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The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb: Miscellaneous prose, 1798-1834
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Miscellaneous prose 17981834 Author:Charles Lamb Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Page 31. Curious Fragments. John Woodvil, 1802, and Works, 1818. Lamb engaged upon these experiments in the manner of Burton, always a favourite author wit... more »h him, at the suggestion of Coleridge. We find him writing to Manning (March 17, 1800) : "He [Coleridge] has lugged me to the brink of engaging to a newspaper, and has suggested to me, for a first plan, the forgery of a supposed manuscript of Burton, the anatomist of melancholy." Writing again to Manning a little later, probably in April, 1800 (the letter is dated wrongly October 5, 1800, in editions of the correspondence), Lamb mentions having submitted two imitations of Burton to Stuart, the editor of the Morning Post, and states also that he has written the lines entitled "Conceipt of Diabolic Possession"—originally, in the John Woodvil volume, a part of these " Fragments," but afterwards, in the Works, separated from them. In August, 1800, Lamb tells Coleridge he has written the ballad in the manner of the " Old and Young Courtier," also originally part of these " Fragments," and mentions further that Stuart had rejected the proposed contribution. Of Lamb's imitations the first two are most akin to the original in spirit, but the whole performance is curiously happy and a perfect illustration of his fellowship with the Elizabethans. Our language probably contains no more successful impersonation of any author: for the time being Lamb's mind approximated to that of Burton, while reserving enough individuality to make a new thing as well as a very subtle and exact echo. The Burton extracts and the Letters of Sir John Falstaff, written four or five years earlier (in which Lamb certainly had a hand : see pp. 191 and 464), represent in prose the same devotion to the Elizabethans that John Woodvil represents in verse. Wit...« less