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CHARLES AND MARY

LAMB

EDITED BY

E. V. LUCAS

VOLUME IV.

DRAMATIC SPECIMENS AND THE GARRICK PLAYS

NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
LONDON: METHUEN & CO.

1904

29037

72 7 L K 1204 V1 4

TH

INTRODUCTION

HE present edition of what was, I fancy, in some respects its author's favourite book, follows the two-volume edition of 1835, which was a reprint of the Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of Shakspeare, first published by Longmans in 1808, with the addition of the Extracts from the Garrick Plays in the British Museum that Lamb contributed to Hone's Table Book throughout 1827. When writing an autobiographical sketch at the request of William Upcott, in 1827, Lamb closed the brief record of his career with the words: "He also was the first to draw the Public attention to the old English Dramatists," and there are other indications that he set a high value upon this piece of pioneering; entitling us, I think, to assume that, although he did not live to see the 1835 volume published, he had authorised the work. There is evidence in the Letters that he meditated a reprint. In 1830 he wrote to William Ayrton to the effect that he would like to fall in with a proposition of John Murray's, to reprint the original Specimens, possibly with the omission of a few men who had become better known since he wrote in 1808, and the addition of his new material. Murray, however, not carrying out the project, it was left for Moxon.

It is because I entertain the impression that Lamb saw the proofsheets of Moxon's edition, and was responsible for its arrangement, that I have reproduced that in the present volume, rather than print from the edition of 1808, and from the Table Book; where, by the way, we know Lamb's arrangement (herein followed) to have been deliberate, since he first copied his extracts into Note Books (now preserved at the British Museum), and afterwards formed

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for Hone separate articles, which are now among the Rowfant treasures.

An additional reason for leaving Lamb's extracts as he left them is that they are so essentially the work of a chartered enthusiast roaming and tasting where he will. To impose any

logical scheme upon such a bag of sweets would be, I think, a mistake. As Lamb himself wrote, one's "business is with the poetry only."

I have, however, added to the text, within square brackets, the dates of the plays, the birth and death dates of the authors, and a reference to the pages in the volume in which other extracts from their works may be found. Beyond these interpolations, notes of the omitted passages, hints as to the best modern editions, and the addition of references to the act and scene of the play from which each extract is taken, the text is as Lamb left it. Chief among the friends but for whose help my difficulties would have been greater is Mr. A. H. Bullen.

For the same reason that the order of the extracts has not been changed the old dramatists have not been amended, although better editions than those from which Lamb worked give readings that in many cases may be held preferable. Were this book a serious study of the old drama I should feel it my duty to enter into such minutiæ. But it is not a text-book. It is an inspired but strictly unofficial invitation, as informal and privileged as a familiar letter, to visit a great tract of beautiful and wonderful country. Hence the notes will be found principally to consist of the history of the book, told largely in the words of the late Mr. Dykes Campbell, by permission of Mrs. Dykes Campbell and the Editor of The Athenæum, together with a few further comments by Lamb, on the same subjects, drawn from other of his writings, and now and then a remark upon or corroboration of his criticisms by other critics.

The present edition is completer than any that has yet been published, for it contains not only the Specimens, and the Garrick Extracts that Lamb sent to Hone, but also those extracts which he copied into his Note Books but did not send. I have also, by the courtesy of Mr. Godfrey Locker-Lampson, examined the

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