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CHARLES LAMB 
 
tJ^ this Large Paper Edition of the 
 Memoirs of Charles LamA One 
 Hundred and Fifty Copies are printed. One 
 Hundred and Twenty-five for England and 
 Twenty five for America. fUj jTf 
 
 \ 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013495217 
 
MEMOI RS 
 
 OF 
 
 HARLES WAMB 
 
 SIR THOMAS.NOON TALFOURD, D.C.L. 
 
 ONE OF HIS EXECUTORS 
 
 EDITEB. AND ANNOTATED 
 
 BY 
 
 PERCY FITZGERALD, M.A., F.S.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' CHARLES LAMB, HIS HOMES, HIS HAUNTS, AND HIS BOOKS,' ETC. 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS 
 
 W. W. GIBBINGS 
 
 18 BURY STREET, LONDON, W.C. 
 iSgs 
 
 
j\ L>i(^sS^ 
 
LIST OF PLATES 
 
 Lamb. From an Engraving by Henry Meyer, Frontispiece 
 
 „ Scratched on Copper, by Brook Pulham, face page i 
 ,, Engraved by EDWARD Smith, after 
 
 Wm. Hazlitt, 
 
 face page 8 
 
 Coleridge. " From an Engraving by W. Say, after North- 
 cote, face page 34 
 
 Lamb. From a Water-Colour by G. F. Joseph, in the 
 
 British Museum, .... face page 76 - 
 
 MuNDEN (in 'Lock and Key'). From an Engraving by 
 
 Thos. Lupton, after G. Clint, . face page 130 
 
 Godwin. From an Engraving by G. Dawe, after North- 
 cote, face page 174 
 
 Wordsworth. From an Engraving by Thos. Lupton, 
 
 after B. R. Haydon, . . . face page 248 
 
 Lamb. From the Drawing by Maclise in the Dyce and 
 
 Forster Collection, .... face page 26^ 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Lamb is a writer whose merit has been but tardily recog- 
 nised. Talfourd's admirable and dramatic "Life" was 
 intended rather as an account of the sad story of the 
 struggles of an interesting literary man. It was issued in 
 1838, the " Final Memorials " in 1843; and though much 
 interest was excited by their publication, it cannot be said 
 that there was any very hearty appreciation of Lamb's rare 
 gifts as a writer until many years later. The Americans 
 may be said to have taken the lead in this cordial 
 recognition. Not content with relishing his "official" 
 writings, they set the example of diligently collecting all 
 his scattered essays, and even his most careless scraps : 
 and, though these were of unequal merit, they were much 
 enjoyed, and perhaps of the same quality as his best 
 work. But during the last thirty years, this engaging 
 writer has enjoyed the fullest and increasing recognition 
 and popularity. Editions of all kinds have multiplied. 
 His writings have been edited, and collected again and 
 again; there have been dainty little editions of his 
 " Essays," and even what is called an " edition of luxury,' 
 which seems to suit their tranquil ruminative character 
 
VIU INTRODUCTION. 
 
 about as little as its modern dress did the reprinted old 
 Burton folio, which Lamb himself described as "heart- 
 less." This supplying illustrations of localities, buildings, 
 &c., imparted somewhat too concrete and literal a tone. 
 
 I feel pleasure in thinking that in a small way I con- 
 tributed to this revival, having nearly thirty years ago 
 issued a volume entitled " Charles Lamb, his Homes, his 
 Haunts, and his Books," which was very cordially received. 
 I may also claim to have made the first full and regular 
 collection of Lamb's letters, and of his other writings, to 
 which Talfourd's memoir was prefixed, and which was 
 issued in six volumes about the year 1876. It was 
 stereotyped, and there have been several issues during the 
 past years. In the same year, Mr Charles Kent prepared 
 for Messrs. Routledge a compact and convenient edition 
 of Lamb's writings, excluding the letters, prefixing to each 
 essay or paper a short account of its history, an ex- 
 planation of the allusions, initials, &c. This edition was 
 valuable for at least two interesting contributions to 
 Lamb's history, for an extract from the Temple Register 
 of the births of the Lamb family, and the true story 
 
 of Barbara S , supplied to the editor in person by 
 
 the veteran actress Miss Kelly, herself the heroine. This 
 little narrative must have given genuine pleasure to all 
 lovers of Elia. 
 
 At this moment, I do not know of any one now alive 
 who had known or spoken to Charles Lamb, though it 
 is not quite sixty years since his death. It is a pleasant 
 thing, however, to have talked of him with his friends, 
 to have pressed hands that have shaken his. The late 
 Mr John Forster, and Mr Procter, have often spoken 
 to me of their departed friend, while Mr Allsop furnished 
 me with letters which he had received from him. The 
 
INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 Cowden Clarkes are dead. Mr Forster attended Lamb's 
 funeral, and I have seen the tears fill his eyes, coming 
 from his honest, trusty heart, as he turned over the old 
 letters, and faltered out, " Poor Charles Lamb ! " Mr 
 Procter, whom I well knew, at one time corresponded 
 with me as to his account of Lamb which he was about 
 publishing. He and his friends pressed me much to 
 postpone my little book on the subject, but it was too 
 late. 
 
 Since those days, what may be called the Lamb litera- 
 ture, in the shape of criticisms, collections, lives, &c., has 
 increased to large proportions. So diligent has been the 
 exertion of explorers, that some pieces, thought to have 
 disappeared, or to be apocryphal, have been recovered. 
 Much ingenuity and labour have been expended in this 
 interesting pursuit ; one long lost copy of the " Poetry for 
 Children " was actually unearthed in some distant colony 
 to great rejoicing. A few lines, quoted by Elia at the 
 end of one of his essays, described a boy snatching "a 
 fearful joy " from reading at a stall. This he quoted as 
 the work of a poet of the day, but a critic sagaciously 
 suggested that it was one of his favourite artful devices 
 for veiling the authorship. It was in fact his sister's 
 composition. Scattered little poems were found in a 
 collection issued by the schoolmaster Mylius, and the 
 indefatigable Mr Richard Heme Shepherd, who has 
 written a useful bibliography of Lamb, contrived to bring 
 together these fragments. The poetry for children, thus 
 recovered, was reprinted for the curious amateur. During 
 these latter years, however, yet another, and even, I think, 
 a third copy, has turned up, which has been sold at 
 auction for an enormous price. 
 Quite as rare a production of Lamb's, almost introuvabk. 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 was the " Devil's Walk," of which I have seen only a 
 single copy, in the hands of Mr Payne, the translator of 
 the Arabian Nights. By him it was reprinted in the 
 Moxon collection of Lamb's writings. A casual allusion, 
 in a letter or diary of Crabb Robinson's, set the collectors 
 and explorers on a fresh literary chase. Every effort was 
 made to recover " Prince Dorus," a fairy tale, and in due 
 time these labours were rewarded, the little volume re- 
 covered and reprinted. Another fairy tale in verse, called 
 " Beauty and the Beast," was issued by Godwin at his 
 Juvenile Library. This, too, has been reprinted in a de 
 luxe fashion, but no one who was familiar with Lamb's 
 style could have any hesitation in rejecting it. It seems 
 astonishing that Mr Andrew Lang should have accepted 
 the office of introducing it to the public. 
 
 The latest, and admittedly the best, of Lamb's editors, 
 is certainly Canon Ainger, who, after furnishing a short 
 life of the essayist to the series of English Men of Letters, 
 was led by his studies to prepare a selection of his works, 
 illustrated by notes and criticisms. No one could be better 
 or so well fitted for the task, from a certain elegance 
 of style, as well as from his hearty sympathy with his 
 author, judiciously restrained, and never lapsing into 
 hysterics. 
 
 And now arises an interesting question, namely. What 
 should be the limits of selection, when the works and 
 writings of great authors are collected after their death? 
 Should everything they wrote be gathered up and reprinted, 
 or only such productions as appear to the particular editor 
 to be worthy of preservation ? Canon Ainger, in his 
 edition, seems to have been guided by a rule which he 
 thinks must be conclusive, namely, to include such pieces 
 only as the author himself had selected for preservation. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 The fallacy here is the assumption that the author has 
 discarded the rest of what he had written. But what 
 ground is there for presuming that he would not have 
 included these very pieces in some new and fresh 
 miscellany? Lamb was likely enough to have merely 
 selected what seemed to him the best for his immediate 
 purpose. Then arises a more difficult question still. 
 Should every scrap or fragment of every kind be collected, 
 even such as the writer obviously produced for some 
 ephemeral purpose, and which, to use Johnson's ex- 
 pression, had not "vitality enough to preserve it from 
 putrefaction " ? 
 
 Of course, in the case of writers of ordinary pattern, it 
 would be undesirable to preserve such trivialities ; even 
 in the instance of Thackeray and Dickens, there was 
 much that was written for a mere temporary purpose, all 
 the interest in which evaporated when the occasion passed 
 by. Little, therefore, would be gained by retaining such 
 pieces. It is different with a writer like Lamb, whose 
 style is quite unique, and where, indeed, the species is the 
 genus. Every " scrap,'' as it seems to me, written by him 
 has special interest, quaintness, and piquancy, which we 
 would be unwilling to let die. 
 
 Not less remarkable are the vast stores of letters that 
 have come to light. When Talfourd issued his volumes, 
 it was considered that a more than usually rich and 
 abundant collection had been furnished. But since that 
 time, an enormous number of letters have been discovered, 
 the most important being those printed by Mr Kegan 
 Paul in his life of Godwin, and the letters given in the 
 Cowden Clarke recollections. At autograph sales, letters 
 are constantly found. All these are of excellent quality — 
 indeed, it may be said that Lamb never wrote a letter 
 
Xll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 that was not characteristic, or that was not in his best 
 manner; or that did not contain something quaint or 
 curious. The collection in my own edition comprised 
 some four hundred and thirty-seven letters and notelets. 
 
 One of the most agreeable critical exercises, is the 
 inquiry. In what consists the charm and attraction of 
 Lamb's style? A superficial view might be that he 
 modelled himself on his old Elizabethan favourites, and 
 reproduced their common forms and expressions. The 
 truth is, that from constant study and perusal, he had 
 become so saturated with the spirit and thoughts of these 
 ancients, that he could only express himself in their 
 manner and phrases. Modern language and modern 
 forms, he found, did not serve him ; these failed to 
 express what he desired. Certain antique but significant 
 words he introduced with the happiest effect, and the 
 reader finds him recurring to these with pleasure. Such, 
 for instance, were " I do agnize," and more effective still, 
 the happy term " arides me," for amuses or " tickles." 
 These linger in the memory. There is no masquerading 
 in this, of which it must be said, we have a suspicion in 
 Mr Carlyle's tortuous Germanisms, and which are now 
 found rather tedious. As a judicious critic has pointed 
 out; "for genuine Anglicism, which, among all other 
 essentials of excellence in our native literature, is now 
 recovering itself from the leaden mace of the Rambler, he 
 is quite a study, his prose is absolutely perfect, it conveys 
 thought without smothering it in blankets." And how 
 true, how forcible is this ! for with him, style is but the 
 expression of his thought, or the thought itself. 
 
 " But besides these quotations avowedly introduced as 
 such, his style is full of quotations, held, if the expression 
 may be allowed, in solution. One feels, rather than 
 
INTRODUCTION. XIU 
 
 recognises, that a phrase, particular or idiom, term, or 
 expression, is an echo of something that one has heard or 
 read before. This style becomes aromatic, like the per- 
 fume of faded rose-leaves in a china jar. 
 
 " But although Lamb's style is essentially the product 
 of the authors he has made his own, nothing would be 
 more untrue than to say of him that he read nature or 
 anything else ' through the spectacles of books.' It is 
 to his own keen insight and intense sympathy that we 
 owe everything that is of value in his writing. His 
 observation was his own, though when he gave it back 
 into the world, the manner of it was the creation of 
 his reading. 
 
 " There are two features, I think, of Lamb's method 
 which distinguish him from so many humorists of to-day. 
 He takes homely and familiar things, and makes them 
 fresh and beautiful. The fashion of to-day is to vulgarise 
 great and noble things in burlesque associations. The 
 humorist's contrast is obtained in both cases." 
 
 Nothing is more difficult than to analyse any particular 
 form of humour, and distinguish and contrast the methods 
 of different writers. Addison, Fielding, Lamb, Dickens, 
 Thackeray, all had a fashion or secret of their own, just 
 as every painter sees the same object from a point of view 
 of his own. In the case of Lamb, Canon Ainger helps 
 us with this acute distinction. " What is the name," he 
 asks, " for this antithesis of irony, this hiding of a sweet 
 aftertaste in a bitter word ? Whatever its name, it is a 
 dominant flavour in Lamb's humour. 
 
 " But Lamb's wit, like his English, is Protean, and just 
 as we think we have fixed its character and source, it 
 escapes into new forms. In simile, he finds opportunity 
 for it that is all his own. What wit, or shall wecall it 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 humour, is there in the gravity of his detail, by which he 
 touches springs of delight, unreached even by Defoe or 
 Swift, as in ' Roast Pig,' where he says that the father 
 and son were summoned to take their trial at Pekin, 
 ' then an inconsiderable assize town.' Or more delight- 
 ful still, later on, 'Thus this custom of firing houses 
 continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a 
 sage arose like Mr Locke.' Or yet, once more, how 
 exquisitely unforeseen and how rich in tenderness is the 
 following remark as to the domestic happiness of himself 
 and his cousin Bridget, in ' Mackery End ' : ' We are 
 generally in harmony, with occasional bickerings, as it 
 should be among near relations.' " 
 
 Perhaps the most delicately humorous and most original 
 touches in Elia are to be found in his essay on the Burial 
 Societies. After playing with his grim subject in his own 
 style, though it must be confessed in places he becomes 
 too elaborate and mechanical, he arrives at the possible 
 hypothesis of the subscriber dying before being entitled to 
 the benefit of his subscription. As a little exercise, the 
 reader might here ask himself, what humorous com- 
 plexion could he put on this, or what quip or turn could 
 it suggest? He will then see how exquisitely droll is 
 Elia's reflection. " One can hardly imagine," he says, " a 
 more distressing case than that of a poor fellow lingering 
 on in a consumption, till the period of his freedom is 
 almost in sight, and then finding himself going with 
 velocity, which makes it doubtful whether he shall be 
 entitled to his funeral honours, his quota to which he 
 nevertheless squeezes out, to the diminution of the 
 comforts which sickness demands." Here we feel that 
 this comic notion of a sick person's lamenting the loss 
 of a profit which can only be secured by his death, is 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 not altogether far-fetched. Another of his speculations, on 
 "The Melancholy of Tailors," offers the same quaint, nay, 
 startling originality, and a view which would never have 
 occurred to us. How rich, for instance, is his theory, so 
 timorously suggested, as to the cause of this melancholy ! 
 " May it not be," he asks, " that the custom of wearing 
 apparel, being derived by us from the Fall, and one of 
 the most mortifying results of that unhappy event, a 
 certain seriousness (to say no more of it) may, in the 
 order of things, have been intended to be impressed 
 upon the minds of this race of men, to keep up the 
 memory of the first institution of clothes ? " 
 
 Canon Ainger explains another " speciality " of Lamb, 
 his curious perversion and disguising of real incidents, 
 names, &c. " There was a certain waywardness or love 
 of practical joking in Charles Lamb, that led him often 
 to treat matters of fact with deliberate falsification. His 
 essays are full of autobiography, but often purposely 
 disguised, whether to amuse those who were in the secret, 
 or to perplex those who were not, it is impossible to say. 
 
 " But apart from changes of names and incidents in 
 his essays, there is in Lamb's humour the constant 
 element of a mischievous love of hoaxing. He loves 
 nothing so much as to mingle romance with reality, so 
 that it shall be difficult for the reader to disentangle them. 
 And besides these deliberate mystifications, there is found 
 also in Lamb a certain natural incapacity for being 
 accurate, an inveterate turn for the opposite." 
 
 I doubt, however, if Lamb had any such commonplace 
 or obvious purpose as this. There was a more far-reach- 
 ing finesse and delicacy involved, than a mere spirit of 
 " hoaxing." His system was akin to that of the skilled 
 novelist, who accepts a real character or incident for 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 treatment, but will make it generic, and discard what is 
 not characteristic, and merely an accident, as in his 
 beautiful story of "Barbara S." I am inclined to think 
 too that he found his fancy kindled or stimulated by 
 adopting some living type as a model, and which he 
 could vary or develop. 
 
 One of the most favourite tributes to a deceased writer 
 nowadays, is the tracing of him from place to place, with 
 minute descriptions of the various houses in which he 
 lived, a description often extended to the surrounding 
 country. Pictures of the various localities and buildings 
 are supplied, and the whole is usually entitled, " In the 
 Footsteps of So-and-So." There is something attractive 
 in this system, though the haunts and homes are daily 
 passing away; and when the reader, inspired with a new- 
 born enthusiasm, comes to inspect the building, he too 
 often finds that it has been pulled down and cleared. 
 
 The Society of Arts, which places recording tablets on 
 such houses, has perhaps indirectly contributed to their 
 preservation, for the proprietors, from a sense of pride in 
 having their walls thus garnished, are inclined to exert 
 themselves to take care of it. Recently an admiring 
 American has published a work of this kind, " In the 
 Footsteps of Charles Lamb." But I confess this system 
 appears to be too " pedagogic,'' and even earthy, and no 
 fresh pleasure is conveyed by these researches. 
 
 To write a life of Lamb might fittingly engage the 
 most finished pen of our times, and would require the 
 most delicate touch and the finest critical appreciation. 
 Yet even were such forthcoming, the fragmentary Life 
 written by Sir Thomas Talfourd would still hold its place 
 as the work of one who had been Lamb's friend and 
 companion, and was himself no indifferent writer. Though 
 
INTRODUCTION. XVII 
 
 in parts a little inflated, its polished style will always 
 please readers of taste ; while the various painful episodes 
 of Lamb's life are treated in excellent taste, and even with 
 art. The biographical realism, as it is called, of our time, 
 — a realism which so largely affects painting and poetry, — 
 seems to require as great a collection as possible of in- 
 teresting and detailed facts. Treated on such principles, 
 the Life of Charles Lamb would leave a painful impression. 
 Talfourd, his contemporary, was eminently suited for the 
 task. In his hands all vulgar associations disappear. 
 His style, too, reflects the literary tone of his day ; and 
 there is introduced a strain of allusion to literary fashions 
 and manners quite in keeping with the subject of his 
 story. His carefully studied periods seem to harmonize 
 with Lamb's almost fastidious style. 
 
 The Memoir was issued in two portions — the first, in 
 1837, under the title of " Letters of Charles Lamb, with 
 a Sketch of his Life " ; the second, after an interval of 
 eleven years, in 1848, under that of "Final Memorials of 
 Charles Lamb; consisting chiefly of his Letters not before 
 published, with Sketches of some of his Companions.'^ 
 The reason for this delay, it is explained in the Preface, 
 was the delicate motive of not entering on the tragic side 
 of Lamb's life, so long as his sister was alive. Her death 
 removed the difficulty, while the scruples of persons who 
 objected to having the letters in their possession published 
 had given way. The author then explained that he in- 
 tended his second portion to be, not so much a sequel, 
 as a supplement, and that he was careful not to go over 
 any ground that had been covered in the first part. He 
 added that he had wished to combine both parts into one 
 whole, but that he had forborne " out of consideration 
 for the purchasers of the early volumes." It will also be 
 
XVIU INTRODUCTION. 
 
 gathered from his second Preface that he was not at all 
 content with the form of his work. Bearing this in mind, 
 it did not seem improper to do what Talfourd himself 
 was inclined to have done, viz. combine the two portions 
 of the Memoir in one, dismissing only such short para- 
 graphs as had been introduced to form a framework or 
 introduction for the letters. That these were of no value 
 or interest will be seen at once ; the following being fairly 
 selected specimens : — " The next is a short but charac- 
 teristic letter to Manning ; " " Here is a specimen of 
 Lamb's criticism on Southey's poetical communications;" 
 or such a passage as " Lamb then gives an account of his 
 visit to an exhibition of snakes ; of a frightful vividness 
 and interesting, as all details of these fascinating reptiles 
 are, whom we at once loathe and long to look upon, as 
 the old enemies and tempters of our race." 
 
