Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb is a great artist in showing humour and pathos in a single row. He had as keen a
perception of the funny side of life as he had of the tragic. The funny side and the sense of humour
never desert him. And we find a curious mingling of there two (humour and pathos) ingredients in his
works. Laughter is followed by tears of sympathy in many of his essays. Moreover, humour may be
described as an extreme sensitiveness to the true proportion of things and pathos that appeals to our
feelings of compassion and evokes sympathy. In some essays, we have Pathos and Humour alternating
each other, in others we have the two elements coexisting in the same passion that we see pathos and
humor as facts of the same thing.

In Lambs writing wit, humour and fun are interwoven and it is humour
which is most notable for its extreme sensitiveness to the true proportion of
things. Lamb often brings out the two sides of a fact and causes laughter at
our own previous misconceptions. Therefore it borders on the painful
realization. Thus his humour is very nearly allied to pathos. They are
different facts of the same gem.

In his essay Dream Children: A Reverie Lamb talks of personal sorrows

and joys. He gives expressions to his unfulfilled longings and desires. He
readily enters into the world of fantasy and pops up stories in front of his
dream children. He relates his childhood days, of Mrs. Field, his grandmother
and John Lamb, his brother. He describes how fun he had at the great house
and orchard in Norfolk. Of his relations he gives us full and living pictures
his brother John is James Elia of My Relations, but here is John L-, so
handsome and spirited youth, and a king. John was brave, handsome and
won admiration from everybody Charles grandmother Mrs. Field is the other
living picture. She was a good natured and religions minded lady of
respectable personality. Narrators sweet heart Alice Winterton is the other
shadowed reality. The Dream Children, Alice and John are mere bubbles of
fancy. Thus Lambs nostalgic memory transports us back to those good old
days of great grandmother Field. But even in those romantic nostalgia the
hard realities of life does not miss our eyes. Death, separation and suffering
inject us deep-rooted pathos in our heart. Whereas Mrs. Field died of cancer,
John Lamb died in early age. Ann Simmons has been a tale of unrequited
love story of Charles Lamb. Notably the children are millions of ages distant
of oblivion and Charles is not a married man but a bachelor having a reverie.

In his actual life Lamb courted Ann Simmons but could not marry her,
he wanted to have children but could not have any. Thus he strikes a very
pathetic note towards the end of his essay when he puts the following word
into the months of his imaginary children, we are not of Alice, nor of thee,
nor are we children at all We are nothing, less than nothing, dreams. We
are only what might have been. Alice is here no other that Ann Simmons
the girl Lamb wanted to marry, but failed to marry her. In fact, the subtitle
of the essay A Reverie which literally means a daydream or a fantasy
prepares us for the pathos of the return to reality although the essay begins
on a deceptively realistic note.

Although Dream Children begins on a merry note, the dark side of life soon
forces itself upon Lambs attention and the comic attitude gives way to
melancholy at the end of the essay. Throughout the essay Lamb presents his
children in such a way that we never guess that they are merely figments of
his imagination their movements, their reactions, their expressions are all
realistic. It is only at the end of the essay that we realize that the entire
episode with his children is a daydream. We are awakening by a painful
realization of the facts.

Lambs humour was no surface play, but the flower plucked from the
nettle of peril and awe. In fact, Lambs humor and pathos take different
shapes in different essays. Sometimes it is due to his own unfulfilled desires,
sometimes it is due to the ill-fortunes of his relatives and friends and on
some other occasions it is due to his frustration in love etc. If his Poor
Relations begin humorously of a male and female poor relation, he later
gives us a few pathetic examples of poor relations that had to suffer on
account of poverty.

Again in his The Praise of Chimney Sweepers Lamb sways between humour
and pathos while describing the chimney sweepers. Similarly the essay
Dream Children is a beautiful projection of Lambs feelings and desire to
have a wife and children of his own. It is humorous that in his dream he is
married and has two children of his own while he had a disheartening
frustration in love. Thus Lamb has painted both the lights and shades of life
in full circle. His is the criticism of life in pathos and humours.

