Very Rare. ESTC records copies at Cambridge, Bodley and BL (lacking the plate) in the UK and a copy at the Turnbull Library in New Zealand. No copies recorded in North America. No copies recorded on Rare Book Hub.
The author’s own copy of an eccentric collection of prose and verse by the “perverted & mischievous” friend of Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth and Lamb, Charles Valentine Le Grice. Written while the author was still a student at Cambridge and seemingly intended as a Christmas gift.
This highly unusual little book was written by Charles Valentine Le Grice (1773-1858) while he was studying at Trinity College Cambridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Le Grice’s contemporary and friend at Cambridge) wrote to Robert Southey in December 1794 describing this book:
“Le Grice has jumbled together all the quaint stupidity he ever wrote, amounting to about thirty pages, and published it in a book about the size and dimensions of children’s twopenny books. The dedication is pretty. He calls the publication ‘Tineum;’ for what reason or with what meaning would give Madame Sphinx a complete victory over Oedipus” (Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Vol 1) 1895 p.111)
Le Grice had known both Coleridge and Lamb while they were both schoolboys at Christ’s Hospital (Lamb refers to the “wit-combats” between Coleridge and Le Grice in Essays of Elia) and the relationship with Coleridge continued when they both went up to Cambridge (Coleridge was at Jesus). Le Grice was also later friends with Wordsworth and Southey and wrote a number of poems recalling his literary friends.
In a short “Card” before the main text, addressed to a “Gentle Bookseller’s window-persuer”, Le Grice writes, “Do not dip into the first part of this bookling, skim the cream of it, and walk out of the shop without buying it: this will be cheating the Bookseller, cheating the Author, and indeed cheating yourself; for the rules, which it contains, require accurate attention, and ought to be deeply imprinted in the memory. Therefore buy it; - and **may the festal fires of the ensuing Christmas roar approbation of your newly acquired skill”** (A2r)
The book continues with a dedication to a mystery gentleman (his wife “Mrs H” is referred to) before continuing with “The Art of Stirring a Fire” a long (student wit) mock essay on the intricacies of stirring a fire in a grate which is even accompanied by a woodcut diagram showing the correct positioning of the poker. This is followed by “The Icead” a very short mock epic poem set in the “stern frost” of the Antarctic. There are also some shorter verses at the end including “Emma to Edward” and the schoolboy yearnings of, “On seeing Mrs Siddons the first time, and then in the Character of Isabella” (p.45)
In this copy leaves C2-C6 containing Grice’s “Imitation of Horace” and some epitaphs have been cancelled and replaced with three (possibly unique) folded octavo sheets printed (later c.1811-1823) by Vigurs of Penzance, Cornwall. These leaves reproduce the “Imitation of Horace” as it was printed in the original but with three additional extra lines and some supplementary notes.
When Le Grice published his Cambridge prize declaration the year after the publication of this book he wrote in his preface: “my only inducement to hazard the publication of these Exercises was the following advice of a person high in station and eminent of his classical taste: ‘I think you should publish them, as they might redeem that credit, which you have lost among your Friends by your late little foolish book’”
“Le Grice’s friends and associates sometimes judged him severely. Coleridge in 1794, Lamb in 1796, Wordsworth and Robert Southey in 1807, all expressed contempt for Le Grice in letters to third parties. The remarks of Coleridge and Lamb are petty; those of Wordsworth and Southey contain more serious charges, that Le Grice, writing for the Critical Review, was giving vent to hatred of Coleridge by venomously attacking Coleridge and his friends. According to Wordsworth, Le Grice was a ‘most malignant Spirit’; to Southey, Le Grice’s mind was ‘perverted & mischievous’. But Wellens [in his essay “Wordsworth’s ‘most malignant Spirit’ …’, Elizabethan and modern studies: presented to professor Willem Schrickx on the occasion of his retirement, ed. J. P. Vander Motten (Ghent, 1985), 309–15], who finds no evidence that Le Grice hated Coleridge, argues that Wordsworth and Southey misunderstood Le Grice whose severe criticisms were rather an attempt to uphold traditional neoclassical standards against the new Romantic poetry. In later life, at any rate, Le Grice met on cordial terms with all four: with Coleridge in 1833 at Highgate and Trinity; with Lamb, also in 1833, in Edmonton; with Southey at Trereife in 1836; and with Wordsworth at Rydal Mount in 1841 (ODNB).
Provenance: Untidy note on the title-page reads “The author’s own copy ?bound” and the poem on Mrs Siddons has a manuscript note “Written at School”. Modern book label of J. O. Edwards.