 Having thus retained the old Memoir, it was easy to 
 see that in many points of view it was incomplete, and 
 passed over much that was important. These defects I 
 have tried to supply by an abundance of notes, in which 
 has been collected, with at least diligence, everything 
 important relating to Lamb. A great deal of what I have 
 added is new, and all, I hope, will be found interesting. 
 

 'i " 
 
 ScratcKed on Copper from Life in 1 82,5 'by his frieDtl Brook -Pulhatn. 
 
CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 [1775 to •796-] 
 Lamb's Parentage, School-days, and Youth. 
 
 Charles Lamb was born on loth February,^ i775» in 
 Crown Office Row," in the Inner Temple, where he 
 spent the first seven years of his life. His parents 
 were in a humble station, but they were endued with 
 sentiments and with manners which might well be- 
 come the gentlest blood ; and fortune, which had 
 denied them wealth, enabled them to bestow on their 
 children some of the happiest intellectual advantages 
 which wealth ever confers. His father, Mr. John 
 Lamb, who came up a little boy from Lincoln, for- 
 tunately both for himself and his master, entered into 
 the service of Mr. Salt, one of the benchers of the 
 Inner Temple, a widower, who, growing old within 
 
 1 In his first edidon, Talfourd gives the date as February 1 8th. — F. 
 
 2 " On die ground floor, looking into Inner Temple Lane, ' — 
 Barron Field, Annual Obituary. — F. 
 
 B 
 
2 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 its precincts, was enabled to appreciate and to reward 
 his devotedness and intelligence ; and to whom he 
 became, in the language of his son, " his clerk, his 
 good servant, his dresser, his friend, his flapper, his 
 guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer."^ Although 
 contented with his lot, and discharging its duties 
 with the most patient assiduity, he was not without 
 literary ambition ; and having written some occasional 
 verses to grace the festivities of a benefit society of 
 which he was a member, was encouraged by his bro- 
 ther members to publish, in a thin quarto, " Poetical 
 Pieces on several occasions." This volume contains 
 a lively picture of the life of a lady's footman of the 
 last century; the " History of Joseph," told in well- 
 measured heroic couplets ; and a pleasant piece, after 
 the manner of " Gay's Fables," entitled the " Spar- 
 row's Wedding," which was the author's favourite, 
 and which, when he fell into the dotage of age, he 
 delighted to hear Charles read." His wife was a wo- 
 man of appearance so matronly and commanding, 
 
 1 Lamb has given characters of his father (under the name of Lovel), 
 and of Mr. Salt, in one of the most exquisite of all the Essays of Elia — 
 " The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." 
 
 ' The following little poem, entitled " A Letter from a Child to its 
 Grandmother," written by Mr. John Lamb for his eldest son, though 
 possessing no merit beyond simplicity of expression, may show the 
 manner in which he endeavoured to discharge his parental duties : — 
 
 " Dear Grandam, 
 
 Pray to God to bless 
 Your grandson dear, with happiness ; 
 That, as I do advance each year, 
 I may be taught my God to fear ; 
 My little frame from passion free. 
 To man's estate trora intancy ; 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 3 
 
 that, according to the recollection of one of Lamh's 
 dearest schoolmates, " she might be taken for a sister 
 of Mrs. Siddons." This excellent couple were blessed 
 with three children, John, Mary,' and Charles; John 
 being twelve and Mary ten years older than Charles. 
 Jolp, who is vividly described in the essay of Elia 
 entitled " My Relations," under the name of James 
 Elia, rose to fill a lucrative office in the South Sea 
 House, and died a few years ago, having to the last 
 fulfilled the affectionate injunction of Charles, " to 
 keep the elder brother up in state." Mary (the 
 Bridget of the same essay) still survives,'' to mourn 
 the severance of a life-long association, as free from 
 every alloy of selfishness, as remarkable for moral 
 beauty, as this world ever witnessed in brother and 
 sister. 
 
 On the gth of October, 1782, when Charles Lamb 
 had attained the age of seven, he was presented to 
 the school of Christ's Hospital," by Timothy Yeates, 
 
 From vice, that turns a youth aside. 
 And to have wisdom for my guide ; 
 That I may neither lie nor swear. 
 But in the path of virtue steer; 
 My actions generous, firm, and just, 
 Be always faithful to my trust ; 
 And thee the Lord will ever bless. 
 Your grandson dear, 
 
 John L , the 1*S8." 
 
 1 Mary-Anne was, properly speaking, her name.— F. 
 
 ' Written in 1837.— F. 
 
 ' Mr. Salt's interest was enough to secure this valuable privilege, 
 though, as Talfourd says, he was presented by Timothy Yeates, one ol 
 the Governors of tlie Hospital. Lamb himself says the " Governor" who 
 presented him resided "under the paternal roof," clearly pointing to 
 Mr. Salt. The latter probably exerted his interest with Yeates. He 
 
 B 2 
 
4 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 Governor, as " the son of John Lamb, scrivener, and 
 Elizabeth his wife," and remained a scholar of that 
 noble establishment till he had entered into his fif- 
 teenth year.'' 
 
 was admitted in a committee, on July lyth, 1782, " by a bond entered 
 into by Samuel Salt, of the Inner Temple, London, Esquire." A pe- 
 tition had been sent in from his fattier, who set forth " that he had a 
 wife and three children, and he finds it difficult to maintain and edu- 
 cate his family without some assistance." The admission was then 
 merely formal, and he was not " clothed" as a Blue-coat boy until the 
 9th of October in the same year. I have been &voured with these 
 extracts from the books of the Hospital, through the courtesy of the 
 present Treasurer. — F, 
 
 1 He was a sensitive child with a delicate temper, which seems to 
 have been misunderstood or neglected by his parents. The eldest was 
 the mother's favourite. "They loved pleasure, and parties, and visit- 
 ing," he says in " Maria Howe ;" " but as they found the tenor of my 
 mind to be qnite opposite, they gave themselves little trouble about 
 me, but on such occasions left me to my choice, which was much 
 oftener to stay at home, and indulge myself in my solitude, than join 
 in their rambling visits." He found a friend in his old aunt, who was 
 domiciled with them, and whom Mary long after thus recalled : — 
 " My father had a sister lived with us — of course, lived with my Mo- 
 ther, her sister-in-law ; they were, in their different ways, the best 
 creatures in the world — but they set out wrong at first. They made 
 each other miserable for full twenty years of their lives — my Mother 
 was a perfect gentlewoman, my Aunty as unlike a gentlewoman as you 
 can possibly imagine a good old woman to be ; so that my dear Mo- 
 ther (who, though you do not know it, is always in my poor head and 
 heart) used to distress and weary her with her incessant & unceasing 
 attention and politeness, to gain her affection. The old woman could 
 not return this in kind, and did not know what to make of it — thought 
 it all deceit, and used to hate my Mother with a bitter hatred ; which, 
 of course, was soon returned with interest. A little frankness, and 
 looking into each other's characters at first, would have spared all this, 
 and they would have lived, as they died, fond of each other for the last 
 few years of their lives. When we grew up and harmonized them a 
 little, they sincerely loved each other." — Letter of Mary Lamb, given 
 in Mr. Hazlitt's " Charles and Mary Lamb." This aunt clung to the 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 5 
 
 Small of stature, delicate of frame, and constitu- 
 tionally nervous and timid, he would seem unfitted to 
 encounter the discipline of a school formed to restrain 
 some hundreds of lads in the heart of the metropolis, 
 or to fight his way among them. But the sweetness 
 of his disposition won him favour from all ; and 
 although the antique peculiarities of the school tinged 
 his opening imagination, they did not sadden his 
 
 child, saying, with some ungraciousness towards her hosts, it was the 
 only thing in the world she loved. Her affection for the boy was 
 constant — displayed when he was a wretched little sufferer from small- 
 pox, when only five years old, at school, and later again under a 
 terrible trial. But she unconsciously ministered to a diseased and 
 morbid aiTection of his nature ; and when actual derangement of mind 
 came long after, it was easy to tell "when its first seeds were sown." 
 " I was let grow up wild," he says, " like an ill-weed ; and thrived 
 accordingly. One night, that I had been terrified in my sleep with my 
 imaginations, T got out of bed, and crept softly to the adjoining room. 
 My room was next to where my aunt usually sat when she was alone. 
 Into her room I crept for relief from my fears. The old lady was not 
 yet retired to rest, but she was sitting with her eyes half open, half 
 closed ; her spectacles tottering upon her nose ; her head nodding over 
 her Prayer-book ; her lips mumbling the words as she read them, or 
 half read them, in her dozing posture ; her grotesque appearance, hei 
 old-fashioned dress, resembling what 1 had seen in that fatal picture in 
 Stackhouse. All this, witli the time of night, joined to produce a 
 wicked fancy in me, that the form which I beheld was not my aunt, 
 but some witch. Her mumbling ul her prayers confirmed me in this 
 shocking idea. I had read in Glanvil of those wicked creatures reading 
 their prayers back<ivards ; and I thought that this was the operation 
 which her lips were at this time employed about. Instead of flying ta 
 her friendly lap for that protection which I had so often experienced 
 when I have been weak and timid, I shrunk back, terrified and bewil- 
 dered to my bed, where I lay, in broken sleeps and miserable fancies, 
 till the morning, which I had so much reason to wish for, came." 
 From this morbid state he was rescued by a fortunate visit from his 
 grandmamma, who carried him off to the country, down toBlakesmooi, 
 where the change had the happiest effect. The good old lady had not 
 
6 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 childhood. One of his schoolfellows, of whose genial 
 qualities he has made affectionate mention in his 
 " Recollections of Christ's Hospital," Charles V. Le 
 Grice, now of Treriefe, near Penzance, has supplied 
 me with some particulars of his school-days, for which 
 friends of a later date will be grateful, " Lamb," says 
 Mr. Le Grice, " was an amiable gentle boy, very 
 sensible and keenly observing, indulged by his school- 
 
 only Charles, but her other grandchild Mary, often down on a visit. 
 Her room in the house was the haunted one. Her recollection of the 
 place affected her in the same mysterious way as it did her brother. 
 She had to attend on the austere old lady, who every morning used to 
 nod her head very kindly, and say very graciously, " How do you do, 
 little Mary?" 
 
 There is another episode connected with these early days which is 
 passed over by Talfourd. Charles and his sister were sent to a day- 
 school, situated in the mean passage that leads from Fetter Lane into 
 Bartlett's Buildings, and looking into a discoloured, dingy garden. It 
 was presided over by a Mr. William Bird, teacher of languages and 
 mathematics, who was assisted by a strange being, called " Captain 
 Starkey," later to become a character. This oddity wrote an account 
 of his own life, which Lamb happened to stumble upon, and the name 
 awakened all his and his sister's slumbering recollections of their school 
 days. " This, then," he said, " was the Starkey of whom I have heard 
 my sister relate so many pleasant anecdotes, and whom, never having 
 seen, I almost seem to rememb^. Heaven knows what 'languages' 
 were taught in it then ! I am sure that neither my sister nor myself 
 brought any out of it but a little of our native English, By ' mathe- 
 matics,' reader, must be understood • ciphering.' It was, in fact, an 
 humble day-school, at which reading and writing were taught to us 
 boys in the morning; and the slender erudition was communicated to 
 the girls, our sisters, etc., in the evening." Mr. Moxon speaks of an 
 old schoolmistress: — " Well we remember the veneration with which 
 we used to look upon the old lady— for she remembered Goldsmith ! 
 He had once lent her his poems to teaJ. We often lament that he did 
 not give them to her ; but the author of the ' Vicar of Wakefield' was 
 poor." — F. 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 7 
 
 fellows and by his master on account of his infirmity 
 of speech.. His countenance was mild ; his com- 
 plexion clear brown, with an expression which might 
 lead you to think he was of Jewish descent. His 
 eyes were not each of the same colour, one was hazel, 
 the other had specks of grey in the iris, mingled as 
 we see red spots in the blood-stone. His step was 
 plantigrade, which made his walk slow and peculiar, 
 adding to the staid appearance of his figure. I never 
 heard his name mentioned without the addition of 
 Charles, although, as there was no other boy of the 
 name of Lamb, the addition was unnecessary; but 
 there was an implied kindness in it, and it was a 
 proof that his gentle manners excited that kindness." 
 " His delicate frame and his difficulty of utterance^ 
 which was increased by agitation, unfitted him for 
 joining in any boisterous sport. The description 
 which he gives, in his ' Recollections of Christ's Hos- 
 pital,' of the habits and feelings of the schoolboy, is a 
 true one in general, but is more particularly a deli- 
 neation of himself — the feelings were all in his own 
 heart — the portrait was his own : ' While others were 
 all fire and play, he stole along with 0II the self- 
 concentration of a young monk.' These habits and 
 feelings were awakened and cherished in him by pecu- 
 liar circumstances : he had been born and bred in the 
 Inner Temple ; and his parents continued to reside 
 there while he was at school, so that he passed 
 from cloister to cloister, and this was all the 
 change his young mind ever knew. On every half- 
 holiday (and there were two in the week) in ten 
 minutes he was in the gardens, on the terrace, or at 
 the fountain of the Temple : here was his home, here 
 his recreation ; and the influence they had on his 
 
8 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 infant mind is vividly shown in his description of the 
 Old Benchers. He says, ' I vifas born and passed 
 the first seven years of my life in the Temple :' he 
 might have added, that here he passed a great portion 
 of the second seven years of his life, a portion which 
 mixed itself with all his habits and enjoyments, and 
 gave a bias to the whole. Here he found a happy 
 home, affectionate parents, and a sister who watched 
 over him to the latest hour of his existence (God be 
 with her !) with the tenderest solicitude ; and here he 
 had access to the library of Mr. Salt, one of the 
 Benchers, to whose memory his pen has given, in 
 return for this and greater favours — I do not think it 
 extravagant to say — immortality. To use his own 
 language, here he ' was tumbled into a spacious closet 
 of good old English reading, where he browsed at will 
 upon that fair and wholesome pasturage.' He applied 
 these words to his sister; but there is no doubt they 
 ' browsed ' together ; they had walked hand in hand 
 from a time ' extending beyond the period of their 
 memory.' " 
 
 When Lamb quitted school, he was in the lower 
 division of the second class — which in the language 
 of the school is termed " being in Greek Form, but 
 not Deputy Grecian."^ He had read Virgil, Sallust, 
 Terence, selections from Lucian's Dialogues, and 
 Xenophon ; and had evinced considerable skill in the 
 niceties of Latin composition, both in prose and 
 verse. His docility and aptitude for the attainment 
 of classical knowledge would have ensured him an 
 exhibition ; but to this the impediment in his speech 
 
 • His various friends, however — Leigh Hunt, Southey, and others 
 
 incline to think that he was a Deputy Grecian.— F. 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. Q 
 
 proved an insuperable obstacle. The exhibitions 
 were given under the implied, if not expressed, con- 
 dition of entering into the Church ; the whole course 
 of education was preparatory to that end ; and there- 
 fore Lamb, who was unfitted by nature for the clerical 
 profession, was not adopted into the class which led 
 to it, and quitted school to pursue the uncongenial 
 labour of the " desk's dull wood." To this apparently 
 hard lot he submitted with cheerfulness, and saw his 
 schoolfellows of his own standing depart, one after 
 another, for the University without a murmur. This 
 acquiescence in his different fortune must have been 
 a hard trial for the sweetness of his disposition ; as 
 he always, in after life, regarded the ancient seats of 
 learning with the fondness of one who had been 
 hardly divorced from them. He delighted, when 
 other duties did not hinder, to pass his vacations in 
 their neighbourhood, and indulge in that fancied 
 association with them which he has so beautifully 
 mirrored in his " Sonnet written at Cambridge." 
 What worldly success can, indeed, ever compensate 
 for the want of timely nurture beneath the shade of 
 one of these venerable institutions — for the sense of 
 antiquity shading, not checking, the joyous impulses 
 of opening manhood — for the refinement and the 
 grace there interfused into the long labour of ambi- 
 tious study — for young friendships consecrated by the 
 associations of long past time ; and for liberal emula- 
 tion, crowned by successes restrained from ungenerous 
 and selfish pride by palpable symbols of the genius 
 and the learning of ages ? 
 
 On 23rd November, 1789, Lamb finally quitted 
 Christ's Hospital for the abode of his parents, who 
 still resided in the Temple. At first he was employed 
 
10 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 in the South Sea House, under his brothel- John ; but 
 on the 5th April, 1792, he obtained an appointment 
 in the Accountant's Office of the East India Company J 
 His salary, though then small, was a welcome addition 
 to the scanty means of his parents ; who now were 
 unable, by their own exertions, to increase it, his 
 mother being in ill health, which confined her to her 
 bed, and his father sinking into dotage. On their 
 comfort, however, this, and what was more precious 
 to him, his little leisure, were freely bestowed ; and 
 his recreations were confined to a delightful visit to 
 the two-shilling gallery of the theatre, in company 
 with his sister, and an occasional supper with some 
 of his schoolmates," when in town, from Cambridge. 
 On one of these latter occasions he obtained the appel- 
 lation of Guy, by which he was always called among 
 them ; but of which few of his late friends heard till 
 after his death. " In the first year of his clerkship," 
 says Mr, Le Grice, in the communication with which 
 he favoured me, " Lamb spent the evening of the 5th 
 November with some of his former schoolfellows, 
 who, being amused with the particularly large and 
 flapping brim of his round hat, pinned it up on the 
 sides in the form of a cocked-hat. Lamb made no 
 alteration in it, but walked home in his usual saunter- 
 ing gait towards the Temple. As he was going down 
 Ludgate Hill, some gay young men, who seemed not 
 to have passed the London Tavern without resting, 
 exclaimed, ' The veritable Guy ! — no man of straw !' 
 and with this exclamation they took him up, making 
 a chair with their arms, carried him, seated him on a 
 
 1 " Through the influence, I believe, of Mr. Salt." — Procter. — ^F. 
 " Leigh Hunt, then ai Christ's Hospital, i»caUs Lamb's occasional 
 visits to the school. — F. 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. II 
 
 post in St. Paul's Churchyard, and there left him. 
 This story Lamb told so seriously, that the truth of 
 it was never doubted. He wore his three-cornered 
 hat many evenings, and retained the name of Guy 
 ever after. Like Nym, he quietly sympathised in the 
 fun, and seemed to say, ' that was the humour of it.' 
 A clergyman of the City lately wrote to me, ' I have 
 no recollection of Lamb. There was a gentleman 
 called Guy, to whom you once introduced me, and 
 with whom I have occasionally interchanged nods for 
 more than thirty years ; but how is it that I never 
 met Mr. Lamb ? If I was ever introduced to him, I 
 wonder that we never came in contact during my 
 residence for ten years in Edmonton.' Imagine this 
 gentleman's surprise when I informed him that his 
 nods to Mr. Guy had been constantly reciprocated by 
 Mr. Lamb 1" 
 
 During these years Lamb's most frequent com- 
 panion was James White, or rather, Jem White, as 
 he always called him. Lamb always insisted that for 
 hearty joyous humour, tinged with Shakesperean fancy, 
 Jem never had an equal. "Jem White !" said he, to 
 Mr. Le Grice, when they met for the last time, after 
 many years' absence, at the Bell at Edmonton, in 
 June, 1833, " there never was his like ! We never 
 shall see such days as those in which Jem flourished 1" 
 All that now remains of Jem is the celebration of the 
 suppers which he gave the young chimney-sweepers 
 in the Elia of his friend, and a thin duodecimo 
 volume, which he published in 1796, under the title 
 of the " Letters of Sir John FalstafF, with a dedication 
 (printed in black letter) to Master Samuel Irelaunde," 
 which those who knew Lamb at the time believed to 
 be his. " White's Letters," said Lamb, in a letter to 
 
12 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 a friend about this time, " are near publication. His 
 frontispiece is a good conceit ; Sir John learning io 
 dance, to please Madam Page, in dress of doublet, 
 etc., from the upper half, and modern pantaloons, 
 with shoes of the eighteenth century, from the lower 
 half, and the whole work is full of goodly quips and 
 rare fancies, ' all deftly masked like hoar antiquity' — 
 much superior to Dr. Kenrick's ' Falstaff's Wedding.' " 
 The work was neglected, although Lamb exerted all 
 the influence he subsequently acquired with more 
 popular writers to obtain for it favourable notices, as 
 will be seen from various passages in his letters. He 
 stuck, however, gallantly by his favourite protege ; 
 and even when he could little afford to disburse six- 
 pence, he made a point of buying a copy of the book 
 whenever he discovered one amidst the refuse of a 
 bookseller's stall, and would present it to a friend in 
 the hope of making a convert. He gave me one of 
 these copies soon after I became acquainted with 
 him, stating that he had purchased it in the morning 
 for sixpence, and assuring me I should enjoy a rare 
 treat in the perusal ; but if I must confess the truth, 
 the mask of quaintness was so closely worn, that it 
 nearly concealed the humour. To Lamb it was, 
 doubtless, vivified by the eye and voice of his old 
 boon companion, forming to him an undying com- 
 mentary ; without which it was comparatively 
 spiritless. Alas ! how many even of his own 
 most delicate fancies, nr.h as they are in feeling 
 and in wisdom, will be lust to those who have 
 not present to them the sweet broken accents, and 
 the half playful, half melancholy smile of the writer !' 
 