The pastoral elegy

The pastoral elegy is a poem about both death and idyllic rural life. Often, the pastoral elegy features
shepherds. The genre is actually a subgroup of pastoral poetry, as the elegy takes the pastoral elements
and relates them to expressing the poets grief at a loss. This form of poetry has several key features,
including the invocation of the Muse, expression of the shepherds, or poets, grief, praise of the
deceased, a tirade against death, a detailing of the effects of this specific death upon nature, and
eventually, the poets simultaneous acceptance of deaths inevitability and hope for immortality..
'Adonais' is a pastoral elegy which Shelley wrote on the death of his contemporary poet John Keats. In a
pastoral elegy, the deceased is typically recast as a shepherd, no matter what his role in life, and
is surrounded by figures from classical mythology such as nymphs and fauns.
Shelley wrote this long poem as an elegy for Shelleys close friend and fellow poet John Keats,
who died in Rome of tuberculosis at the age of 26. The mood of the poem begins in dejection,
but ends in optimismhoping Keats spark of brilliance reverberates through the generations of
future poets and inspires revolutionary change throughout Europe. Adonis is the stand-in for
Keats, for he too died at a young age after being mauled by a wild boar. In Shelleys version, the
beast responsible for Keatss death is the literary critic, specifically one from Londons
Quarterly who gave a scathing review of Keats poem Endymion .Urania (also known as
Venus or Aphrodite), who is Adonis lover in the myth, is rewritten here as the young mans
mother ,possibly because Keats had no lover at the time of his death. In a sense, Keats is not
dead, for like other great poets, he lives within those who benefited from his life and poetry, and
he is alive because he is one with Nature. He is even Christlike, a divinity among the best of
poets. Even so, he died too soon. In death, he beacons the living to join him in eternity.

The overarching form of the poem is a pastoral elegy, meaning that a shepherd of sorts is
mourning the death of another. Literarily speaking, the function of pastoral poetry is reflexive in
that it uses older traditions to make complex emotions seem simpler.Using this myth as the
central theme in the elegy, Shelley is hoping, or suggesting, that Keats shall be as immortal as
the young Adonis. Beyond the obvious parallel that both were taken at a young age, Shelley uses
this poem to exhort readers to mourn him in his death, but hold onto him in memory and rejoice
in his virtual resurrection by reading his words.

Shelley blames Keats death on literary criticism that was recently published (see lines 150-53;
he was unaware that Keats was suffering from tuberculosis). He scorns the weakness and
cowardice of the critic compared with the poet, echoing his famous essay providing A Defense
of Poetry. The poet wonders why Adonis mother (Urania) was not able to do more to save
her beloved son, and he summons all spirits, living and dead, to join him in his mourning.
Shelley argues that Keats had great potential as a poet and is perhaps the loveliest and the last
great spirit of the Romantic period (an argument that might be true).

'Adonais' is written mainly in the classical pattern, though Shelley has adapted and added some of the
elements.

Adonais begins with the announcement of his death and the mourning that followed:

"I weep for Adonaishe is dead!"

Shelley is mourning the death of his good friend, the young English poet John Keats. The
persona has entered a state of dejection, calling everyone to mourn with him, and announcing
that Keats should be remembered forever.
.Stanza ten changes to dialogue: his mother, Urania, holds the corpse of her young poet son and
realizes that some dream has loosened from his brain. That is, something about his mind is not
dead although his body may be dead. The body is visited by a series of Greek Goddesses, who
prepare the corpse for the afterlife. Even nature is mourning the loss, where things like the ocean,
winds, and echoes are stopping to pay their respects. As the seasons come and go, the persona is
feeling no better.

By stanza twenty, the persona finally perceives a separation between the corpse and the spirit,
one going to fertilize new life in nature, the other persisting to inspire aesthetic beauty. This is
when Urania awakens from her own dejected sleep and takes flight across the land, taunting
death to meet her but realizing she is chained to time and cannot be with her beloved son, so
she is again left feeling hopeless and dejected. She acknowledges her sons defenselessness
against the herded wolves of mankind but then compares him to Apollo, suggesting he will
have more inspiration in death than he would have in life.

