My Friends and Acquaintance
Charles Lamb IX
Peter George Patmore, diary entry, 13 July [1826?]
“Friday, July 13.—Spent the evening at Leigh Hunt’s, with the
Lambs, Atherstone, Mrs.
Shelley, and the Gliddons.
Lamb talked admirably about Dryden and some of the older poets, in
particular of Davenant’s
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Gondibert. Of this Hunt wanted to show
that it consisted almost entirely of monosyllables, which give a most heavy and
monotonous effect to the versification; and he read some passages to that
effect. Lamb would not admit this, and he read an
admirable passage in reply, about a Museum of Natural Curiosities in which Man,
the pretended Lord of all the other creatures, hung by the wall, dry, like all
the rest, and even Woman, the Lord of Man, hung there too—‘and she dried by him.’ The effect of the
passage was prodigious. . . .
“He (Lamb) spoke
of Dryden as a prodigious person, so far
as his wonderful power of versification went, but not a first-rate poet, or
even capable of appreciating such—giving instances from his prefaces in proof
of this. He spoke of Dryden’s prefaces as the finest
pieces of criticism, nevertheless, that had ever been
written, and the better for being contradictory to each other, because not
founded on any pretended rules.
“Hunt was asking how
it was necessary to manage in order to get Coleridge to come and dine. Lamb replied that he believed he (Cole-![]()
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ridge) was under a kind of watch and ward—alluding to the watchful care taken
of him by the Gilmans, with whom he was
then residing. ‘Ah,’ said H., ‘vain
is the watch (Mrs. G.), and bootless is the ward’ (Mr.
G.), who always wore shoes.
“Lamb repeated one
of his own enormous puns. He had met Procter, and speaking of his little girl (then an infant),
Procter said they had called her Adelaide. ‘Ah,’ said
Lamb, ‘a very good name for her—Addle-head.’”
Edwin Atherstone (1788-1872)
English poet educated at the Fulneck Moravian School in Yorkshire; he was an associate of
the painter John Martin.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
Sir William Davenant (1606-1668)
English poet and playwright; he was poet laureate (1638) and founder of the Duke's
Company (1660).
John Dryden (1631-1700)
English poet laureate, dramatist, and critic; author of
Of Dramatick
Poesie (1667),
Absalom and Achitophel (1681),
Alexander's Feast; or the Power of Musique (1697),
The Works of Virgil translated into English Verse (1697), and
Fables (1700).
Anne Gillman [née Harding] (1779 c.-1860)
Of Highgate, the daughter of James Harding; in 1807 she married the surgeon James
Gillman, afterwards Coleridge's friend and patron.
James Gillman (1782-1839)
The Highgate surgeon with whom Coleridge lived from 1816 until his death in 1834; in 1838
he published an incomplete
Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Arthur Gliddon (1788-1862)
Tobacconist in King Street, Covent Garden, and personal friend of Leigh Hunt, the husband
of Alistasia Gliddon.
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
English poet, journalist, and man of letters; editor of
The
Examiner and
The Liberal; friend of Byron, Keats, and
Shelley.
Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of
Essays of Elia published in the
London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.
Adelaide Anne Procter [Mary Berwick] (1825-1864)
The eldest child of Bryan Waller Procter; she contributed poetry to Dickens's periodicals
collected as
Legends and Lyrics (1858, 1861).
Bryan Waller Procter [Barry Cornwall] (1787-1874)
English poet; a contemporary of Byron at Harrow, and friend of Leigh Hunt and Charles
Lamb. He was the author of several volumes of poem and
Mirandola, a
tragedy (1821).
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley [née Godwin] (1797-1851)
English novelist, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecaft, and the second wife
of Percy Bysshe Shelley. She is the author of
Frankenstein (1818)
and
The Last Man (1835) and the editor of Shelley's works
(1839-40).