 ' " Jem White " held an office in Christ's Hospital, and later, ac- 
 cording to Mr. Procter, became a newspaper agent. — F. 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. I3 
 
 But if Jem White was the companion of his lighter 
 moods, the friend of his serious thoughts was a 
 person of far nobler powers — Samuel Taylor Cole- 
 ridge. It was his good fortune to be the schoolfellow 
 of that extraordinary man ; and if no particular inti- 
 macy had been formed between them at Christ's 
 Hospital, a foundation was there laid for a friendship 
 to which the world is probably indebted for all that 
 Lamb has added to its sources of pleasure. Junior 
 to Coleridge by two years, and far inferior to him in 
 all scholastic acquirements, Lamb had listened to the 
 rich discourse of "the inspired charity-boy" with a 
 wondering delight, pure from all envy, and, it may 
 be, enhanced by his sense of his own feebleness and 
 difficulty of expression. While Coleridge remained 
 at the University, they met occasionally on his visits 
 to London ; and when he quitted it, and came to 
 town, full of mantling hopes and glorious schemes, 
 Lamb became his admiring disciple. The scene of 
 these happy meetings was a little public-house, called 
 the Salutation and Cat,' in the neighbourhood of 
 Smithfield, where they used to sup, and remain long 
 after they had " heard the chimes at midnight." 
 There they discoursed of Bowles, who was the god 
 of Coleridge's poetical idolatry, and of Burns and 
 Cowper, who, of recent poets, in that season of com- 
 parative barrenness, had made the deepest impression 
 on Lamb. There Coleridge talked of " Fate, free- 
 
 ' The tavern still exists, much modernised, as the "Salutation" 
 simply, at No. 17, Newgate Street. Coleridge's powers of conversa- 
 tion were here exhibited to such profit for the house, that the land- 
 lord is said to have offered him free quarters if he would stay and 
 «lk on. — F. 
 
14 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 will, fore-knowledge absolute," to one who desired 
 " to find no end " of the golden maze ; and there he 
 recited his early poems with that deep sweetness of 
 intonation which sunk into the heart of his hearer. 
 To these meetings Lamb was accustomed at all 
 periods of his life to revert, as the season when his 
 finer intellects were quickened into action. Shortly 
 after they had terminated, with Coleridge's departure 
 from London, he thus recalled them in a letter :^ 
 " When I read in your little volume your nineteenth 
 effusion, or what you call ' the Sigh,' I think I hear 
 you again. I imagine to myself the little smoky 
 room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat 
 together through the winter nights beguiling the 
 cares of life with Poesy." This was early in 1796 1 
 and in 1818, when dedicating his works, then first 
 collected, to his earliest friend, he thus spoke of the 
 same meetings : " Some of the sonnets, which shall 
 be carelessly turned over by the general reader, may 
 happily awaken in you remembrances which I should 
 be sorry should be ever totally extinct, — the memory 
 ' of summer days and of delightful years,' even so far 
 back as those old suppers at our old Inn, — when life 
 was fresh, and topics exhaustless, — and you first 
 kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, 
 and beauty, and kindliness." And so he talked of 
 these unforgotten hours in that short interval during 
 which death divided them ! 
 
 ' This, and other passages I have interwoven with my own slendei 
 thread of narration, are from letters which I have thought either too 
 personal for entire publication at present, or not of sufficient interest, 
 in comparison with others, to occupy a portion of the space, to whicb 
 the letters are limited. 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 15 
 
 The warmth of Coleridge's friendship supplied the 
 quickening impulse to Lamb's genius ; but the germ 
 enfolding all its nice peculiarities lay ready for the 
 influence, and expanded into forms and hues of its 
 own. Lamb's earliest poetry was not a faint reflec- 
 tion of Coleridge's, such as the young lustre of 
 original genius may cast on a polished and sensitive 
 mind, to glow and tremble for a season, but was 
 streaked with delicate yet distinct traits, which proved 
 it an emanation from within. There was, indeed, 
 little resemblance between the two, except in the 
 affection which they bore towards each other. Cole- 
 ridge's mind, not laden as yet with the spoils of all 
 systems and of all times, glowed with the ardour of 
 uncontrollable purpose, and thirsted for glorious 
 achievement and universal knowledge. The imagina- 
 tion, which afterwards struggled gloriously but 
 perhaps vainly to overmaster the stupendous clouds 
 of German philosophies, breaking them into huge 
 masses, and tinting them with heavenly hues, then 
 shone through the simple articles of Unitarian faith, 
 the graceful architecture of Hartley's theory, and the 
 well-compacted chain by which Priestley and Edwards 
 seemed to bind all things in necessary connection, as 
 through transparencies of thought; and, finding no 
 opposition worthy of its activity in this poor fore- 
 ground of the mind, opened for itself a bright succes- 
 sion of fairy visions, which it sought to realize on 
 earth. In its light, oppression and force seemed to 
 vanish like the phantoms of a feverish dream ; man- 
 kind were disposed in the picturesque groups of 
 universal brotherhood ; and, in far distance, the 
 ladder which Jacob saw in solemn vision connected 
 earth with heaven, " and the angels of God were 
 
l6 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 ascending and descending upon it."^ Lamb had no 
 sympathy with these radiant hopes, except as they 
 were part of his friend. He clung to the realities of 
 life ; to things nearest to him, which the force of 
 habit had made dear ; and caught tremblingly hold of 
 the past. He delighted^ indeed, to hear Coleridge 
 talk of the distant and future ; to see the palm-trees 
 wave, and the pyramids tower in the long perspective 
 of his style; and to catch the prophetic notes of a 
 universal harmony trembling in his voice ; but the 
 pleasure was only that of admiration unalloyed by 
 envy, and of the generous pride of friendship. The 
 tendency of his mind to detect the beautiful and good 
 in surrounding things, to nestle rather than to roam, 
 was cherished by all the circumstances of his boyish 
 days. He had become familiar with the vestiges of 
 antiquity, both in his school and in his home of the 
 Temple ; and these became dear to him in his serious 
 and affectionate childhood. But, perhaps, more even 
 than those external associations, the situation of his 
 parents, as it was elevated and graced by their cha- 
 racter, moulded his young thoughts to the holy habit 
 of a liberal obedience, and unaspiring self-respect, 
 
 ' This was the scheme of the " Pantisoceacy," that strange ideal ol 
 communism which seriously engaged the thoughts of Coleridge and a 
 band of ardent and clever youths. The story is naturally and agree- 
 ably told by Cottle the bookseller, who welcomed the young enthu- 
 siasts at Bristol , allowed himself to be patronised by them with an 
 amiable simplicity, and accepted the publication of their rather imma- 
 ture compositions as a favour and an honour. Southey, Burnett, Lovell, 
 Allen, and Coleridge, were the original spirits of the scheme ; but as it 
 became impossible to reach the Susquehanna without money, the 
 enthusiasm soon cooled, and the sectaries fell away one by one. — See 
 Cottle's Reminiscences, passim. — F. 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 17 
 
 (Vhich led rather to the embellishment of what was 
 near than to the creation of visionary forms. He 
 saw at home the daily beauty of a cheerful submission 
 to a state bordering on the servile ; he looked upward 
 to his father's master, and the old Benchers who 
 walked with him on the stately terrace, with a modest 
 erectness of mind ; and he saw in his own humble 
 home how well the decencies of life could be main- 
 tained on slender means, by the exercise of generous 
 principle. Another circumstance, akin to these, 
 tended also to impart a tinge of venerableness to his 
 early musings. Hie maternal grandmother was for 
 many years housekeeper in the old and wealthy 
 family of the Plumers of Hertfordshire, by whom she 
 was held in true esteem ; and his visits to their 
 ancient mansion, where he had the free range of every 
 apartment, gallery, and terraced-walk, gave him " a 
 peep at the contrasting accidents of a great fortune," 
 and an alliance with that gentility of soul, which to 
 appreciate, is to share. He has beautifully recorded 
 his own recollections of this place in the essay 
 
 entitled " Blakesmoor in H shire," in which he 
 
 modestly vindicates his claim to partake in the asso- 
 ciations of ancestry not his own, and shows the true 
 v^lue of high lineage by detecting the spirit of noble- 
 ness which breathes around it, for the enkindling of 
 generous affections, not only in those who may boast 
 of its possession, but in all who can feel its influences. 
 While the bias of the minds of Coleridge and 
 Lamb thus essentially differed, it is singular that 
 their opinions on religion, and on those philosophical 
 questions which border on religious belief, and receive 
 their colour from it, agreed, although probably derived 
 from various sources. Both were Unitarians, ardent 
 
 c 
 
l8 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 admirers of the writings and character of Dr. Priest- 
 ley, and both believers in necessity, according to Dr. 
 Priestley's exposition, and in the inference which he 
 drew from that doctrine respecting moral responsi- 
 bility, and the ultimate destiny of the human race. 
 The adoption of this creed arose in Lamb from the 
 accident of education ; he was brought up to receive 
 and love it ; and attended, when circumstances per- 
 mitted, at the chapel at Hackney, of which Mr. 
 Belsham, afterwards of Essex Street, was then the 
 minister. It is remarkable that another of Lamb's 
 most intimate friends, in whose conversation, next to 
 that of Coleridge, he most delighted, Mr. Hazlitt, 
 with whom he became acquainted at a subsequent 
 time, and who came from a distant part of the country, 
 was educated in the same faith. With Coleridge, 
 whose early impressions were derived from the rites 
 and services of the Church of England, Unitarianism 
 was the result of a strong conviction ; so strong, that 
 with all the ardour of a convert, he sought to win 
 proselytes to his chosen creed, and purposed to spend 
 his days in preaching it. Neither of these young 
 men, however, long continued to profess it. Lamb, 
 in his maturer lifp, rarely alluded to matters of reli- 
 gious doctrine ; and when he did so, evinced no 
 sympathy with the professors of his once-loved creed. 
 Hazlitt wrote to his father, who was a Unitarian 
 minister at Wem, with honouring affection; and of 
 his dissenting associates with respect, but he had 
 obviously ceased to think or feel with them ; and 
 Coleridge's Eemains indicate, what was well known 
 to all who enjoyed the privilege of his conversation, 
 that he not only reverted to a belie<' in the Trinitarian 
 mysteries, but that he was accustomed to express as 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 1 9 
 
 much distaste for Unitarianism, and for the spirit of 
 its more active advocates, as the benignity of his 
 nature would allow him to feel for any human opinion 
 honestly cherished. Perhaps this solitary approach 
 to intolerance in the universality of Coleridge's mind 
 arose from the disapproval with which he might justly 
 regard his own pride of understanding, as excited in 
 defence of the doctrines he had adopted. To him 
 there was much of devotional thought to be violated, 
 many reverential associations, intertwined with the 
 moral being, to be rent away in the struggle of the 
 intellect to grasp the doctrines which were alien to 
 its nurture. But to Lamb these formed the simple 
 creed of his childhood ; and slender and barren as 
 they seem, to those who are united in religious 
 sympathy with the great body of their fellow-country- 
 men, they sufficed for affections which had so strong 
 a tendency to find out resting-places for themselves 
 as his. Those who only knew him in his latter days 
 and who feel that if ever the spirit of Christianity 
 breathed through a human life, it breathed in his. 
 will, nevertheless, trace with surprise the extraordinary 
 vividness of impressions directly religious, and the 
 self-jealousy with which he watched the cares and 
 distractions of the world, which might efface them, in 
 his first letters. If in a life of ungenial toil, diver- 
 sified with frequent sorrow, the train of these solemn 
 meditations was broken ; if he was led, in the dis- 
 tractions and labours of his course, to cleave more 
 closely to surrounding objects than those early asp- 
 rations promised; if, in his cravings after immediate 
 sympathy, he rather sought to perpetuate the social 
 circle which he charmed, than to expatiate in scenes 
 of untried being ; bis pious feelings were only diverted. 
 
20 PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 
 
 not destroyed. The stream glided still, the under- 
 current of thought sometimes breaking out in sallies 
 which strangers did not understand, but always 
 feeding and nourishing the most exquisite sweetness 
 of disposition, and the most unobtrusive proofs of 
 self-denying love. 
 
 While Lamb was enjoying habits of the closest 
 intimacy with Coleridge in London, he was introduced 
 by him to a young poet whose name has often been 
 associated with his — Charles Lloyd — the son of a 
 wealthy banker at Birmingham, who had recently cast 
 off the trammels of the Society of Friends, and, smit- 
 ten with the love of poetry, had become a student at 
 the University of Cambridge. There he had been 
 attracted to Coleridge by the fascination of his dis- 
 course ;' and having been admitted to his regard, was 
 introduced by him to Lamb. Lloyd was endeared 
 both to Lamb and Coleridge by a very amiable dispo- 
 sition and a pensive cast of thought ; but his intellect 
 bore little resemblance to that of either. He wrote, 
 indeed, pleasing verses with great facility — a facility 
 fatal to excellence ; but his mind was chiefly remark- 
 able for the fine power of analysis which distinguishes 
 his " London," and other of his later compositions. 
 In this power of discriminating and distinguishing — 
 carried to a pitch almost of painfulness — Lloyd has 
 scarcely been equalled ; and his poems, though rugged 
 in point of versification, will be found by those who 
 will read them with the calm attention they require, 
 replete with critical and moral suggestions of the 
 highest value. He and Coleridge were devoted wholly 
 
 ' This, Southey says, is a mistaKe. Lloyd first met Coleridge at 
 Bristol, and did not go to Cambridge till some years later. — F. 
 
PARENTAGE, SCHOOL-DAYS, AND YOUTH. 21 
 
 to literary pursuits ; while Lamb's days were given to 
 accounts, and only at snatches of time was he able to 
 cultivate the faculty of which the society of Coleridge 
 had made him imperfectly conscious. 
 
 Lamb's first compositions were in verse — produced 
 slowly, at long intervals, and with self-distrust which 
 the encouragements of Coleridge could not subdue. 
 With the exception of a sonnet to Mrs. Siddons, 
 whose acting, especially in the character of Lady 
 Randolph, had made a deep impression upon him, 
 they were exclusively personal. The longest and 
 most elaborate is that beautiful piece of blank verse 
 entitled " The Grandame," in which he so affection- 
 ately celebrates the virtues of the " antique world" of 
 the aged housekeeper of Mr. Plumer. A youthful 
 passion, which lasted only a few months, and which 
 he afterwards attempted to regard lightly as a folly 
 past, inspired a few sonnets of very delicate feeling 
 and exquisite music. On the death of his parents, he 
 felt himself called upon by duty to repay to his sister 
 the solicitude with which she had watched over his 
 infancy ; — and well indeed he performed it ! To her, 
 from the age of twenty-one, he devoted his existence; 
 seeking thenceforth no connection which could inter- 
 fere with her supremacy in his affections, or impair 
 his ability to sustain and comfort her. 
 
[ 22 ) 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 [1795-1798.J 
 Insanity of Mary Lamb. — Early Poetic Efforts. 
 
 In the year 1795, Charles Lamb resided with his 
 father, mother, and sister, in lodgings at No. 7, Little 
 Queen-street, Holborn. The father was rapidly sink- 
 ing into dotage ; the mother suffered under an in- 
 firmity which deprived her of the use of her limbs ; 
 and the sister not only undertook the office of daily 
 and nightly attendance on her mother, but sought to 
 add by needle- work to their slender resources.' Their 
 income then consisted of an annuity which Mr. Lamb 
 the elder derived from the old Bencher, Mr. Salt, 
 whom he had faithfully served for many years ; 
 Charles's salary, which, being that of a clerk of three 
 years' standing in the India House, could have been 
 but scanty ; and a small payment made for board by 
 an old maiden aunt, who resided with them. In this 
 year Lamb, being just twenty years of age, began to 
 write verses — partly incited by the example of his old 
 friend, Coleridge, whom he regarded with as much 
 reverence as affection, and partly inspired by an 
 attachment to a young lady residing in the neigh- 
 
 ' Sonthey thus describes their menage in a letter to Moxon; — 
 " When I saw the family (one evening only, and at that time), they 
 were lodging somewhere near Lincoln's Inn, on the western side (I for- 
 get the street), and were evidently in uncomfortable circumstances. 
 The &ther and mother were both living ; and I have some dim recol- 
 lection of the latter's invalid appearance. The father's senses had failed 
 him h«fore that time." — F. 
 
INSANITY OF MARY LAMB. 23 
 
 bcurhood of Islington, who is commemorated in his 
 early verses as " the fair-haired maid." How his 
 love prospered we cannot ascertain ; but we know 
 how nobly that love, and all hope of the earthly 
 blessings attendant on such an affection, were resigned 
 on the catastrophe which darkened the following year. 
 In the meantime, his youth was lonely — rendered the 
 more so by the recollection of the society of Coleridge, 
 who had just left London — of Coleridge in the first 
 bloom of life and genius, unshaded by the mysticism 
 which it afterwards glorified — full of boundless ambi- 
 tion, love, and hope ! There was a tendency to 
 insanity in his family, which had been more than 
 once developed in his sister ; and it was no matter of 
 surprise that in the dreariness of his solitude it fell 
 upon him ; and that, at the close of the year, he was 
 subjected for a few weeks to the restraint of the in- 
 sane.' The wonder is that, amidst all the difficulties, 
 the sorrows, and the excitements of his succeeding 
 forty years, it never recurred. Perhaps the true cause 
 of this remarkable exemption — an exemption the more 
 remarkable when his afflictions are considered in 
 association with one single frailty — will be found in 
 the sudden claim made on his moral and intellectual 
 nature by a terrible exigency, and by his generous 
 answer to that claim ; so that a life of self-sacrifice was 
 rewarded by the preservation of unclouded reason. 
 
 In the year 1796, Coleridge, having married,^ and 
 relinquished his splendid dream of emigration, was 
 resident at Bristol. Lamb felt his absence from Lon- 
 
 ' In his ravings he fancied that he was Young Nerval — so Coleridge 
 told Southey. — F. 
 
 In the October of 1795. — F. 
 
24 INSANITY OF MARY LAMB. 
 
 don bitterly, and sought a correspondence with him 
 as, almost, his only comfort. " In your absence," he 
 writes, in one of the earliest of his letters, " I feel a 
 stupor that makes me indifferent to the hopes and 
 fears of this life. A correspondence opening with 
 you has roused me a little from my lethargy, and 
 made me conscious of existence. Indulge me in it ! 
 I will not be very troublesome." And again, a few 
 days after : " You are the only correspondent, and, I 
 might add, the only friend, I have in the world. I go 
 no-where, and have no acquaintance. Slow of 
 speech, and reserved of manners, no one seeks or 
 cares for my society, and I am left alone. Coleridge, 
 I devoutly wish that Fortune, which has made sport 
 with you so long, may play one freak more, throw 
 you into London, or some spot near it, and there 
 snugify you for life." These appeals, it may well be 
 believed, were not made in vain to one who delighted 
 in the lavish communication of the riches of his own 
 mind even to strangers ; but none of the letters of 
 Coleridge to Lamb have been preserved. He had 
 just published his " Religious Musings," and the glit- 
 tering enthusiasm of its language excited Lamb's 
 pious feelings, almost to a degree of pain. " I dare 
 not," says he of this poem, " criticise it. I like not 
 to select any part where all is excellent. I can only 
 admire and thank you for it, in the name of a lover of 
 true poetry — 
 
 ' Believe thon, O my soul, 
 Life is a vision shadowy of truth ; 
 And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave, 
 Shapes of a dream.' 
 