The poet then describes the death of Keats with scorn for those whom he thinks are responsible.
Keats visits his mother as a ghost whom she does not recognize. The persona calls for Keats to
be remembered for his work and not the age of his death, and Shelley takes an unusual religious
tone as he places Keats as a soul in the heavens, looking down upon earth. Shelley contends that
Keats, in death, is more alive than the common man will ever be, and he can now exist
peacefully, safe from the evils of men and their criticisms.

In stanza forty-one, the poem takes a major shift. The narrator begins to rejoice, becoming aware
that the young Adonis is alive (in spirit) and will live on forever. We see the Romantic notion
that he is now one with nature, and just as other young poets who have died (Shelley lists
them), their spirits all live on in the inspiration we draw from their work and short lives. Even so,
Keats is a head above the rest. Completely turning on his original position, the speaker now calls
upon anyone who mourns for Adonis as a wretch, arguing that his spirit is immortal, making
him as permanent as the great city of Rome. Shelley ends the poem wondering about his own
fate, when he will die, and if he will be mourned and remembered with such respect as he is
giving Keats.

While Urania is in mourning for the loss of her son, he visits her in spirit form (see lines 296-
311). This makes Keats Christlike (with ensanguined brow) and makes Urania a kind of
grieving Virgin Mary. After Urania does not recognize him, the speaker begins to realize that his
beloved Adonis is not dead (line 343). This is not just a Christian metaphor of resurrection; it
also employs a Platonic idea that all forms of the good emanate from the absolute good. As an
example of the good and the beautiful, Keats partakes in the eternal and therefore never dies (see
line 340). This is the realization that causes the speaker to rejoice and change his view from
sadness to optimism, and the speaker now begins to immortalize Keats in many different forms.
He is made one with Nature, and he bursts in beautyfrom trees to beasts to men to
Heaven.

Finally, the poet almost dares the reader, if he is still mourning, to join him in his newfound
vision of immortality in mutated form (lines 415-23). He alludes to the city of Rome as the
grave, the city, and the wilderness, where mourning is dull time. That is, if you do not quit
this mourning, you risk finding yourself in your own tomb (lines 455-59).

Ultimately, Shelley concedes the passing of his friend because he accepts the idea that Keats
light will continue to kindle the inspiration of the universe. So long as we never forget the
power of Adonis spiritual resurrection, he will forever remain. The poets breath, in the
light that shall guide Shelley throughout the rest of his life (Shelley died not long afterward, in
1822).

In the previous chapter we considered certain aspects of the attitude assumed by our Aryan
forefathers towards the great processes of Nature in their ordered sequence of Birth, Growth, and
Decay. We saw that while on one hand they, by prayer and supplication, threw themselves upon t

In Stanzas 2 through 35 a series of mourners lament the death of Adonais. The mother of
Adonais, Urania, is invoked to arise to conduct the ceremony at his bier. Mourners are implored
to "weep for Adonais.In Stanza 9 the "flocks" of the deceased appear, representing his dreams
and inspirations. the personifications of the thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and skills of the
deceased appear. Urania is awakened by the grief of Misery and the poet. The lament is invoked:

"He will awake no more, oh, never more!"

Urania pleads in vain for Adonais to awake and to arise. The poet weeps for John Keats who is
dead and who will be long mourned. He calls on Urania to mourn for Keats who died in Rome.
The poet summons the subject matter of Keats' poetry to weep for him. It comes and mourns at
his bidding. Nature, celebrated by Keats in his poetry, mourns him. Spring, which brings nature
to new life, cannot restore him . Urania rises, goes to Keats' death chamber and laments that she
cannot join him in death . Fellow poets mourn the death of Keats: Byron, Thomas Moore,
Shelley, and Leigh Hunt . The anonymous Quarterly Review critic is blamed for Keats' death and
chastised .

