Selected Prose by Charles Lamb

Author:Charles Lamb [Lamb, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: British Literature, Essays, Classics, Nonfiction, Writing
ISBN: 9780141392929
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1986-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

This is all extremely clever, and about as true as it is necessary for such half-imaginary sketches to be. The veteran subject of it has had his name bandied to & fro, for praise & blame, the better part of a century, and has learned to stand harder knocks than these. He will laugh, we dare say, very heartily at this Chimaera of himself from the pen of a brother-reformer. We would venture a wager that the writer of it, with all his appearance of drawing from the life, never spent a day in company with the Major. We have passed many, & can assure the Essayist, that Major C— has many things in his head, and in his mouth too, besides Parliamentary Reform. We know that he is more solicitous to evade the question, than to obtrude it, in private company; and will chuse to turn the conversation purposely to topics of philology & polite literature, of which he is no common master. He will not shun a metaphysical point even if it come in his way, though he professes not to enter into that sort of science so deeply as Mr Hazlitt; and will discuss any point ‘at sight’ from history & chronology, his favourite subjects, down to the merits of his scarcely less darling Norfolk dumpling. We suspect that Mr Hazlitt knows nothing of the veteran beyond his political speeches, which to be sure are pretty monotonous upon one subject, and has carved the rest out of his own brain. But to deduce a man’s general conversation from what falls from him in public meetings, expressly convened to discuss a particular topic, is about as good logic, as it would be in the case of another sort of Reformer, who, like Major C—, but in an humbler sphere, goes about professing to remove nuisances if we should infer, that the good man’s whole discourse, at bed & board, in the ale-house & by the roadside, was confined to two cuckoo syllables, because in the exercise of his public function we had never heard him utter anything beyond Dust O!

The ‘Character of Cobbett’ (Sixth Essay) comes nearer the mark. It has the freedom of a sketch, and the truth of an elaborated portrait. Nothing is extenuated, nothing overdone. It is ‘without o’erflowing full’.8 It may be read with advantage by the partisans & opponents of the most extraordinary political personage that has appeared in modern times. It is too long to quote, too good for abridgment. We prefer closing our extracts with a portion of the Twelfth Essay, both for variety-sake, and because it seems no inappropriate conclusion to leave off with that which is ordinarily the latest of human actions – ‘the last infirmity of common minds’9 – the making of a Will. [Lamb quotes with omissions the passage beginning ‘Few things shew the human character … that we came into it!’]

We cannot take leave of this agreeable and spirited volume without bearing our decided testimony to Mr Hazlitt’s general merits as a writer.

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