 I thank you for these lines in the name of a neces- 
 sarian." To Priestley, Lamb repeatedly alludes as to 
 
INSANITY OF MARY LAMB. 25 
 
 the object of their common admiration. " In reading 
 your ' Religious Musings,' " says he, " I felt a tran- 
 sient superiority over you : I have seen Priestley. I 
 love to see his name repeated in your writings ; — I 
 love and honour him almost profanely."' 
 
 It was in the spring of this year that Coleridge 
 proposed the association of those first efforts of the 
 young clerk in the India House, which he had 
 prompted and praised, with his own, in a new edition 
 of his Poems, to which Mr. Charles Lloyd also pro- 
 posed to contribute." Lamb's letters at this time are 
 full of Sonnets transmitted to Coleridge for this 
 purpose, accompanied by characteristic remarks. 
 When later Coleridge became settled in his melan- 
 choly cottage, he invited Lamb to visit him, and the 
 hope — the expectation — the disappointment, are all 
 depicted in the various letters the latter sent to his 
 friend. A little copy of verses, in which Lamb com- 
 memorated and softened his disappointment, bearing 
 date (a most unusual circumstance with Lamb), 5th 
 July, 1796, was inclosed in a letter of the following 
 day, which refers to a scheme Coleridge had formed 
 of settling in London on an invitation to share the 
 
 ' Talfourd mentions " a poem" of Coleridge's as being " emulous of 
 Southey's 'Joan of Arc,'" apparently ignorant that it was a contribution 
 from Coleridge to his friend's poem. 
 
 ^ Talfourd does not appear to have known that Lamb's verses had 
 already appeared, in company with those of Coleridge, in a little 
 volume published at Bristol in 1796, entitled "Poems on Various 
 Subjects," which is even more scarce than the one spoken of here. 
 Place was given to three of Lamb's Sonnets, introduced with this 
 handsome compliment : — " The efTusions signed C. L. were written by 
 Mr. Charles Lamb, of tlie India House. Independently of the sig- 
 nature, their superior merit would sufficiently have distinguished 
 them."— F. 
 
26 INSANITY OF MARY LAMB. 
 
 Editorship of the Morning Chronicle. The poem 
 inchides a lamentation over a fantastical loss — that 
 of a draught of the Avon " which Shakespeare 
 drank;" somewhat strangely confounding the Avon 
 of Stratford with that of Bristol. It may be doubted 
 whether Shakespeare knew the taste of the waves of 
 one Avon more than of the other, or whether Lamb 
 would not have found more kindred with the world's 
 poet in a glass of sack, than in the water of either 
 stream. Coleridge must have enjoyed the misplaced 
 sentiment of his friend, for he was singularly desti- 
 tute of sympathy with local associations, which he 
 regarded as interfering with the pure and simple 
 impression of great deeds or thoughts ; denied a 
 special interest to the Pass of Thermopylae : and 
 instead of subscribing to purchase " Shakespeare's 
 House," would scarcely have admitted the peculiar 
 sanctity of the spot which enshrines his ashes. 
 
 The autumn found Lamb engaged all the morning 
 in task-work at the India House, and all the evening 
 in attempting to amuse his father by playing cribbage ; 
 while Miss Lamb was worn down to a state of 
 extreme nervous misery, by attention to needlework 
 by day, and to her mother by night, until the insanity, 
 which had been manifested more than once, broke 
 out into frenzy, which, on Thursday, 22nd of 
 September, proved fatal to her mother. The following 
 account of the proceedings of the inquest, copied 
 from the Times of Monday, 26th September, 1796, 
 supplies the details of this terrible calamity, doubtless 
 with accuracy, except that it would seem, from a 
 letter of Lamb's to Coleridge, that he, and not the 
 landlord, took the knife from the unconscious hand. 
 
 " On Friday afternoon, the coroner and a jury sat 
 
INSANITY OF MARY LAMB. 27 
 
 on the body of a lady in the neighbourhood of 
 Holborn, who died in consequence of a wound from 
 her daughter the preceding day. It appeared, by the 
 evidence adduced, that, while the family were pre- 
 paring for dinner, the young lady seized a case-knife 
 lying on the table, and in a menacing manner pursued 
 a little girl, her apprentice, round the room. On the 
 calls of her infirm mother to forbear, she renounced 
 her first object, and, with loud shrieks, approached 
 her parent. The child, by her cries, quickly brought 
 up the landlord of the house, but too late. The 
 dreadful scene presented to him the mother lifeless, 
 pierced to the heart, on a chair, her daughter yet 
 wildly standing over her with the fatal knife, and the 
 old man, her father, weeping by her side, himself 
 bleeding at the forehead from the effect* of a severe 
 blow he received from one of the forks she had been 
 madly hurling about the room. 
 
 " For a few days prior to this, the family had 
 observed some symptoms of insanity in her, which 
 had so much increased on the Wednesday evening, 
 that her brother, early the next morning, went to Dr. 
 Pitcairn, but that gentleman was not at home. 
 
 " It seems the young lady had been once before 
 deranged. 
 
 " The jury, of course, brought in their verdict — 
 Lunacy."^ 
 
 ' A statement nearly similar to this will be found in several other 
 journals of tlie day, and in the Annual Register for the year. The 
 True Briton adds : — " It appears she had been before, in the earlier 
 part of her life, deranged, from the harassing fatigues of too much 
 business. As her carriage towards her mother had always been affec- 
 tionate in the extreme, it is believed her increased attachment to her, 
 as her infirmities called for it by day and by night, caused her loss ol 
 
28 INSANITY OF MARY LAMB. 
 
 The following is Lamb's account of the event to 
 Coleridge : — 
 
 " September 27th, 1796. 
 
 " My dearest Friend, — White, or some of my 
 friends, or the public papers, by this time may have 
 informed you of the terrible calamities that have 
 fallen on our family. I will only give you the out- 
 lines : — My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of 
 insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I 
 was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out 
 of her grasp. She is at present in a madhouse, from 
 whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. 
 God has preserved to me my senses, — I eat, and 
 drink, and sleep, and have my judgment, I believe, 
 very sound. Write as religious a letter as possible, 
 but no mention of what is gone and done with. 
 With me ' the former things are passed away,' and I 
 have something more to do than to feel. 
 
 " God Almighty have us well in his keeping. 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 " Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed 
 every vestige of past vanities of that kind. Do as 
 you please, but if you publish, publish mine (I give 
 free leave) without name or initial, and never send 
 me a book, I charge you. " C. Lamb."' 
 
 reason at this time. It has been stated in some of the morning papers 
 that she has an insane brother in confinement; but this is without 
 foundation." None of the accounts give the names of the sufferers ; 
 but in the index to the Annual Register, the anonymous account is 
 referred to with Mrs. Lamb's name. 
 
 ' In "The Old Familiar Faces" was originally inserted a stanza, 
 which he suppressed later, as touching on terrible recollections. 
 " Where are they gone, the old ;kmiliar faces 
 / had a mother, but she died. 
 Died prematurely in a day of horrors." — F. 
 
EARLY POETIC EFFORTS. 2Q 
 
 The anxieties of Lamb's new position were assuaged 
 during the spring of 1797, by frequent communi- 
 cations with Coleridge respecting the anticipated 
 volume, and by some additions to his own share in 
 its pages. He was also cheered by the company of 
 Lloyd, who, having resided for a few months with 
 Coleridge, at Stowey, came to London in some per- 
 plexity as to his future course. Of this visit Lamb 
 speaks in a letter, probably written in January. It 
 contains some verses expressive of his delight at 
 Lloyd's visit, which, although afterwards inserted in 
 the volume, are well fitted to their frame-work of 
 prose, and indicative of the feelings of the writer at 
 this crisis of his life. 
 
 Poor Charles Lloyd 1 Delusions of the most melan- 
 choly kind thickened over his latter days — yet left his 
 admirable intellect free for the finest processes of 
 severe reasoning.^ At a time when, like Cowper, he 
 believed himself the especial subject of Divine wrath, 
 he could bear his part in the most subtle disquisition 
 on questions of religion, morals, and poetry, with 
 the nicest accuracy of perception and the most exem- 
 plary candour; and, after an argument of hours, 
 revert, with a faint smile, to his own despair I 
 
 As summer advanced. Lamb discerned a hope of 
 compensation for the disappointment of last year, by 
 
 ' He had been already thus afflicted, when staying with Coleridge at 
 Stowey. " I write under great agony of mind, Charles Lloyd being 
 very ill. He has been seized with his fits three times in the space 
 of seven days : and just as I was in bed last night, I waB called up 
 again ; and from twelve o'clock at night to five this morning, he re- 
 mained in one continued state of agonized delirium." — Coleridge to 
 Cottle.— T. 
 
30 EARLY POETIC EFFORTS. 
 
 a visit to Coleridge; and thus expressed his wishes : — 
 " I discern a possibiHty of my paying you a visit next 
 week. May I, can I, shall I, come as soon? Have 
 you room for me, leisure for me, and are you all pretty 
 well ? Tell me all this honestly — immediately." The 
 visit was enjoyed ; and Lamb was once more left to 
 the daily labours of the India House and the unceas- 
 ing anxieties of his home.' 
 
 Soon after, death released his father from his state 
 of imbecility and the son from his wearisome duties. 
 With his life, the annuity he had derived from the old 
 Bencher he had served so faithfully, ceased ; while 
 the aunt continued to linger still with Lamb in his 
 cheerless lodging. His sister still remained in con- 
 finement in the asylum to which she had been 
 consigned on her mother's death — perfectly sensible 
 and calm, — and he was passionately desirous of ob- 
 taining her liberty. The surviving members of the 
 family, especially his brother John,^ who enjoyed a fair 
 income in the South Sea House, opposed her dis- 
 charge ; — and painful doubts were suggested by the 
 authorities of the parish, where the terrible occurrence 
 happened, whether they were not bound to institute 
 proceedings, which must have placed her for life at the 
 disposition of the Crown, especially as no medical 
 assurance could be given against the probable recur- 
 
 ' It took place in the first week in July, 1797, when the good- 
 natured bookseller, Cottle, was invited to meet Iiim, who, arriving later, 
 heard Coleridge descant warmly and affectionately on the merits of his 
 old schoolfellow. — F. 
 
 2 " I do not retain an agreeable impression of him. If not rude, he 
 was sometimes, indeed, generally, abrupt and unprepossessing in man- 
 ner. He was assuredly deficient in tliat courtesy which usually springs 
 Irom a mind at friendshio wi'.h the world." — Procter. — F. 
 
EARLY POETIC EFFORTS. 3 1 
 
 fence of dangerous frenzy. But Charles came to her 
 deliverance ; he satisfied all the parties who had 
 power to oppose her release, by his solemn engage- 
 ment that he would take her under his care for life ; 
 and he kept his word. Whether any communication 
 with the Home Secretary occurred before her release, 
 I have been unable to ascertain ; it was the impres- 
 sion of Mr. Lloyd, from whom my own knowledge of 
 the circumstances, which the letters do not ascertain, 
 was derived, that a communication took place, on 
 which a similar pledge was given ; at all events, the 
 result was, that she left the asylum and took up her 
 abode for life with her brother Charles. For her sake, 
 at the same time, he abandoned all thoughts of love 
 and marriage ; and with an income of scarcely more 
 than £100 a-year, derived from his clerkship, aided 
 for a little while by the old aunt's small annuity, set 
 out on the journey of life at twenty-two years of age, 
 cheerfully, with his beloved companion, endeared to 
 him the more by her strange calamity, and the con- 
 stant apprehension of a recurrence of the malady 
 which had caused it ! The illness of the poor old 
 aunt brought on the confirmation of Lamb's fears 
 respecting his sister's malady. After lingering a short 
 time she died ; but before this Miss Lamb's incessant 
 attendance upon her produced a recurrence of in- 
 sanity, and Lamb was obliged to place her under 
 medical care, and was left alone to write letters full 
 of misery to his friend. 
 
 It would seem that Lamb, at first, took a small 
 lodging for his sister apart from his own — but soon 
 to be for life united. His feelings on the recurrence 
 of the season, which had. last year, been darkened by 
 his terrible calamity, can be understood from the first 
 
32 EARLY POETIC EFFORTS. 
 
 of two pieces of blank verse, which fill the two first 
 sheets of a letter to Coleridge, written under an 
 apprehension of some neglect on the part of his friend, 
 which had its cause in no estrangement of Coleridge's 
 aifections, but in the vicissitudes of > the imaginative 
 philosopher's fortune, and the constancy of his day- 
 dreamings. These were the verses entitled, " Writ- 
 ten a Twelvemonth after the Events," and be- 
 ginning :— 
 
 •' Alas ! how am I changed !" 
 
 and in which occurred these lines : — 
 
 **Thou and I, dear friend. 
 With filial recognition sweet, shall know 
 One day the face of oar dear mother in heaven, 
 And her remember'd looks of love shall greet 
 With answering looks of love, her placid smiles 
 Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand 
 With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse." 
 
 In the margin of MS. he wrote, " This is almost 
 literal from a letter of my sister's — less than a year 
 ago." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 *• O my companions ! O ye loved names 
 
 Of friend, or playmate dear, gone are ye now. 
 Gone divers ways; to honour and credit some ; 
 And some, I fear, to ignominy and shame !" 
 
 In the margin he added, " Alluding to some of my 
 old play-fellows being, literally, ' on the town,' and 
 some otherwise wretched. 
 
 Two months, though passed by Lamb in anxiety and 
 labour, but cheered by Miss Lamb's continued pos- 
 session of reason, so far restored the tone of his mind, 
 that his interest in the volume which had been con- 
 templated to introduce his first verses to the world, 
 
EARLY POETIC EFFORTS. 33 
 
 in association with those of his friend, was enkindled 
 anew. While cherishing the hope of reunion with 
 his sister, and painfully wresting his leisure hours 
 from poetry and Coleridge to amuse the dotage of 
 his father, he watched over his own returning sense 
 of enjoyment with a sort of holy jealousy, apprehen- 
 sive lest he should forget too soon the terrible visita- 
 tion of Heaven. It would seem that his acquaintance 
 with the old English dramatists had just commenced 
 with Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger. 
 
 A proposal by Coleridge to print Lamb's poems 
 with a new edition of his own (an association in 
 which Lloyd was ultimately included) occasioned 
 reciprocal communications of each other's verses, and 
 many questions of small alterations suggested and 
 argued on both sides. 
 
 The volume which was to combine the early poetry of 
 the three friends was not completed in the year 1796, 
 and proceeded slowly through the press in the follow- 
 ing year ; Lamb occasionally submitting an additional 
 sonnet, or correction of one already sent, to the judg- 
 ment of Coleridge, and filling long letters with minute 
 suggestions on Coleridge's share of the work, and high, 
 but honest expressions of praise of particular images 
 and thoughts. The eulogy is only interesting as indi- 
 cative of the reverential feeling with which Lamb 
 regarded the genius of Coleridge — but one or two 
 specimens of the gentle rebuke which he ventured on, 
 when the gorgeousness of Coleridge's language seemed 
 to oppress his sense, are worthy of preservation. The 
 following relates to a line in the noble Ode on the 
 Departing Year, in which Coleridge had written of 
 
 " Th' ethereal multitude, 
 Whose purple locks with snow-white glories shrne." 
 
 D 
 
34 EARLY POETIC EFFORTS. 
 
 "'Purple locks, and snow-white glories;' — ^these 
 are things the muse talks about when, to borrow H, 
 Walpole's witty phrase, she is not finely-frenzied, 
 only a little light-headed, that's all — ' Purple-locks.' 
 They may manage things differently in fairyland; but 
 your ' golden tresses' are to my fancy." 
 
 On this remonstrance Coleridge changed the " pur- 
 ple" into "golden," defending his original epithet, 
 and Lamb gave up the point. 
 
 In the commencement of the previous year, Coleridge 
 removed from Bristol to a cottage at Nether Stowey, 
 to embody his favourite dream of a cottage life. 
 This change of place probably delayed the printing 
 of the volume ; and Coleridge, busy with a thousand 
 speculations, became irregular in replying to the letters 
 with writing which Lamb solaced his weary hours. 
 
 Not satisfied with the dedication of his portion of 
 the volume to his sister, and the sonnet which had 
 been sent to the press. Lamb urged on Coleridge the 
 insertion of another, which seems to have been ulti- 
 mately withheld as too poor in poetical merit for 
 publication. The rejected sonnet (" Friend of my 
 earliest years '), and the references made to it by the 
 writer, have an interest now beyond what mere fancy 
 can give. 
 
 At length the small volume containing the poems 
 of Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lamb, was published by 
 Mr. Cottle at Bristol. It excited little attention ; but 
 Lamb had the pleasure of seeing his dedication to his 
 sister printed in good set form, after his own fashion, 
 and of witnessing the delight and pride with which 
 she received it. This little book, now very scarce, 
 had the following motto, expressive of Coleridge's 
 feelings towards his associates: — Duplex nobis vin- 
 
EARLY POETIC EFFOKTS. 35 
 
 culum, et amiciticB et similium junctarumque Camce- 
 narum ; quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis 
 longinquitas.^ Lamb's share of the work consists of 
 
 ' " The Latin motto, prefixed to the second edition of Mr. C.'t 
 poems, puzzled everybody to know from what author it was derived. 
 One and another inquired of me, to no purpose, and expressed a wish 
 that Mr. C. had been clearer in his citation, ' as no one could under- 
 stand it.' On my naming this to Mr. Coleridge, he laughed heartily, 
 and said, ' It was all a hoax. Not meeting,' said he, ' with a suitable 
 motto, I invented one, and with references perfectly obscure." — Cottle's 
 Remintjcences, 168. The reference was an excellent mystification. — 
 " CroscoU. Epist. ad Car., Uteni/O'v. et Ptol. Lux. Last." 
 
 In tliis arrangement there were some evidences of the almost tender 
 afiection with which Lamb had inspired Coleridge. He would admit 
 Lloyd's poems, " on condition that you print them in this volume of 
 his, Charles Lamb's, poems ; the title-page, Poems by S. T. Coleridge. 
 Second Edition ; to which are added Poems by C. Lamb and C. Lloyd. 
 C. Lamb's Poems will occupy about forty pages ; C. Lloyd's at least 
 one hundred, although only his choice fish." At Lamb's request, 
 however, Lloyd's pieces were placed first. In the new volume Coleridge 
 said, " There were inserted in my former edition a few sonnets of my 
 friend and old schoolfellow, Charles Lamb. He has now communi- 
 cated to me a complete Collection of all his Poems. Qua qui non 
 rorsus amet, ilium omnes et Firtutet et Veneres odere." He then 
 mentions Lloyd, but not so affectionately. " My friend Charles Lloyd 
 has likewise joined me, and has contributed every poem of his which 
 he deemed worthy of preservation." This republication of the poems 
 seems to have been connected with a dissolution of the partnership, tlie 
 result of a quarrel between Coleridge and Lloyd, and also of a coolness 
 between Lamb and Coleridge. On receipt of the volume, Lamb had 
 written warmly, praising Lloyd's contributions, which he thought 
 " eminently beautiful," but deferring his consideration of Coleridge's. 
 He was not satisfied, too, with some alterations made in his own lines ; 
 
 " though I think whoever altered did wrong." On the other 
 
 hand, the two minor poets could not have relished some verses in ridi- 
 cule of their style, which Coleridge sent to a magazine, under the sig- 
 nature of " Nehemiah Higginbotham," and which, as he owned, were 
 intended to expose ** that affectation of unaffectedness, of jumping and 
 misplaced accent, in common-place epithets, flat lines forced inta 
 
 D 2 
 
35 EARLY POETIC EFFORTS. 
 
 eight sonnets ; four short fragments of blank verse, 
 of which the Grandame is the principal ; a poem, 
 called the Tomb of Douglas ; some verses to Charles 
 
 poetry by italics (signifying how well and raouthishly the author 
 would read them), puny pathos, etc., etc. ; the instances were almost 
 all taken from myself, and Lloyd and Lamb." Though he af&cted to 
 include bis own productions, the ridicule really affects his weaker com- 
 panions. His severity in the case of Lamb, will be seen by comparing 
 the sonnets : — 
 
 " Was it some sweet delight of Faery, 
 That mock'd my steps with many a lonely glade. 
 And fancied wand'rings with a fair-haired maid. 
 Have these things been ? Or what rare witchery 
 (Impregning with delights the charmed air) 
 Enlightened up the semblance of a smile 
 In those fine eyes ? Methought they spake the while 
 Soft soothing things, which might enforce Despair 
 To drop the murdering knife, and let go by 
 His foul resolve. And does the lonely glade. 
 Still court the footsteps of the fair-haired maid .' 
 Still in her locks the gales of summer sigh? 
 While I forlorn do wander, heedless where, 
 And 'mid my wanderings meet no Anna there." 
 