The poet urges the mourners not to weep any longer. Keats has become a portion of the eternal
and is free from the attacks of reviewers. He is not dead; it is the living who are dead. He has
gone where "envy and calumny and hate and pain" cannot reach him. He is "made one with
Nature." His being has been withdrawn into the one Spirit which is responsible for all beauty. In
eternity, other poets, among them Thomas Chatterton, Sir Philip Sidney, and the Roman poet
Lucan, come to greet him .Let anyone who still mourns Keats send his "spirit's light" beyond
space and be filled with hope, or let him go to Rome where Keats is buried. Let him "Seek
shelter in the shadow of the tomb. / What Adonais is, why fear we to become?" He is with the
unchanging Spirit, Intellectual Beauty, or Love in heaven. By comparison with the clear light of
eternity, life is a stain.

The poet tells himself he should now depart from life, which has nothing left to offer. The One,
which is Light, Beauty, Benediction, and Love, now shines on him. He feels carried "darkly,
fearfully, afar" to where the soul of Keats glows like a star, in the dwelling where those who will
live forever are.
As a pastoral elegy, adonais closely follows the classical machinery of pastoral. It may
be divided into two parts. The first running up to the 38 th stanza, is cast in the pastoral
mould ; there is the traditional of invocation to weep, sympathetic mourning in nature,
procession of mourner consisting of the flocks of dead Shepherd, and his follow
shepherd , personal digression and invective. In the second part (17 stanza), Shelley
strikes a modern note. There is change in mood, and final consolation.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was attracted by Keats because he founded in him a poet of
promise, and because his sympathy was aroused of by the story, though wrong, that he
had been killed by the brutal attack on his Endymion in the Quarterly Review. That is
why we are not told so much of Keats as about the critcs who are supposed to have
caused the death of a great poet.

Shelley chose the Pastoral convention for his elegy, for he had such noble examples as his precedents as
Miltons Lycidas and Spensers Astrephel. He used the classical form , so that he may connect his
theme with the great poetic tradition of the world, and so that may represent Keats as one of a long
series of poets.

The greatness Adonais are due primarily to that part of it, which steers clear of
Pastoral convention. It is so because in the first part Shelleys fancy was chained down
by the shackles of convention and in the second part he, Soars aloft mighty wings.

The mood gradually shifts form grief to comfort as the poem approaches its end. Shelley makes Keats
spirit one with the Eternal; after viewing the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, Shelley presents his
philosophic concept related to Platos doctrine of the ideal: Life, like a dome of many colored glass.
Shelley claims, with reference to his Neo-Platonic ideals, that Keats death in glory is far better than the
inglorious and shameful life of his murderer, the savage critic. He also feels that he is being called by the
spirit of John Keats in the immortal world.

Shelley adheres to all the traditional formal pastoral constraints in producing his elegy. In
keeping with the tradition, he does not identify the characters by their actual names, but by their
shepherd names or by characteristics typical of natural such as Keats poetic efforts, as his flocks.

The procession of mourners is appropriately decorated in flowers and other vestiges (footnote) of
spring; even in the depths of his grief, the poet never fails to remind the reader that it is in fact the
spring time of the year.
 The elegiac pastoral is compelled to render the experience positive by the end of the poem. the
pastorals very idealizations require one to imagine a transcendent reality as the true locus of all human
hopes and aspirations.

In its spirited exultation that light shall triumph over darkness, that the true shall endure the violence
done them through hatred and spite, resurrections that can take the breath away, Adonais reaffirms life
in the very act of lamenting an individuals death.

Conclution:

Indeed, it may seem strange that Shelley should choose to lament Keats death in such an artificial and
constrained format as the pastoral requires. If his feelings of grief were genuine, one might ask, why not
have expressed them in plain, or at least far less contrived terms. The pastoral allows the poet to
exercise, nevertheless, the option of poeticizing the event. From that perspective, Shelley, who was
quite capable of using a wide range of poetic styles and expression, was first of all doing his fellow poet
a high honor by eulogizing him in a structure unique to poetic discourse.Shelley never claimed it to
be not an expression of personal sorrow rather It is a lament on the loss of a valuable
life as Lycidas.
Thus the following point proves that Adonais is a Pastoral elegy. Not only that, the in-
depth use of the Spenserian stanza contributes much to the artistic perfection of this
elegy.