships. Coleridge, who was born
in 1772, went to Christ’s Hospital in July, 1782, and
Lamb, who was born in 1775, joined him there in the
following October. How soon they found each other,
we do not know ; but once the contact was made, it was
for ever; for the breach in 1798 may be considered
negligible. On his death-bed, Coleridge, re-reading an
early poem in which Lamb was mentiéned, wrote in
the margin: ” Charles and Mary Lamb—dear to my
heart, yea, as it were my heart,” and in his Will he
left a mourning ring to “my close friend. and ever-
beloved school—fellow.” What Lamb thought of Coleridge
can be gathered from the Essays and Letters and from
the little passage on his death written in an album late
in 1834: “ His great and dear spirit haunts me.

He was my fifty—years old friend without a
dissension.”

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Both passed away on the confines of the city they'
knew so well but could now Visit so seldom—Coleridge
at Highgate and Lamb at Edmonton: both unhappy
and ready to go, Coleridge because, as Lamb wrote of
him a month before his own death, “he had a hunger
for eternity” ; Lamb because his sister was now rarely
herself, his adopted daughter was married, his friends
were far away and his work was done. But for Coleridge’s
death he might have lived longer, yet it was hardly to
he wished. John Forster, who knew him well and saw
him in the last days as often as anyone, writing in
February, 1835, said that from Coleridge’s death Lamb
never fully recovered: “ He thought of little else (his
sister was but another portion of himself) until his own
great spirit joined his friend.”

The reunion in this room of the Coleridge and Lamb
circles is not complete, but it is as complete as the
resources of the National Portrait Gallery will allow.
Hazlitt, for example, their intellectual equal and the
painter of one of the portraits of Lamb, is only on loan ;
James White, whom Lamb encouraged in his Falstafl’s
Letters and with whom once a year he gorged the little
chimney—sweeps, is not here ; George Dyer, who fell into
the New River in front of Lamb’s Cottage, is not here ;
Thomas Manning, who gave Lamb the idea for the
dissertation on Roast Pig, is not here; Bernard Barton,
to whom Lamb wrote so many good letters, is not here ,-
the Rev. H. F. Cary, who translated Dante and was
helped to fame by Coleridge, and whose son painted
the picture of Charles and Mary Lamb together, is not
here. . But the company in which we find ourselves is
representative and distinguished ; and Such a collection
should do more to reconstruct the past than much writing.

E. V. LUCAS.

 

 CHARLES LAMB.

1775 Born in London.
1782—9 Christ’s Hospital.
1792 Obtained his post in the India House.

1796 Death of his mother at the hands of his sister Mary
during an attack of insanity.

1807 Published with his sister the Tales from Shakespeare.
1808 Published Specimens of Dramatic English Poets.
1820—22 Essays of Ella.

1825 Retired from the India House.

1834 Died at Edmonton.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

1772 Born in Devonshire.

1782—90 Christ’s Hospital.

1791—93 Jesus College, Cambridge.

1797 Wrote The Ancient M Miner and Knbla Khan.
1798—9 Travelled in Germany with Wordsworth.

1800 Settled at Keswick with his family.

1803 Became a slave to opium.

1808—13 Lectured in London on Shakespeare and other poets.
1816 Settled at Highgate with friends.

1828 Published his Collected Works.

1834 Died at Highgate.

 

A set of postcard photographs of portraits of Charles

and Mary Lamb, Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Keats, Southey,

Wordsworth and De Quincey, with specially written

miniature biographies by a leading modern writer,

together with this notice, by E. V. Lucas, of the

Lamb~Coleridge centenary exhibition at the National
Portrait Gallery, is on sale at ls.

 

[6/34] (12/4924) Wt.P.1602-13 3000 9/34 H&S,Ltd. Gp. 12 (4636)