 So in the "House that Jack built": 
 
 " Did ye not see her gleaming through the glade .' 
 Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn. 
 What though she milk no cow with crumpled horn. 
 Yet ay she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd. 
 And ay beside her stalks her amorous knight ! 
 Still on his thighs his wonted brogues are worn. 
 And through these brogues, still tattered and betorn, 
 His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white ; 
 As when through broken clouds, at night's high noon. 
 Peeps in fair fragment forth — the fuU-orb'd harvest moon." 
 
 However this may have been, it was not likely to have caused any 
 ■erious dissension between Lamb and his old friend ; and the visit to 
 Stowey with Mary Lamb, as stated in the text, seems to have fol- 
 
EARLY POETIC EFFORTS. 37 
 
 Lloyd ; and a vision of Repentance ; which are all 
 published in the last edition of his poetical works, 
 except one of the sonnets, which was addressed to 
 
 lowed, in the first months of the year 1798. It is probable that the 
 sensitive Lloyd showed some jealousy as to the success of the volume, 
 which Coleridge naturally considered was owing to his share in the 
 work. When a new edition was talked of, he may have shown a wish 
 to be free from the alliance ; or what is more likely, thought 
 that Ms labours were obscured by " the greater Ajax." Cottle seems 
 to say that both causes were at work. Lloyd proposed to his friend 
 Lamb that they should withdraw theirs from the association, and pub- 
 lish their poems without Coleridge. On this being opened to the 
 latter by the publisher, he wrote scornfully, " It is curious that I should 
 be applied to to be persuaded to resign ; and in hopes that I mighr 
 * consent to give up' (unknown by whom) a number of poems which 
 were published at the request of the author, . . . Times change and 
 people change ; so let us keep our souls in quietness ! I have no 
 objection to any disposal of Lloyd's poems, except that of their being 
 republished with mine. The motto which I had prefixed, ' Duplex, 
 etc.,' from GroscoUius, has placed me in a ridiculous situation, but it 
 was a foolish and presumptuous start of affectionateness, and I am not 
 unwilling to incur the punishment due to my folly." " Mr. C," 
 adds Cottle, " even determined that the productions of his two late 
 friends should be excluded. Strange as it may appear, Charles Lamb 
 determined to desert the inglorious ground of neutrality, and to com- 
 mence active operations against his late friend." At the end of May, 
 1798, Lamb went down on a visit to Lloyd at Birmingham, and 
 remained a fortnight with him. Never had Lamb " been so happy in 
 his life." His enthusiastic friend, by dwelling on his little grievances 
 against Coleridge, made him a partisan, having indiscreetly shown him 
 a letter, in which was illustrated a distinction between the proportions 
 of great genius and simple talent, contrasted with great talent and 
 little genius, by the instances of Lamb's nature and his own. It was, 
 no doubt, Lloyd that repeated the speech, " Poor Lamb ! If he wants 
 any knowledge he may apply to me." This provoked Lamb to address 
 to him the table of Theses, which he proposed that Coleridge should 
 defend or oppugn in the German schools. And what shows that he 
 was hurt by the ridicule of his verses, is his rather bitter retort, 
 " Wishing, learned sir, that you may see Schiller, and swing m a 
 
38 EARLY POETIC EFFORTS. 
 
 Mrs. Siddons, and the Tomb of Douglas, which was 
 justly omitted as common-place and vapid. They 
 only occupy twenty-eight duodecimo pages, within 
 which space was comprised all that Lamb at this 
 time had written which he deemed worth pre- 
 serving. 
 
 Lamb, however, was not now so lonely as when he 
 wrote to Coleridge imploring his correspondence as 
 the only comfort of his sorrows and labours ; for, 
 through the instrumentality of Coleridge, he was now 
 rich in friends. Among his friends then was Words- 
 worth, the great regenerator of English poetry, pre- 
 paring for his long contest with the glittering forms 
 of inane phraseology which had usurped the dominion 
 of the public mind, and with the cold mockeries of 
 scorn with which their supremacy was defended. By 
 those the beauty of his character was felt ; the ori- 
 ginal cast of his powers was appreciated; and his 
 
 •wood (Vide Poems)," which refers to a sonnet addressed to the German 
 poet, in which occurs the words, " tempest-swinging wood." On 
 receipt of this challenge, Coleridge affected to treat the matter lightly, 
 saying, as he handed the letter to Cottle, " these young visionaries will 
 do each other no good." The publisher saw, however, that he was 
 " greatly hurt," and wrote off " a conciliatory letter" to Lloyd, from 
 whom he received a careless reply : — " I cannot think I have acted 
 with, or from, passion towards him. Even my solitary thoughts have 
 been easy and calm, when they have dwelt on him. ... At present I 
 could not well go to Stowey. But," he added, " he loved Cole- 
 ridge." It has been denied that even so much as a vapour ever clouded 
 the intercourse of Lamb and Coleridge, but if further proof were 
 wanting, we have only to turn to " The Old Familiar Faces," published 
 in Januaiy, 1798, and where the lines — 
 
 " I have a friend, a kinder friend had no man ; 
 Like an ingrate, I left my fHand abruptly." 
 
 refer to Coleridge. — F. 
 
EARLY POETIC EFFORTS. 39 
 
 peculiar huinour was detected and kindled into fitful 
 life. 
 
 At this time, the only literary man whom Lamb 
 knew in London was George Dyer, who had been 
 noted as an accomplished scholar, in Lamb's early 
 childhood, at Christ's Hospital. For him Lamb 
 cherished all the esteem that his guileless simplicity 
 of character and gentleness of nature could inspire ; 
 in these qualities the friends were akin ; but no two 
 men could be more opposite than they were to each 
 other, in intellectual qualifications and tastes — Lamb, 
 in all things original, and rejoicing in the quaint, the 
 strange, the extravagant ; Dyer, the quintessence 
 of learned commonplace ; Lamb wildly catching the 
 most evanescent spirit of wit and poetry ; Dyer, the 
 wondering disciple of their established forms. Dyer 
 officiated as a revering High Priest at the Altar of 
 the Muses — such as they were in the staid, anti- 
 quated trim of the closing years of the eighteenth 
 century, before they formed sentimental attachments 
 in Germany, or flirted with revolutionary France, or 
 renewed their youth by drinking the Spirit of the 
 Lakes. Lamb esteemed and loved him so well, that 
 he felt himself entitled to make sport with his pecu- 
 liarities ; but it was as Fielding might sport with his 
 own idea of Parson Adams, or Goldsmith with his 
 Di. Primrose. 
 
i 40 ) 
 
 CHAPTER 111. 
 
 [1798 — j8o6.] 
 
 Rosamund Gray. — ^John Woodvil. 
 
 In the year 1798, the blank verse of Lloyd and 
 Lamb, which had been contained in the volume pub- 
 lished in conjunction with Coleridge, was, with some 
 additions by Lloyd, published in a thin duodecimo, 
 price 2S. 6d., under the title of " Blank Verse, by 
 Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb." This unpre- 
 "iending book was honoured by a brief and scornful 
 notice in the catalogue of The Monthly Review, in 
 the small print of which the works of the poets who 
 are now recognised as the greatest ornaments of their 
 age, and who have impressed it most deeply by their 
 genius, were usually named to be dismissed with a 
 sneer. After a contemptuous notice of " The Mourn- 
 ful Muse" of Lloyd, Lamb receives his quietus in a 
 line : — " Mr. Lamb, the joint author of this little 
 volume, seems to be very properly associated with 
 his plaintive companion."^ 
 
 In this year Lamb composed his prose tale, " Rosa- 
 mond Gray," and published it in a volume of the 
 same size and price with the last, under the title of 
 " A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret," 
 which, having a semblance of story, sold much better 
 than his poems, and added a few pounds to his 
 
 ' Monthly Revteiv, Sept., 1798. 
 
ROSAMUND GRAY. 4I 
 
 slender income. This miniature romance is unique 
 in English literature. It bears the impress of a 
 recent perusal of " The Man of Feeling," and " Julia 
 de Roubigne ;" and while on the one hand it wants 
 the graphic force and delicate touches of Mackenzie, 
 it is informed with deeper feeling and breathes a 
 diviner morality than the most charming of his tales. 
 Lamb never possessed the faculty of constructing a 
 plot either fbr drama or novel ; and while he luxuriated 
 in the humour of Smollett, the wit of Fielding, or 
 the solemn pathos of Richardson, he was not amused, 
 but perplexed, by the attempt to thread the windings 
 of story which conduct to their most exquisite pas- 
 sages through the maze of adventure. In this tale, 
 nothing is made out with distinctness, except the 
 rustic piety and grace of the lovely girl and her 
 venerable grandmother, which are pictured with such 
 earnestness and simplicity as might beseem a frag- 
 ment of the book of Ruth. The villain who lays 
 waste their humble joys is a murky phantom without 
 individuality ; the events are obscured by the haze of 
 sentiment which hovers over them ; and the narrative 
 gives way to the reflections of the author, who is 
 mingled with the persons of the tale in visionary 
 confusion, and gives to it the character of a sweet 
 but disturbed dream. It has an interest now beyond 
 that of fiction ; for in it we may trace, " as in a glass 
 darkly," the characteristics of the mind and heart of 
 the author, at a time when a change was coming 
 upon them. There are the dainty sense of beauty 
 just weaned from its palpable object, and quivering 
 over its lost images ; feeling grown retrospective 
 before its time, and tinging all things with a strange 
 solemnity ; hints of that craving after immediate 
 
42 ROSAMUND GRAY. 
 
 appliances which might give impulse to a harassed 
 frame, and confidence to struggling fancy, and of 
 that escape from the pressure of agony into fantastic 
 mirth, which in after life made Lamb a problem to a 
 stranger, while they endeared him a thousand-fold to 
 those who really knew him. While the fulness of 
 the religious sentiments, and the scriptural cast of 
 the language, still partake of his early manhood, the 
 visit of the narrator of the tale to the churchyard 
 where his parents lie buried, after his nerves had 
 been strung for the endeavour by wine at the village 
 inn, and the half-frantic jollity of his old heart-broken 
 friend (the lover of the tale), whom he met there, 
 with the exquisite benignity of thought breathing 
 through the whole, prophesy the delightful pecu- 
 liarities and genial frailties of an after day. The 
 reflections he makes on the eulogistic character of all 
 the inscriptions, are drawn from his own childhood ; 
 for when a very little boy, walking with his sister in 
 a churchyard, he suddenly asked her, " Alary, where 
 do the naughty people lie ? " 
 
 "Rosamund Gray" remained unreviewed till August, 
 1800, when it received the following notice in The 
 Monthly Review's catalogue, the manufacturer of 
 which was probably more tolerant of heterodox com- 
 position in prose than verse : — " In the perusal of 
 this pathetic and interesting story, the reader who 
 has a mind capable of enjoying rational and moral 
 sentiment will feel much gratification. Mr. Lamb 
 has here proved himself skilful in touching the nicest 
 feelings of the heart, and in affording great pleasure 
 to the imagination, by exhibiting events and situa- 
 tions which, in the hands of a writer less conversant 
 with the springs and energies of the tmral sense. 
 
COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY. 43 
 
 would make a very 'sorry figure.'" While we ac- 
 knowledge this scanty praise as a redeeming trait in 
 the long series of critical absurdities, we cannot help 
 observing how curiously misplaced all the laudatory 
 epithets are ; the sentiment being profound and true, 
 but not " rational," and the " springs and energies of 
 the moral sense " being substituted for a weakness 
 which had a power of its own ! 
 
 Lamb was introduced by Coleridge to Southey as 
 early as the year 1795 ; but no intimacy ensued until 
 he accompanied Lloyd in the summer of 1797 to the 
 little village of Burton, near Christchurch, in Hamp- 
 shire, where Southey was then residing, and where 
 they spent a fortnight as the poet's guests.' After 
 Coleridge's departure for Germany, in 1798, a corre- 
 spondence began between Lamb and Southey, which 
 continued through that and part of the following 
 year ; — Southey communicates to Lamb his Eclogues, 
 which he was then preparing for the press, and Lamb 
 repaying the confidence by submitting the products 
 of his own leisure hours to his genial critic. li 
 Southey did not, in all respects, compensate Lamb 
 for the absence of his earlier friend, he excited in 
 him a more entire and active intellectual sympathy ; 
 as the character of Southey's mind bore more resem- 
 blance to his own than that of Coleridge. In purity 
 of thought ; in the love of the minutest vestige of 
 antiquity ; in a certain primness of style bounding in 
 the rich humour which threatened to overflow it ; they 
 were nearly akin : both alike reverenced childhood, 
 
 1 « Where I was lodging in a very humble cottage," says Southey. — 
 Letter to Moxon. He adds that Lloyd was inclined to form " suddee 
 friendships." — F, 
 
44 COLERIDOE AND SOUTHEY. 
 
 and both had preserved its best attributes unspotted 
 from the world. If Lamb bowed to the genius of 
 Coleridge with a fonder reverence, he felt more at 
 home with Southey; and although he did not pour 
 out the inmost secrets of his soul in his letters to 
 him as to Coleridge, he gave more scope to the " firsf 
 sprightly runnings" of his humorous fancy. 
 
 At this time Lamb's most intimate associates were 
 Lloyd and Jem White, the author of the Falstaff 
 Letters. When Lloyd was in town, he and White 
 lodged in the same house, and were fast friends, 
 though no two men could be more unlike, Lloyd 
 having no drollery in his nature, and White nothing 
 else. " You will easily understand," observes Mr. 
 Southey, in a letter with which he favoured the pub- 
 lisher, " how Lamb could sympathise with both.'" 
 
 The literary association of Lamb with Coleridge 
 and Southey drew down upon him the hostility of the 
 young scorners of the " Anti-Jacobin," who luxuriat- 
 ing in boyish pride and aristocratic patronage, tossed 
 the arrows of their wit against all charged with inno- 
 vation, whether in politics or poetry, and cared little 
 whom they wounded. No one could be more innocent 
 than Lamb of political heresy ; no one more strongly 
 opposed to new theories in morality, which he always 
 regarded with disgust ; and yet he not only shared in 
 the injustice which accused his friends of the last, 
 but was confounded in the charge of the first, — his 
 only crime being that he had published a few poems 
 deeply coloured with religious enthusiasm, in con- 
 junction with two other men of genius, who were 
 dazzled by the glowing phantoms which the French 
 
 ' Lloyd died at Versailles in 1839. — F. 
 
COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY. 45 
 
 Revolution had raised., The very first number of the 
 Anti-yacobin Magazine and Review was adorned by a 
 caricature of Gilray's, in which Coleridge and Southey 
 were introduced with asses' heads, and Lloyd and 
 Lamb as toad and frog. In the number for July 
 appeared the well-known poem of the " New Morality," 
 in which all the prominent objects of the hatred of 
 these champions of religion and order were intro- 
 duced as offering homage to Lepaux, a French char- 
 latan, — of whose existence Lamb had never even 
 heard. 
 
 " Couriers and Stars, sedition's evening host. 
 Thou Morning Chronicle, and Morning Post, 
 Whether ye aa.V.e the ' Rights of Man ' your theme, 
 Your country libel, and your God blaspheme, 
 Or dirt on private iworth and •virtue throw, 
 Still blasphemous or blackguard, praise Lepa>*x. 
 
 And ye five other wandering bards, that move 
 In sweet accord of harmony and love, 
 
 C rdge and S — th — y, L — d, and L — b and Co., 
 
 Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux ! " 
 
 Not content with thus confounding persons of the 
 most opposite opinions and the most various charac- 
 ters in one common libel, the party returned to the 
 charge in the number for September, and thus de- 
 nounced the young poets, in a parody on the " Ode 
 to the Passions," under the title of "The Anarchists." 
 
 " Next H — ^le — ft vow'd in doleful tone. 
 No more to fire a thankless age : 
 Oblivion mark'd his labours for her own, 
 Neglected from the press, and damn'd upon the stajfre. 
 
 See 1 faitlifiil to their mighty dam, 
 
 C dge, S — th — y, L — d, and L — b. 
 
 In splay-foot madrigals of love. 
 Soft moaning like the widow'd dove. 
 
46 COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY. 
 
 Pour, side-by-side, their sympathetic notes ; 
 Of equal rights, and civic feasts. 
 And tyrant kings, and knavish priests. 
 Swift through the land the tuneful mischief floats. 
 
 And nov7 to softer strains they struck the lyre, 
 
 I'hey sung the beetle or the mole, 
 
 The dying kid, or ass's foal. 
 By cruel man permitted to expire." 
 
 These effusions have the palliation which the excess 
 of sportive wit, impelled by youthful spirits and fos- 
 tered by the applause of the great, brings with it ; 
 but it will be difficult to palliate the coarse malignity 
 of a passage in the prose department of the same 
 work, in which the writer added to a statement that 
 Mr. Coleridge was dishonoured at Cambridge for 
 preaching Deism : " Since then he has left his native 
 country, commenced citizen of the world, left his 
 poor children fatherless, and his wife destitute. Ex 
 his disce, his friends Lamb and Southey." It was 
 surely rather too much even for partisans, when de- 
 nouncing their political opponents as men who " dirt 
 on private worth and virtue threw," thus to slander 
 two young men of the most exemplary character — 
 one, of an almost puritanical exactness of demeanour 
 and conduct — and the other, persevering in a life of 
 noble self-sacrifice, chequered only by the frailties of 
 a sweet nature, which endeared him even to those 
 who were not admitted to the intimacy necessary to 
 appreciate the touching example of his severer virtues ! 
 
 If Lamb's acquaintance with Coleridge and Southey 
 procured for him the scorn of the more virulent of 
 the Anti-Jacobin party, he showed by his intimacy 
 with another distinguished object of their animosit)', 
 that he was not solicitous to avert it. He was intro- 
 
GODWIN. 47 
 
 duced by Mr. Coleridge to one of the most remarkable 
 persons of that stirring time — the author of " Caleb 
 Williams," and of the " Political Justice." The first 
 meeting between Lamb and Godwin did not wear a 
 promising aspect. Lamb grew warm as the con- 
 viviality of the evening advanced, and indulged in 
 some freaks of humour which had not been dreamed 
 of in Godwin's philosophy ; and the philosopher, for: 
 getting the equanimity with which he usually looked 
 on the vicissitudes of the world or the whist-table, 
 broke into an allusion to Gilray's caricature, and 
 asked, " Pray, Mr. Lamb, are you toad or frog ?" ' 
 Coleridge was apprehensive of a rupture ; but calling 
 the next morning on Lamb, he found Godwin seated 
 at breakfast with him ; and an interchange of civilities 
 and card-parties was established, which lasted through 
 the life of Lamb, whom Godwin only survived a few 
 months. Indifferent altogether to the politics of the 
 age. Lamb could not help being struck with produc- 
 tions of its new-born energies, so remarkable as the 
 works and the character of Godwin. He seemed to 
 realize in himself what Wordsworth long afterwards 
 described, " the central calm at the heart of all agita- 
 tion." Through the medium of his mind the stormy 
 convulsions of society were seen " silent as in a 
 picture." Paradoxes the most daring wore the air of 
 deliberate wisdom as he pronounced them. He fore- 
 told the future happiness of mankind, not with the 
 inspiration of the poet, but with the grave and 
 
 ' *' Mrs. Coleridge will remember,'' writes Southey, " the scene, 
 which was to her sufficiently uncomfortable." In his first edition 
 Talfourd, mistaking the point of the jest, had written, " are you both 
 toad and frog ?" — F. 
 
^ "JOHN WOODVIL." 
 
 passionless voice of the oracle. There was nothing 
 better calculated at once to feed and to make steady 
 the enthusiasm of youthful patriots than the high 
 speculations, in which he taught them to engage on 
 the nature of social evils and the great destiny of his 
 species. No one would have suspected the author of 
 those wild theories, which startled the wise and 
 shocked the prudent, in the calm, gentlemanly person 
 who rarely said anything above the most gentle 
 common-place, and took interest in little beyond the 
 whist-table. His peculiar opinions were entirely 
 subservient to his love of letters. He thought any 
 man who had written a book had attained a superiority 
 over his fellows which placed him in another class, 
 and could scarcely understand other distinctions. Of 
 all his works Lamb liked his " Essay on Sepulchres " 
 the best — a short development of a scheme for pre- 
 serving in one place the memory of all great writers 
 deceased, and assigning to each his proper station, — 
 quite chimerical in itself, but accompanied with 
 solemn and touching musings on life and death and 
 fame, embodied in a style of singular refinement and 
 beauty. 
 
 At this time Lamb began to write the tragedy of 
 "John Woodvil." His admiration of the dramatists of 
 Elizabeth's age was yet young, and had some of the 
 indiscretion of an early love ; but there was nothing 
 affected in the antique cast of his language, or the 
 frequent roughness of his verse. His delicate sense 
 of beauty had found a congenial organ in the style 
 which he tasted with rapture ; and criticism gave him 
 little encouragement to adapt it to the frigid insipidi- 
 ties of the time. " My tragedy," says he in the first 
 letter to Southey, which alludes to the play, "will be 
 
MANNING. 49 
 
 a medley (or I intend it to be a medley) of laughter 
 and tears, prose and verse ; and, in some places, 
 rhyme; songs, wit, pathos, humour; and, if possible, 
 sublimity; — at least, 'tis not a fault in my intention if 
 it does not comprehend most of these discordant 
 atoms — Heaven send they dance not the dance of 
 death !" In another letter he there introduces the 
 delicious rhymed passage in the " Forest Scene," 
 which Godwin, having accidentally seen quoted, took 
 for a choice fragment of an old dramatist, and went 
 to Lamb to assist him in finding the author. It 
 seems to have been finished about Christmas, and 
 transmitted to Mr. Kemble. Like all young authors, 
 who are fascinated by the splendour of theatrical 
 representation, he longed to see his conceptions em- 
 bodied on the stage, and to receive his immediate 
 reward in the sympathy of a crowd of excited spec- 
 tators. The hope was vain ; — but it cheered him in 
 many a lonely hour, and inspired him to write when 
 exhausted with the business of the day, and when the 
 less powerful stimulus of the press would have been 
 insufficient to rouse him. 
 
 In the summer he revisited the scenes in Hertford- 
 shire, where, in his grandmother's time, he had spent 
 so many happy holidays. His choice list of friends 
 in the meantime received a most important addition 
 in Mr. Thomas Manning, then a mathematical tutor 
 at Cambridge; of whom he became a frequent cor- 
 respondent, and to whom he remained strongly 
 attached through life. Lloyd had become a graduate 
 of the University, and to his introduction Lamb was 
 indebted for Manning's friendship. His letters show 
 how earnestly, yet how modestly. Lamb sought it. 
 
 Early in the following year (i8oo). Lamb, with his 
 
 B 
 
50 MANNING. 
 
 sister, removed to Chapel Street, Pentonville. In the 
 summer he visited Coleridge, at Stowey, and spent a 
 few delightful holidays in his society and that of 
 Wordsworth, who then resided in the neighbourhood. 
 This was the first opportunity Lamb had enjoyed of 
 seeing much of the poet, who was destined to exercise 
 a beneficial and lasting influence on the literature 
 and moral sense of the Qpening century. At this 
 time Lamb was scarcely prepared to sympathise with 
 the naked simplicity of the " Lyrical Ballads," which 
 Wordsworth was preparing for the press. The " rich 
 conceits" of the writers of Elizabeth's reign, had been 
 blended with his first love of poetry, and he could not 
 at once acknowledge the serene beauty of a style, in 
 which language was only the stainless mirror of 
 thought, and which Sought no aid either from the 
 grandeur of artificial life or the pomp of words. In 
 after days he was among the most earnest of this 
 great poet's admirers, and rejoiced as he found the 
 scoffers who sneered at his bold experiment gradually 
 owning his power. 
 
 Coleridge shortly after came to town, to make 
 arrangements for his contributions to the daily press, 
 and afterwards spent some weeks with Lamb. It 
 was during this visit that he recommended Lamb to 
 Mr. Daniel Stuart, then editor of the Morning Post, 
 as a writer of light articles, by which he might add 
 something to an income, then barely sufiicient for the 
 decent Support of himself and his sister. It would 
 seem from his letter to Manning, that he had made an 
 offer to try his hand at some personal squibs, which, 
 ultimately, was not accepted. Manning need not 
 have feared that there would have been a particle of 
 malice in them ! Lamb afterwards became a cor- 
 
MANNING. 5! 
 
 respondent' to the paper, and has recorded his expe- 
 rience of the misery of toiling after pleasantries in one 
 of the " Essays of Elia," entitled " Newspapers 
 thirty-five years ago." " 
 
 ' Lamb may have filled this office in the more extended sense of 
 the word. The Morning Post at this time sent an agent to Margate, 
 to report the fashionable arrivals, etc. Now from an allusion in one oi 
 Lamb's letters, he would seem to have been at Margate about this 
 period (1802-3). ' ^'!t^& discovered some of these "pleasantries," 
 which will be found, poit, in the notes to the Elia Essays, — F. 
 
 ' He was not to keep this connection very long. " Charles has lost 
 the newspaper, but what we dreaded as an evil has proved the greatest 
 blessing, for we have both strangely recovered our health and spirits 
 since this has happened." — Letter of Mary Lamb, 1 804. Connected 
 with this loss, which was more serious than might have been sup- 
 posed, was a little incident which gives a charming idea of Mary 
 Lamb, her deep affection and earnestness, as well as of her pleasant 
 discrimination of character. " My brother," she writes, " has had a 
 letter from youi Mother, which has distressed him sadly — about the 
 postage of some letters being paid by my brother — ^your silly brother, 
 it seems, has informed your Mother (I did not think your brother could 
 have been so silly) that Charles had grumbled at paying the said post- 
 age. The fact was, just at that time we were very poor, having los' 
 the Morning Post, & we were beginning to practise a strict economy. 
 My brother, who never makes up his mind whetlier he will be a Miser 
 or a Spendthrift, is at all times a strange mixture of both : of this 
 failing, the even economy of your correct brother's temper makes him 
 an ill judge. The miserly part of Charles, at that time smarting under 
 his recent loss, then happened to reign triumphant ; and he would no* 
 write, or let me write, so often as he wished, because the postage cosi 
 two and four pence. Then came two or three of your poor Mother' 
 letters nearly together ; and the two & four pences he wished, but 
 grudged, to pay for his own, he was forced to pay for hers. In this 
 dismal distress, he applied to Fenwick to get his friend Motley to send 
 them free from Portsmouth. This Mr. Fenwick could have done for 
 half a word's speaking ; but this he did not do ! Then Charles fool- 
 ishly & unthinkingly complained to your brother in a half serious, hall 
 joking way; & your brother has wickedly, and with malice afore 
 thought, told your Mother. O fyp upon him ! what will your Mo 
 
 K 2 
 
52 MANNING. 
 
 Lamb's constant apprehensions of the recurrence 
 of his sister's malady were soon realized. An old 
 maid-servant who assisted her in the lodging became 
 ill ; Miss Lamb incessantly watched the death-bed ; 
 and just as the poor creature died, was again seized 
 with madness. He placed her under medical care. 
 It would seem from his letters of this time, that the 
 natural determination of Lamb " to take what plea- 
 sure he could between the acts of his distressful 
 drama," had led him into a wider circle of companion- 
 ship, and had prompted sallies of wilder and broader 
 mirth, which afterwards softened into delicacy, retain- 
 ing all its whim. A passage, which concludes one 
 of his letters to Manning, else occupied with merely 
 personal details, proves that his apprehensions for 
 the diminution of his reverence for sacred things 
 were not wholly unfounded ; while, amidst its gro- 
 tesque expressions, may be discerned the repugnance 
 to the philosophical infidelity of some of his com- 
 panions he retained through life. It may, perhaps, 
 be regarded as a sort of desperate compromise be- 
 tween a wild gaiety and religious impressions obscured 
 
 tber think of us i By entreaties & prayers 1 might have prevailed on 
 my brother to say nothing about it. But I make a point of conscience 
 never to interfere or cross my brother in the humour he happens to be 
 in. Charles is sadly fretted now, I know, at what to say to your 
 Mother. Say to her it was a jest misunderstood ; tell her Charles 
 Lamb is not the shabby fellow she & her son took him for ; but that 
 he is now & then a trifle whimsical or so. I do not ask your brother 
 to do this, for I am offended with him for the mischief he has made." 
 She adds : " I have known many single men I should have liked in my 
 life (if It had suited them) for a husband . out very few husbands have 
 I ever wished was mine, which is rather against the state in general ; 
 but one never is disposed to envy wives their good husbands. So much 
 for marrying — but however get married, if you can." — F. 
 
MANNING. 53 
 
 but not effaced ; and intimating his disapprobation 
 of infidelity, with a melancholy sense of his own 
 unworthiness seriously to express it. Indeed in all 
 his letters to Manning a vein of wild humour breaks 
 out, of which there are but slight indications in the 
 correspondence with his more sentimental friends ; 
 as if the very opposition of Manning's more scientific 
 powertohis own force of sympathy provoked the sallies 
 which the genial kindness of the mathematician fos- 
 tered. The prodigal and reckless humour of some of 
 these letters forms a striking contrast to the deep 
 feeling of the earlier letters to Coleridge. His " Es- 
 says of Elia' show the harmonious union of both. 
 
 During this year (1800) Lamb carried into effect 
 his purpose of removing to Mitre Court Buildings, 
 Temple. During this time he wrote only a few 
 poems. Meanwhile he had engaged to spend a few 
 days when he could obtain leave, with Manning at 
 Cambridge, and, just as he hoped to accomplish his 
 wish, received an invitation from Lloyd to give his 
 holiday to the poets assembled at the Lakes. In the 
 joyous excitement of spirits which the anticipated 
 visit to Manning produced, he played off Manning's 
 proposal on his friend, and abused mountains and 
 luxuriated in his love of London. 
 
 He was presently called on to " assist" at the pro- 
 duction of a tragedy, by a friend, whose more mature 
 reputation gave him readier access to the manager, 
 but who had no better claim to success than himself. 
 Mr. Godwin, whose powerful romance of Caleb Wil- 
 liams had supplied the materials for " The Iron 
 Chest" of Colman, naturally aspired, on his own 
 account, to the glory of the scene, and completed a 
 tragedy under the title of " Antonio; or, the Soldier's 
 
54 GODWIN. 
 
 Eeturn," which was accepted at Drury-lane Theatre, 
 and was announced for representation on Saturday, 
 the 13th December in this year. Lamb supplied the 
 epilogue. 
 
 Alas for human hopes 1 The play was decisively 
 damned, and the epilogue shared its fate. The tra- 
 gedy turned out a miracle of dulness for the world to 
 wonder at, although Lamb always insisted it had one 
 fine line, which he was fond of repeating — sole relic 
 of the else forgotten play.' Kemble and Mrs, Sid- 
 dons, the brother and sister of the play, toiled through 
 four acts and a half without applause or disappro- 
 bation ; one speech was not more vapid than another ; 
 and so dead was the level of the dialogue, that, 
 although its destiny was seen from afar, it presented 
 no opportunity for hissing. But as the play drew 
 towards a close, when, after a scene of frigid chiding 
 not vivified by any fire of Kemble's own, Antonio 
 drew his sword and plunged it into the heroine's 
 bosom, the " sad civility" of the audience vanished, 
 they started as at a real murder, and hooted the actors 
 from the stage. " Philosophy," which could not 
 " make a Juliet," sustained the author through the 
 trial. He sat on one of the front benches of the pit, 
 unmoved amidst the storm. When the first act 
 passed off without a hand, he expressed his satis- 
 faction at the good sense of the house ; " the proper 
 season of applause had not arrived ;" all was exactly 
 
 ' In the fourth scene of that tragedy, where tlie description of the 
 Pagan deities occurs. " In speaking of Saturn, he is figured as ' an old 
 man melancholy.' ' That was my line,' Lsmh would say, exultingly. 
 I forget how it was originally written, except that it had not the extra 
 (or eleventh) syllable, which it now has." — Procter. — F. 
 
GODWIN. 55 
 
 • 
 
 as it should be. The second act proceeded to its close 
 in the same uninterrupted calm ; his friends became 
 uneasy, but still his optimism prevailed ; he could 
 afford to wait. And though he did at last admit the 
 great movement was somewhat tardy, and that the 
 audience seemed rather patient than interested, he 
 did not lose his confidence till the tumult arose, and 
 then he submitted with quiet dignity to the fate of 
 genius, too lofty to be understood by a world as yet 
 in its childhood 1 Notwithstanding this rude repulse, 
 Mr. Godwin retained his taste for the theatre to the 
 last. On every first night of a new piece, whether 
 tragedy, comedy, or 'farce, whether of friend or foe, 
 he sat with gentle interest in a side-box, and bore its 
 fate, whatever it might be, with resignation, as he 
 had done his own.' 
 
 The ominous postponement of Lamb's theatrical 
 hopes was followed by their disappointment at the 
 commencement of the century. He was favoured 
 with at least one interview by the stately manager of 
 Drury Lane, Mr. Kemble, who extended his high-bred 
 courtesy even to authors, whom he invariably attended 
 to the door of his house in Great Russell Street, and 
 bade them "beware of the step." Godwin's cata- 
 strophe had probably rendered him less solicitous to 
 encounter a similar peril ; which the fondest admirers 
 of "John Woodvil" will not regret that it escaped. 
 While the occasional roughness of its verse would 
 have been felt as strange to ears as yet unused to the 
 old dramatists whom Lamb's Specimens had not then 
 made familiar to the town, the delicate beauties 
 
 ' Lamb's grotesque account of the scene will be found in a re- 
 ^enched passage of one of his Essays. — F. 
 
50 "JOHN WOODVIL. 
 
 enshrined within it would scarcely have been perceived 
 in the glare of the theatre. Exhibiting " the depth, 
 and not the tumults of the soul," — presenting a female 
 character of modest and retiring loveliness and noble 
 purpose, but undistracted with any violent emotion, — 
 and developing a train of circumstances which work 
 out their gentle triumphs on the heart only of the 
 hero, without stirring accident or vivid grouping of 
 persons, — it would scarcely have supplied suiBcient 
 of coarse interest to disarm the critical spirit which 
 it would certainly have encountered in all its bitter- 
 ness. Lamb cheerfully consoled himself by publishing 
 it ; and at the close of the year 1801 it appeared in a 
 small volume, of humble appearance, with the " Frag- 
 ments of Burton" (to which Lamb alluded in one of 
 his previous letters), two of his quarto ballads, and 
 the " Helen" of his sister. 
 
 The daring peculiarities attracted the notice of the 
 Edinburgh reviewers, then in the infancy of their 
 slashing career, and the volume was immolated, in 
 due form, by the self-constituted judges, who, taking 
 for their motto " jfudex damnatur cum nocens ahsol- 
 vitur," treated our author as a criminal convicted of 
 publishing, and awaiting his doom from their sen- 
 tence. With the gay recklessness of power, at once 
 usurped and irresponsible, they introduced Lord 
 Mansfield's wild construction of the law of libel into 
 literature ; like him, holding every man primd facie 
 guilty, who should be caught in the act of publishing 
 a book, and referring to the court to decide whether 
 sentence should be passed on him. The article on 
 "John Woodvil," which adorned their third number, 
 is a curious example of the old style of criticism 
 vivified by the impulses of youth. We wonder now 
 
" JOHN WOODVIL. 57 
 
 — and probably the writer of the article, if he is living, 
 will wonder with us — that a young critic should seize 
 on a little eighteen-penny book, simply printed, with- 
 out any preface ; make elaborate merriment of its 
 outline, and, giving no hint of its containing one 
 profound thought or happy expression, leave the 
 reader of the review at a loss to suggest a motive for 
 noticing such vapid absurdities. This article is 
 written in a strain of grave banter, the theme of 
 which is to congratulate the world on having a speci- 
 men of the rudest condition of the drama, " a man 
 of the age of Thespis." "At length," says the 
 reviewer, " even in composition a mighty veteran has 
 been born. Older than ^schylus, and with all the 
 spirit of originality, in an age of poets who had 
 before them the imitations of some thousand years, 
 he comes forward to establish his claim to the ancient 
 hircus, and to satiate the most remote desires of the 
 philosophic antiquary." On this text the writer 
 proceeds, selecting for his purpose whatever, torn 
 from its context, appeared extravagant and crude, 
 and ending without the slightest hint that there is 
 merit, or promise of merit, in the volume. There 
 certainly was no malice, or desire to give pain, in all 
 this ; it was merely the result of the thoughtless 
 adoption, by lads of gaiety and talent, of the old 
 critical canons of the Monthly Reviews, which had 
 been accustomed to damn all works of unpatronized 
 genius in a more summary way, and after a duller 
 fashion. These very critics wrought themselves into 
 good-nature as they broke into deeper veins of 
 thought ; grew gentler as they grew wiser : and 
 sometimes, even when, like Balaam, they came to 
 curse, like him, they ended with " blessing altogether," 
 
58 HESTER SAVORY. 
 
 as in the review of the " Excursion," which, begin- 
 ning in the old strain, " This will never do," pro- 
 ceeded to give examples of its noblest passages, and 
 to grace them with worthiest eulogy. And now, the 
 spirit of the writers thus ridiculed, especially of 
 Wordsworth, breathes through the pages of this very 
 Review, and they not seldom wear the " rich em- 
 broidery" of the language of the poet once scoffed at 
 by their literary corporation as too puerile for the 
 nursery. 
 
 The year 1803 passed without any event to disturb 
 the dull current of Lamb's toilsome life. He wrote 
 nothing this year, except some newspaper squibs. 
 His occasional connection with newspapers introduced 
 him to some of the editors and contributors of that 
 day, who sought to repair the spirit wasted by per- 
 petual exertion, in the protracted conviviality of the 
 evening, and these associates sometimes left poor 
 Lamb with an aching head, and a purse exhausted 
 by the claims of their necessities upon it. Among 
 those was Fenwick, immortalised as the Bigod of 
 " Elia," who edited several ill-fated newspapers in 
 succession, and was the author of many libels, which 
 did his employers no good and his Majesty's govern- 
 ment no harm. This year he also wrote the delightful 
 little poem on the death of Hester Savory. This he 
 sent to Manning at Paris, with the following account 
 of its subject : — 
 
 " Dear Manning, I send you some verses I have 
 made on the death of a young Quaker you may have 
 heard me speak of as being in love with for some 
 years while I lived at Pentonville, though I had never 
 spoken to her in my life. She died about a month 
 since. If yon have interest with the Abbe de Lisle, 
 
HAZLITT. 59 
 
 you may get 'em translated : he has done as much 
 for the Georgics." 
 
 The verses must have been written in the very 
 happiest of Lamb's serious mood. I cannot refrain 
 from the luxury of quoting the conclusion, though 
 many readers have it by heart. 
 
 " My sprightly neighbour, gone before 
 To that unknown and silent shore ! 
 Shall we not meet as heretofore. 
 
 Some summer morning. 
 
 When from thy cheerful eyes a ray 
 Hath struck a bliss upon the day, 
 A bliss that would not go away, 
 
 A sweet forewarning ?" 
 
 There is no vestige of Lamb's correspondence in 
 the year 1804, nor does he seem to have written for 
 the press. This year, however, added to his list of 
 friends — one in whose conversation he took great 
 delight, until death severed them — William Hazlitt. 
 This remarkable metaphysician and critic had then 
 just completed his first work, the " Essay on the 
 Principles of Human Action," but had not entirely 
 given up his hope of excelling as a painter. After a 
 professional tour through part of England, during 
 which he satisfied his sitters better than himself, he 
 remained some time at the house of his brother, then 
 practising as a portrait painter with considerable 
 success ; and while endeavouring to procure a pub- 
 lisher for his work, painted a portrait of Lamb.' 
 
 ' Some extracts from Mary Lamb's letters, of this period, will give 
 an idea of the secret gloom that overhung this milage. It suggests 
 the painful influences brother and sister had to struggle against, and 
 that there were in that household other dismal elements. This indeed 
 
6o HAZLITT. 
 
 It is one of the last of Hazlitt's efforts in an art 
 which he afterwards illustrated with the most ex- 
 was only to be expected, and is scarcely hinted at in Talfourd's equable 
 narrative. 
 
 Miss Lamb wrote in Sept., 1 805 : — " If I possibly can, I will prevail 
 upon Charles to write to your brother ; but he is so unwell, I almost 
 fear the fortnight will slip away before I can get him in the right rein, 
 indeed, it has been sad & heavy times with us lately: when I am 
 pretty well, his low spirits throws me back again ; & when he begins 
 to get a little chearful, then I do the same kind ofHce for him. I 
 heartily wish for the arrival of Coleridge ; a few such evenings as we 
 have sometimes passed with him would wind us up, and set us a going 
 again. Do not say any thing, when you write, of our low spirits — it 
 will vex Charles. You would laugh, or you would cry, perhaps both, 
 to see us sit together, looking at each other with long and rueful faces, 
 & saying, «how do you do?' & 'how do you do.'' and then we fall 
 a-crying, & say we will be better on the morrow." 
 
 Again in November : 
 
 " Your k'uid heart will, I know, even if you have been a little dis- 
 pleased, forgive me, when I assure you my spirits have been so much 
 hurt by my last illness, that at times I hardly know what I do. I do 
 not mean to alarm you about myself, or to plead an excuse ; but I am 
 very much otherwise than you have always known me. I do not think 
 any one perceives me altered, but I have lost all self-confidence in my 
 own actions, & one cause of my low spirits is, that 1 never feel satisfied 
 with any thing I do — a perception of not being in a sane state perpe- 
 tually haunts me." 
 
 What follows opens up further the troubled interior: — "Charles 
 is very busy at the Office ; he will be kept there to-day till seven or 
 eight o'clock : and he came home very smoky ts" drittky last night ; 
 so that I am afraid a hard day's work will not agree very well with 
 him. 
 
 "March [3fay] 14. — Here I was interrupted; and a long, tedious 
 interval has intervened, during which I have had neither time nor 
 inclination to write a word. The Lodging — that pride and pleasure of 
 your heart & mine, is given up, and here he is again— Charles, I 
 mean — as unsettled and as undetermined as ever. When he went to 
 the poor lodging, after the hoUidays I told you he had taken, he could 
 not endure the solitariness of them, and I had no rest for the sole ot 
 
HAZLITT. 61 
 
 quisite criticism which the knowledge and love of it 
 could inspire. 
 
 tny foot till I promised to believe his solemn protestations that he could 
 & would write as well at home a« there. Do you believe this i 
 
 " 1 have no power over Charles — he will do — what he will do. But 
 I ought to have some little influence over myself. You shall hear a 
 good account of me, and the progress I make in altering my fretful 
 temper to a calm and quiet one. It is but being once thorowly con- 
 vinced one is wrong, to make one resolve to do so no more ; and I 
 know my dismal faces have been almost as great a drawback upon 
 Charles's comfort, as his feverish, teazing ways have been upon mine. 
 Our love for each other has been the torment of our lives hitherto. I 
 am most seriously intending to bend tlie whole force of my mind to 
 counteract this, and I think I see some prospect of success. 
 
 " Of Charles ever bringing any work to pass at home, I am very 
 doubtful ; and ot the farce succeeding, I have little or no hope ; but if 
 I could once get into the way of being chearful myself, I should see an 
 easy remedy in leaving town & living cheaply, almost wholly alone ; 
 but till I do find we really are comfortable alone, and by ourselves, it 
 seems a dangerous experiment. We shall certainly stay where we are 
 till after next Christmas." — Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb. — F. 
 
( 62 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 [1806— 1815.] 
 
 " Mr. H."— Temple Lane.— The " Quarterly 
 Review" attack. 
 
 " The first-fruits of my retirement," Lamb wrote 
 to Hazlitt, " has now been a farce which goes to 
 manager to-morrow. Wish my ticket luck. God bless 
 you, and do write. — Y ouis, fumosissimus, C. Lamb." 
 The farce referred to is the delightful jeud'esprit, 
 " Mr. H.," destined to only one night's stage exist- 
 ence, but to become " good jest for ever." It must 
 be confessed that it has not substance enough for a 
 dramatic piece in two acts — a piece which must 
 present a show of real interest — involve its pair of 
 young lovers in actual perplexities — and terminate in 
 the seriousness of marriage ! " It would be rare sport 
 in Milton's " Limbo of Vanity," but is too airy for 
 the ponderous sentimentalism of the modern school 
 of farce. As Swift, in " Gulliver," brings everything 
 to the standard of size, so in this farce everything is 
 reduced to an alphabetical standard. Humour is sent 
 to school to learn its letters ; or, rather, letters are 
 made instinct with the most delicate humour. It is 
 the apotheosis of the alphabet, and teaches the value 
 of a good name without the least hint of moral 
 
 ' Leigh Hunt thought that had the name been " Mr, Horrid&ce, or 
 Mr. Hangman, or Mr. Hornowl or Hellish," etc., the effect would have 
 been better. — F. 
 
" MR. H ." 63 
 
 purpose.' This mere pleasantry — this refining on 
 sounds and letters — this verbal banter, and watery 
 collision of the pale reflexions of words, could not 
 succeed on a stage which had begun to require 
 interest, moral or immoral, to be interwoven with the 
 web of all its actions ; which no longer rejoiced in 
 the riot of animal spirits and careless gaiety; which 
 no longer permitted wit to take the sting from evil, as 
 well as the load from care ; but infected even its prince 
 of rakes, Charles Surface, with a cant of sentiment 
 which makes us turn for relief to the more honest 
 hypocrite his brother. Mr. H. " could never do ;" 
 but its composition was pleasant, and its acceptance 
 gave Lamb some of the happiest moments he ever 
 spent.'' 
 
 Wednesday, loth December, i8o5, was the wished- 
 for evening which decided the fate of " Mr. H." on 
 the boards of Drury. Great curiosity was excited by 
 the announcement ; the house was crowded to the 
 ceiling ; and the audience impatiently awaited the 
 conclusion of the long, dull, intolerable opera of " The 
 Travellers," by which it was preceded. At length, 
 Mr. EUiston, the hero of the farce, entered, gaily 
 dressed, and in happiest spirits — enough, but not too 
 much, elated — and delivered the prologue with great 
 vivacity and success. The farce began : at first it 
 was much applauded ; but the wit seemed wire-drawn ; 
 and when the curtain fell on the first act, the friends 
 of the author began to fear. The second act dragged 
 
 ' This is a too exaggerated estimate of the merits of the piece, 
 which is undramatic in construction. In Alibone's Dictionary it is 
 stated that it was acted with success at Philadelphia, — F. 
 
 ' Mary Lamb carried it herself to Drury Lane. " He was very civil 
 to me," she says of Wroughton the managfer. — F. 
 
64 "MR. H ." 
 
 heavily on, as second acts of farces will do ; a rout at 
 Bath, peopled with ill-dressed and over-dressed actors 
 and actresses, increased the disposition to yawn ; and 
 when the moment of disclosure came, and nothing 
 worse than the name Hogsflesh was heard, the audi- 
 ence resented the long play on their curiosity, and 
 would hear no more. Lamb, with his sister, sat, as 
 he anticipated, in the front of the pit, and having 
 joined in encoring the epilogue, the brilliancy of which 
 injured the farce, he gave way with equal pliancy to 
 the common feeling, and hissed and hooted as loudly 
 as any of his neighbours. The next morning's play- 
 bill contained a veracious announcement, that " the 
 new farce of Mr. H., performed for the first time last 
 night, was received by an overflowing audience with 
 universal applause, and will be repeated for the second 
 time to-morrow ;" but the stage lamps never that 
 morrow saw I Elliston would have tried it again : 
 but Lamb saw at once that the case was hopeless, 
 and consoled his friends with a century of puns for 
 the wreck of his dramatic hopes.' 
 
 ' It was thus announced. "To-morrow The Travellers, after which 
 (never acted) a new Farce in two acts, called ' Mr. H .' The charac- 
 ters by Mr. Elliston, Mr. Hartley, Mr. Wewitzer, Miss Mellon, Aliss 
 Tidswell," etc. The performance was thus criticised in the Morning 
 Chronicle .- — " Last night, after the opera of The Travellers, a new 
 
 Farce was produced here, entitled ' Mr. H .' This air of mystery 
 
 had the effect of attracting a very numerous audience. Before the rising 
 of the curtain, and for some time after, many conjectures were formed 
 respecting the name, and a few of the spectators seemed disposed to 
 concur with some of the personages of the piece, in the supposition 
 that he must turn out to be no other than the Prince of Hesse in dis- 
 guise." An account follows of the plot. " The idea certainly might 
 have afforded material ioi a laughable entertainment, as it may be easily 
 conceived that the fear of discovery might have brought Mr. H 
 
" MR. H ." 65 
 
 From this period, the letters of Lamb which have 
 been preserved are comparatively few, with reference 
 
 into many awkvrard predicaments, and his excessive irritability respect- 
 ing liis name occasioned mucli ludicrous conversation. The author 
 has not by any means made so much of it as he might have done. At 
 the same time he did not entirely fail, for the horror of Mr. H, at his 
 own name, and his embarrassment from the eagerness of everybody to 
 discover it, was tolerably supported. But there were defects in the 
 piece, which justified a part of the disapprobation which it experienced 
 towards the close. The chief of these were, first, the excessive length 
 to which the puns on the name were carried after the discovery ; and 
 secondly, the want of prominent characters. . . . This excessive 
 punning produces disgust rather than laughter. The only character of 
 any consequence is Mr. H. himself, and he, unfortunately, is not 
 managed so as to enable him to support completely the interest of the 
 piece. The unexpected change of name seemed to shock from its 
 improbability, and the pun attached to it rather increased the disgust. 
 The conclusion, too, was exceedingly tame and ill-managed. If, 
 however, the most obnoxious of the puns were struck out, and a more 
 interesting concluding scene devised, the piece might be tolerable. 
 Certainly, even as it is, more insipid farces have been endured, and the 
 dissatisfaction with which it was received was greater than the occasion 
 called for. A considerable number, however, declared in its favour, 
 and it was given out for a second representation on Friday." The 
 author, Hazlitt, and Mr. Crabb Robinson sat together in the front 
 row of the pit. The reception of the prologue was encouraging, and 
 it was believed that had a less ponderous piece than The Travellers 
 opened the performance the piece might have succeeded. His two 
 companions were astonished to find him joining in the hisses. Lewis 
 the actor declared, that with judicious curtailment it would even have 
 been popular. Even now, when its author's reputation is estab- 
 lished, it would be found amusing, and certainly interesting, if com- 
 pressed into a one-act piece. On the following morning it was 
 announced for Friday evening ; but in the programme of that day 
 appeared the following : — " * , * The new farce of Mr. H is with- 
 drawn at the request of the author ;" and " Three Weeks after Mar- 
 riage" was substituted. " Much whim," said the Daily Advert'uer, 
 "vras expected. The piece was completely condemned." The laborious 
 Geneste declares "that worse farces than this have been successful." — F. 
 
66 TEMPLE LANE. 
 
 to the years through which they are scattered. He 
 began to write in earnest for the press, and the time 
 thus occupied was withdrawn from his correspondents, 
 while his thoughts and feeh'ngs were developed by a 
 different excitement, and expressed in other forms. 
 In the year 1807 the series of stories founded on the 
 plays of Shakspeare, referred to in his last letter to 
 Manning, was published ; in which the outlines of 
 his plots are happily brought within the apprehension 
 of children, and his language preserved wherever it 
 was possible to retain it; a fit counterpoise to those 
 works addressed to the young understanding, to 
 which Lamb still cherished the strong distaste which 
 broke out in one of his previous letters. Of these 
 tales. King Lear, Macbeth, Timon of Athens, Romeo 
 and Juliet, Hamlet, and Othello, are by Charles, and 
 the others by Mary Lamb; hers being, as Lamb 
 always insisted, the most felicitous, but all well 
 adapted to infuse some sense of the nobleness of the 
 poet's thoughts into the hearts of their little readers. 
 He had two other works preparing for the press. 
 
 Miss Lamb, also, sought to contribute to her bro- 
 ther's scanty income by presenting the plots of some 
 of Shakespeare's plays in prose, with the spirit of the 
 poet's genius interfused, and many of his happiest 
 expressions preserved, in which good work Lamb 
 assisted her ; though he always insisted, as he did in 
 reference to " Mrs. Leicester's School," that her por- 
 tions were the best. 
 
 During the next year they produced their charming 
 little book of " Poetry for Children," and removed 
 from Mitre Court to Southampton Buildings, but only 
 for a few months, and preparatory to a settlement 
 (which meant to be final) in those rooms in Inner 
 
TEMPLE LANE. 67 
 
 Temple Lane, — most dear of all their abodes to the 
 memory of their ancient friends — where first I knew 
 them. The change produced its natural and sad 
 effect on Miss Lamb.' 
 
 I Here is i/Lairy Lamb's quaintsketch of the place, written four years 
 later : — " We still live in Temple Lane, but I am now sitting in a 
 room you never saw ; soon after you left us we were distressed by the 
 cries of a cat, which seemed to proceed from the garrets adjoining to 
 ours, and only separated from ours by the locked door on the farther 
 side of my brother's bedroom, which you know was the little room at 
 the top of the kitchen stairs. We had the lock forced and let poor 
 puss out from behind a panel of the wainscot, and she lived with us 
 from that time, for we were in gratitude bound to keep her, as she had 
 introduced us to four untenanted, unowned rooms, and by degrees we 
 have taken possession of these unclaimed apartments — first putting up 
 lines to dry our clothes, then moving my brother's bed into one of 
 them, more commodious than his own room. And last winter, my 
 brother being unable to pursue a work he had begun, owing to the 
 kind interruptions of friends who were more at leisure than himself, I 
 persuaded him that he might write at his ease in one of these rooms, 
 as he could not then hear the door knock, or hear himself denied to be 
 at home, which was sure to make him call out and convict the poor 
 maid in a fib. Here, I said, he might be almost really not at home. 
 So I put in an old grate, and made him a fire in the largest of these 
 garrets, and carried in one table and one chair, and bid him write 
 away, and consider himself as much alone as if he were in some lodging 
 on the midst of Salisbury Plain, or any other wide unfrequented place 
 where he could expect few visitors to break .n upon his solitude. I 
 left him quite delighted with his new acquisition, but in a few hours 
 he came down again with a sadly dismal face. He could do nothing, 
 he said, with those bare whitewashed walls before his eyes. He could 
 not write in that dull unfurnished prison. 
 
 " The next day, before he came home from his office, I had gathered 
 up various bits of old carpeting to cover the floor ; and, to a little 
 break the blank look of the bare walls, I hung up a few old prints that 
 used to ornament the kitchen, and after dinner, with great boast of 
 what an improvement I had made, I took Charles once more into his 
 new study. A week of busy labours followed, in which I think you 
 would not have disliked to have been our assistant. My brother and I 
 
 P 2 
 
68 TEMPLE LANE. 
 
 A journey into Wiltshire, to visit Hazlitt, followed 
 Miss Lamb's recovery. Martin Burney and a large 
 company were of the party.' 
 
 almost covered the walls with prints, for which purpose he cut out 
 every print from every book in his old library, coming in every now 
 and then to ask my leave to strip a fresh poor author — ^which he might 
 not do, you know, without my permission, as I am elder sister. There 
 was such pasting, such consultation where their portraits, and where a 
 series of pictures from Ovid, Milton, and Shakespeare would show to 
 most advantage, and in what obscure corner authors of humbler note 
 might be allowed to tell their stories. All the books gave up their 
 stories but one — a translation from Ariosto — a delicious set of four- 
 and-twenty prints, and for which I had marked out a conspicuous 
 place ; when lo ! we found at the moment the scissors were going to 
 work that a part of the poem was printed at the back of every picture. 
 What a cruel disappointment I To conclude this long story about 
 nothing, the poor despised garret is now called the print room, and is 
 become our most favourite sitting-room." — Mary Lamb to Miss Betham, 
 Nov. 7,, 1 8 14. 
 
 Mr. Crabb Robinson says the place was little more than " a garret;" 
 and in his diary, Talfourd's allusion to its disastrous effect on Mary Lamb 
 receives significant confirmation. In 1 8 10, Mr. Robinson wrote that she 
 was " in a feeble and tottering condition. IVater prescribed." The 
 amiable motive of her brother's abstinence appears to have been a 
 wish to encourage and support her ; and though the practice improved 
 his health, yet when in low spirits it left him without a remedy. — F. 
 
 ' As a large company was invited ; and Mary Lamb, with touching 
 forethought, seems to have sent the hostess a contribution to defray the 
 extra expense, " We can spare you also just five pounds," she wrote. 
 " You are not to say this to Hazlitt, lest his delicacy should be alarmed ; 
 but I tell you what Martin and I have planned, that, if you happen to 
 be empty pursed at this time, you may think it as well to make him 
 up a bed in the best kitchen. 
 
 " I think it very probable that Phillips will come ; and, if you do 
 not like such a crowd of us, for they both talk of staying a whole 
 month, tell me so, and we will put off our visit to next summer. 
 
 «The 14th July is the day Mardn has fixed for coming. I 
 should have written before, if I could have got a positive answer 
 from them." — F. 
 
TEMPLE LANE. 69 
 
 But the country excursions, with which Lamb 
 sometimes occupied his weeks of vacation, were taken 
 with fear and trembling — often foregone — and finally 
 given up, in consequence of the sad eifects which the 
 excitement of travel and change produced in his 
 beloved companion. 
 
 Two new works were shortly after published. " The 
 Adventures of Ulysses " had some tinge of the 
 quaintness of Chapman; it gives the plot of the 
 earliest and one of the most charming of romances, 
 without spelling its interest. The " Specimens of 
 English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of 
 Shakspeare," were received with more favour than 
 Lamb's previous works, though it was only by slow 
 and imperceptible degrees that they won their way to 
 the apprehensions of the most influential minds, and 
 wrought out the genial purpose of the editor in 
 renewing a taste for the great contemporaries of 
 Shakspeare. The Monthly Review vouchsafed a 
 notice in its large print, upon the whole favourable, 
 according to the existing fashion of criticism, but 
 " craftily qualified." It will scarcely be credited, 
 without reference to the article itself, that on the 
 notes the critic pronounces this judgment : " The 
 notes before us indeed have nothing very remarkable, 
 except the style, which is formally abrupt and elabo- 
 rately quaint. Some of the most studied attempts to 
 display excessive feeling we had noted for animad- 
 version, but the task is unnecessary," etc. 
 
 It is easy to conceive of readers strongly dissenting 
 from some of the passionate eulogies of these notes, 
 and even taking oifence at the boldness of the allu- 
 sions ; but that any one should read these essences of 
 criticism, suggesting the profoundest thoughts, and 
 
yo THE "QUARTERLY REVIEW ' ATTACK. 
 
 replete throughout with fine imagery, and find in 
 them " nothing remarkable," is a mystery which 
 puzzles us. But when the same critic speaks of the 
 heroine of the " Broken Heart" as "the light-heeled 
 Calantha," it is easy to appreciate his fitness for 
 sitting in judgment on the old English drama and the 
 congenial expositor of its grandeurs 1 
 
 In the autumn, the establishment of a Quarterly 
 Magazine, entitled the Reflector, opened a new sphere 
 for Lamb's powers as a humorist and a critic. Its 
 editor, Mr. Leigh Hunt, having been educated in the 
 same school, enjoyed many associations and friend- 
 ships in common with him, and was thus able to 
 excite in Lamb the greatest motive for exertion in the 
 zeal of kindness. In this Magazine appeared some 
 of Lamb's noblest effusions ; his essay " On Garrick 
 and Acting," which contains the character of Lear, 
 perhaps the noblest criticism ever written, and on the 
 noblest human subject ; his delightful " Essays on 
 Hogarth ;" his " Farewell to Tobacco," and several 
 of the choicest of his gayer pieces. 
 
 The number of the Quarterly Review, for December, 
 1811, contained an attack upon Lamb, which it would 
 be difficult, as well as painful, to characterise as it 
 deserves. Mr. Weber, in his edition of " Ford," had 
 extracted Lamb's note on the catastrophe of " The 
 Broken Heart," in which Lamb, speaking of that 
 which he regarded as the highest exhibition of tragic 
 suffering which human genius had depicted, dared an 
 allusion which was perhaps too bold for those who 
 did not understand the peculiar feeling by which it 
 was suggested, but which no unprejudiced mind could 
 mistake for the breathing of other than a pious spirit. 
 In reviewing Mr. Weber, the critic, who was also the 
 
THE "QUARTERLY REVIEW ATTACK. 7] 
 
 editor of the Review, thus complains of the quota- 
 tion : — " We have a more serious charge to bring 
 against the editor than the omission of points, or the 
 misapprehension of words. He has polluted his 
 pages with the blasphemies of a poor maniac, who, it 
 seems, once published some detached scenes of the 
 ' Broken Heart.' For this unfortunate creature, every 
 feeling mind will find an apology in his calamitous 
 situation; but for Mr. Weber, we know not where 
 the warmest of his friends will find palliation or 
 excuse.'' It would be unjust to attribute this para- 
 graph to the accidental association of Lamb in literary 
 undertakings with persons like Mr. Hunt, strongly 
 opposed to the political opinions of Mr. Giiford. It 
 seems rather the peculiar expression of the distaste 
 of a small though acute mind for an original power 
 which it could not appreciate, and which disturbed 
 the conventional associations of which it was master, 
 aggravated by bodily weakness and disease.' 
 
 ' Talfourd, in his warmth for his friend, taunts the reviewer with 
 having a small but acute mind, with associations " aggravated by bodily 
 weakness and disease." This reproach offends against taste almost as 
 much as the original attack. It would seem incredible indeed, even in 
 those days of personality, that any writer would have made an infirmity 
 of the kind a subject of abuse ; this kind of recrimination being in 
 favour, as Lamb has said in one of his " popular fallacies," with the 
 lower and less cultivated classes. It seems that Mr. Gifford meant no 
 more than the conventional terms that were applied in Ihe Anti-faco- 
 bin and other Tory organs, to Radicals and Freethinkers, then inva- 
 riably pronounced to be iools, madmen, or scoundrels. Southey 
 wrote to the publisher, Murray, lamenting that such an unfortunate 
 expression had been used, and received ii-om Giflbrd the following 
 dated Feb. 13, 1812 : — 
 
 " My dear Sir, — ... I have this moment received your last letter 
 to Murray. It has grieved and shocked me beyond expression ; but, 
 my dear friend, I am innocent, as far as the intent goes. T call God to 
 
72 THE "QUARTERLY REVIEW" ATTACK. 
 
 Notwithstanding this attack, Lamb was prompted 
 by his admiration for Wordsworth's " Excursion" to 
 contribute a review of that work, on its appearance, 
 to the Quarterly, and he anticipated great pleasure in 
 the poet's approval of his criticism ; but when the 
 review appeared, the article was so mercilessly man- 
 gled by the editor, that Lamb entreated Wordsworth 
 not to read it. For these grievances Lamb took a 
 very gentle revenge in his sonnet, " Saint Crispin to 
 Mr. Gifford." 
 
 Lamb, as we have seen, cared nothing for politics ; 
 
 witness that in the whole course of my life I never heard one syllable 
 of Mr. Lamb or his family. I knew not that he ever had a sister, or that 
 he had parents living, or that he or any person connected with him had 
 ever manifested the slightest tendency to insanity. In a word, I declare 
 to you, in the most solemn manner, that all I ever knew or ever heard 
 of Mr. Lamb was merely his name. Had I been aware of one of the 
 circumstances which you mention, I would have lost my right arm 
 sooner than have written what I have. The plain truth is, I was 
 shocked at seeing him compare the suf&ring and death of a person 
 who just continues to dance after the death of her lover is announced 
 (for this is all her merit) to the pangs of Mount Calvary ; and not 
 choosing to attribute it to folly, because I reserved that chaige for 
 Weber, I unhappily in the present case ascribed it to madness, for 
 which I pray God to forgive me, since the blow has fallen heavily where 
 I really thought it would not be felt. I considered Lamb as a thought- 
 less scribbler, who, in circumstances of ease, amused himself by writing 
 upon any subject. Why I thought so I cannot tell, but it was the 
 opinion I formed to myself, for I now regret to say I never made any 
 inquiry upon the subject; nor by any accident in the whole course of 
 my life did I hear him mentioned beyond his name." 
 
 It must be siud that nothing could be more frank or truthful than 
 this explanadon ; and this genuine distress, as Southey says, makes one 
 think better of Giflbrd. It was unfortunate that the letter was not 
 found in time to be used in the Biography. Further, on consulting 
 the number, I could not succeed in finding the obnoxious passage : so 
 Giflord must have vrithdrawn it in the later impressions. — F. 
 
THE "QUARTERLY REVIEW ATTACK. 73 
 
 yet his desire to serve his friends sometimes induced 
 him to adopt for a short time their view of public 
 aiFairs, and assist them with a harmless pleasantry.' 
 His epigram on the disappointment of the Whig 
 associates of the Regent, appeared in the Examiner; 
 and the better known " Triumph of the Whale," also 
 published in the same paper, would probably have 
 only caused a smile if read by the Regent himself, 
 and may now be republished without offence to any 
 one. At the time when he wrote it, Lamb used to 
 stop any passionate attacks upon the prince, with the 
 smiling remark, " I love my Regent." 
 
 * This scarcely represents the true state of the case. Lamb's politi- 
 cal squibs all show a heartiness and bitterness — ^witness his epigram on 
 Sir J. Mackintosh — which proves that his feelings were engaged. 
 These satires, too, are much more numerous than is supposed. It was 
 only Talfourd's amiable optimism that could have led him to believe 
 that the Regent would have "smiled" on reading " The Whale ;" a 
 mope bitter, savage onslaught was never made. — F. 
 
( 74 ) 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 [1815 to 1817.] 
 
 Lamb's Suppers. 
 
 It was at the beginning of the year 1815 that I had 
 first the happiness of a personal acquaintance with 
 Mr. Lamb. With his scattered essays and poems I 
 had become familiar a few weeks before, through the 
 instrumentality of Mr. Barron Field, now Chief 
 Justice of Gibraltar, who had been brought into close 
 intimacy with Lamb by the association of his own 
 family with Christ's Hospital, of which his father was 
 the surgeon, and by his own participation in the 
 Reflector. Living then in chambers in Inner 
 Temple Lane, and attending those of Mr. Chitty, the 
 special pleader, which were on the next staircase to 
 Mr. Lamb's, I had been possessed some time by a 
 desire to become acquainted with the writings of my 
 gifted neighbour, which my friend was able only par- 
 tially to gratify. "John Woodvil," and the number 
 of the Reflector enriched with Lamb's article, he 
 indeed lent me, but he had no copy of " Rosamund 
 Gray," which I was most anxious to read, and which, 
 after earnest search through all the bookstalls within 
 the scope of my walks, I found, exhibiting proper 
 marks of due appreciation, in the store of a little 
 circulating library near Holborn. There was some- 
 thing in this little romance so entirely new, yet 
 breathing the air of old acquaintance; a sense of 
 
lamb's suppers. 75 
 
 beauty so delicate and so intense ; and a morality so 
 benignant and so profound, that, as I read it, my 
 curiosity to see its author rose almost to the height 
 of pain. The commencement of the new year brought 
 me that gratification ; I was invited to meet Lamb at 
 dinner, at the house of Mr. William Evans, a gentle- 
 man holding an office in the India House, who then 
 lived in Weymouth Street, and who was a proprietor 
 of the Pamphleteer, to which I had contributed 
 some idle scribblings. My duties at the office did not 
 allow me to avail myself of this invitation to dinner, 
 but I went up at ten o'clock, through a deep snow, 
 palpably congealing into ice, and was amply repaid 
 when I reached the hospitable abode of my friend. 
 There was Lamb, preparing to depart, but he stayed 
 half an hour in kindness to me, and then accompanied 
 me to our common home — the Temple. 
 
 Methinks I see him before me now, as he appeared 
 then, and as he continued, with scarcely any per- 
 ceptible alteration to me, during the twenty years of 
 intimacy which followed, and were closed by his death. 
 A light frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a breath 
 would overthrow it, clad in clerk-like black, was sur- 
 mounted by a head of form and expression the most 
 noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about 
 an expanded forehead ; his eyes, softly brown, twin- 
 kled with varying expression, though the prevalent 
 feeling was sad ; and the nose slightly curved, and 
 delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline 
 of the face regularly oval, completed a head which 
 was finely placed on the shoulders, and gave im- 
 portance, and even dignity, to a diminutive and 
 shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance 
 — catch its quivering sweetness — and fix it for ever in 
 
76 lamb's suppers. 
 
 words ? There are none, alas ! to answer the vain 
 desire of friendship. Deep thought, striving with 
 humour ; the lines of suffering wreathed into cordial 
 mirth ; and a smile of painful sweetness, presents an 
 image to the mind it can as little describe as lose. 
 His personal appearance and manner are not unfitly 
 characterised by what he himself says in one of his 
 letters to Manning of Braham — " a compound of the 
 Jew, the gentleman, and the angel." He took my 
 arm, and we walked to the Temple, Lamb stammering 
 out fine remarks as we walked ; and when we reached 
 his staircase, he detained me with an urgency which 
 would not be denied, and we mounted to the top 
 story, where an old petted servant, called Becky, was 
 ready to receive us. We were soon seated beside a 
 cheerful fire ; hot water and its better adjuncts were 
 before us ; and Lamb insisted on my sitting with him 
 while he smoked " one pipe" — for, alas ! for poor 
 human nature — he had resumed his acquaintance 
 with his " fair traitress." How often the pipe and 
 the glasses were replenished, I will not undertake to 
 disclose ; but I can never forget the conversation : 
 though the first, it was more solemn, and in higher 
 mood, than any I ever after had with Lamb through 
 the whole of our friendship. How it took such a 
 turn between two strangers, one of them a lad of not 
 quite twenty, I cannot tell ; but so it happened. We 
 discoursed then of life and death, and our anticipation 
 of a world beyond the grave. Lamb spoke of these 
 awful themes with the simplest piety, but expressed 
 his own fond cleavings to life — to all well-known 
 accustomed things — and a shivering (not shuddering) 
 sense of that which is to come, which he so finely 
 indicated in his " New Year's Eve," years afterwards. 
 

 ,/ 
 
lamb's suppers. 77 
 
 It was two o'clock before we parted, when Lamb 
 gave me a hearty invitation to renew my visit at 
 pleasure ; but two or three months elapsed before I 
 saw him again. In the meantime, a number of the 
 Pamphleteer, contained an " Essay on the Chief 
 Living Poets," among whom on the title appeared 
 the name of Lamb, and some page or two were ex- 
 pressly devoted to his praises. It was a poor tissue 
 of tawdry eulogies — a shallow outpouring of young 
 enthusiasm in fine words, which it mistakes for 
 thoughts ; yet it gave Lamb, who had hitherto received 
 scarcely civil notice from reviewers, great pleasure to 
 find that any one recognised him as having a place 
 among the poets. The next time I saw him, he came 
 almost breathless into the ofiice, and proposed to give 
 me what I should have chosen as the greatest of all 
 possible honours and delights — an introduction to 
 Wordsworth, who I learned, with a palpitating heart, 
 was actually at the next door. I hurried out with my 
 kind conductor, and a minute after was presented by 
 Lamb to the person whom in all the world I venerated 
 most with this preface : — " Wordsworth, give me 
 leave to introduce to you my only admirer." 
 
 The years which Lamb passed in his chambers in 
 Inner Temple Lane were, perhaps, the happiest of 
 his life. His salary was considerably augmented, his 
 fame as an author was rapidly extending ;' he resided 
 
 ' Many years later he met Moore at breakfasts and dinners ; and it 
 is amusing to see tlie air of patronage witli whicli the poet records his 
 impressions, ** A clever fellow certainly," he writes in his diary, " but 
 full of villanous and abortive puns, which he miscarries of every 
 minute." He was, however, pleased with his comic idea of forming 
 a library solely of the heroes of the Dunciad, displacing the Humes. 
 Gibbons, and other respectable authors, "which no gentleman's library 
 
78 lamb's suppers. 
 
 near the spot which he best loved ; and was surrounded 
 by a motley group of attached friends, some of them 
 men of rarest parts, and all strongly attached to him 
 and to his sister. Here the glory of his Wednesday 
 nights shone forth in its greatest lustre. If you did 
 not meet there the favourites of fortune ; authors 
 whose works bore the highest price in Paternoster 
 Row, and who glittered in the circles of fashion ; you 
 might find those who had thought most deeply, felt 
 most keenly, and were destined to produce the most 
 lasting influences on the literature and manners of 
 the age. There Hazlitt, sometimes kindling into 
 fierce passion at any mention of the great reverses of 
 his idol Napoleon, at other times bashfully enunciated 
 the finest criticism on art; or dwelt with genial 
 iteration on a passage in Chaucer ; or, fresh from the 
 theatre, expatiated on some new instance of energy 
 in Kean, or reluctantly conceded a greatness to 
 Kemble ; or detected some popular fallacy with the 
 fairest and the subtlest reasoning. There Godwin, 
 as he played his quiet rubber, or benignantly joined 
 in the gossip of the day, sat an object of curiosity 
 and wonder to the stranger, who had been at one 
 time shocked or charmed with his high speculation, 
 and at another awe-struck by the force and graphic 
 power of his novels. There Coleridge sometimes, 
 though rarely, took his seat; and then the genial 
 hubbub of voices was still ; critics, philosophers, and 
 
 should be without." Yet Lamb was delighted with him. " Mister 
 Moore," Mr. Crabb Robinson heard him call out not very distinctly 
 across the table, " will you drink a glass of wine with me ?" Thej 
 suiting the action to the word, he went on : " Mister Moore, till now 
 I have always felt an antipathy, but now ttiat I have seen you, I shall 
 like you ever after." — F. 
 
LAMB'S SUPPERS. 
 
 79 
 
 poets, were contented to listen ; and toil-worn lawyers, 
 clerks from the India House, and members of the 
 Stock Exchange, grew romantic while he spoke. 
 Lamb used to say that he was inferior then to what 
 he had been in his youth ; but I can scarcely believe 
 it ; at least there is nothing in his early writing which 
 gives any idea of the richness of his mind so lavishly 
 poured out at this time in his happiest moods. 
 Although he looked much older than he was, his hair 
 being silvered all over, and his person tending to cor- 
 pulency, there was about him no trace of bodily sick- 
 ness or mental decay, but rather an air of voluptuous 
 repose. His benignity of manner placed his auditors 
 entirely at their ease, and inclined them to listen 
 delighted to the sweet, low tone in which he began to 
 discourse on some high theme. Whether he had 
 won for his greedy listener only some raw lad, or 
 charmed a circle of beauty, rank, and wit, who hung 
 breathless on his words, he talked with equal elo- 
 quence ; for his subject, not his audience, inspired 
 him. At first his tones were conversational ; he 
 seemed to dally with the shadows of the subject and 
 with fantastic images which bordered it ; but gradually 
 the thought grew deeper, and the voice deepened with 
 the thought ; the stream gathering strength, seemed^ 
 to bear along with it all things which opposed its 
 progress, and blended them with its current; and 
 stretching away among regions tinted with ethereal 
 colours, was lost at airy distance in the horizon of 
 the fancy. His hearers were unable to grasp his 
 theories, which were indeed too vast to be exhibited 
 in the longest conversation ; but they perceived noble 
 images, generous suggestions, affecting pictures of 
 virtue, which enriched their minds and nurtured their 
 
So lamb's suppers. 
 
 best affections. Coleridge was sometimes induced to 
 recite portions of " Christabel," then enshrined in 
 manuscript from eyes profane, and gave a bewitching 
 effect to its wizard lines. But more peculiar in its 
 beauty than this, was his lecitation of Kubla Khan. 
 As he repeated the passage — 
 
 A damsel with a dulcimer 
 In a vision once I saw : 
 
 It was an Abyssinian maid. 
 And on Iter dulcimer she played. 
 Singing of Mont Abora ! 
 
 his voice seemed to mount, and melt into air, as the 
 images grew more visionary, and the suggested asso- 
 ciations more remote. He usually met opposition by 
 conceding the point to the objector, and then went 
 on with his high argument as if it had never been 
 raised : thus satisfying his antagonist, himself, and 
 all who heard him ; none of whom desired to hear his 
 discourse frittered into points, or displaced by the 
 near encounter even of the most brilliant wits. The 
 first time I met him, which was on one of those 
 Wednesday evenings, we quitted the party together 
 between one and two in the morning ; Coleridge took 
 my arm and led me nothing loath, at a very gentle 
 pace, to his lodgings, at the Gloucester Coffee House, 
 pouring into my ear the whole way an argument by 
 which he sought to reconcile the doctrines of Neces- 
 sity and Free-will, winding on through a golden maze 
 of exquisite illustration ; but finding no end, except 
 with the termination of that (to me) enchanted walk. 
 He was only then on the threshold of the Temple of 
 Truth, into which his genius darted its quivering and 
 uncertain rays, but which he promised shortly to light 
 
lamb's SUPPERS. 8l 
 
 up with unbroken lustre. " I understood a beauty in 
 the words, but not the words : " 
 
 " And when the stream of sound. 
 Which overflowed the soul, had passed away, 
 A consciousness survived that it had left. 
 Deposited upon the silent shore 
 Of memory, images and gentle thoughts. 
 Which cannot die, and will not be destroyed," 
 
 Men of "great mark and likelihood" — attended those 
 delightful suppers, where the utmost freedom pre- 
 vailed — including politicians of every grade, from 
 Godwin up to the editor of the New Times. 
 
 Hazlitt has alluded con amore to these meetings in 
 his Essay " On the Conversation of Authors,'" and 
 
 1 The following is his graphic sketch of these evenings : — "This was 
 formerly the case at Lamb's, where we used to have many lively 
 skirmishes at his Thursday evening parties. I doubt whether the 
 small-coal- man's musical parties could exceed them. O 1 for the pen 
 of John Buncle to consecrate & petit sowvenir to their memory. There 
 was Lamb himself, the most delightful, the most provoking, the most 
 witty and sensible of men I He always made the best pun and the 
 best remark in the course of the evening. His serious conversation, 
 like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered out such 
 fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things in half a dozen half-sentences, as 
 he does. His jests scald like tears, and he probes a question with a 
 play upon words. What a keen, laughing, hairbrained view of home- 
 felt truth ! What choice venom ! How often did we cut into the 
 haunch of letters, while we discussed the mutton on the table ! How 
 we skimmed the cream of criticism ! How we got into the heart ot 
 controversy 1 How we picked out the marrow of authors 1 And in our 
 flowing cups many a good name and true was freshly remembered. 
 Recollect, most sage and critical reader, that in all this I was but a 
 guest. Need I go over the names. They were the old everlasting set 
 — Milton and Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addison, 
 Swiit and Gay, Smollett, Sterne, Richardson j Hogarth's prints, Claude's 
 landscapes ; the cartoons at Hampton Court, and all those things, that, 
 having once been, must ever be. The Scotch novels had not then been 
 
 G 
 
82 lamb's suppers. 
 
 has reported one of the most remarkable discussions 
 which graced them in his Essay " On Persons one 
 would wish to have seen," published by his son, in 
 the two volumes of his remains, which with so affec- 
 tionate a care he has given to the world. In this was 
 a fine touch of Lamb's pious feeling, breaking through 
 his fancies and his humours, which Hazlitt has 
 recorded, but which cannot be duly appreciated, 
 except by those who can recall to memory the suffused 
 eye and quivering lip with which he stammered out a 
 reference to the name which he would not utter. 
 " There is only one other person I can ever think of 
 after this," said he. " If Shakespeare was to come 
 into the room, we should all rise to meet him ; but if 
 
 heard of, so we said nothing about them. In general we were hard 
 upon the moderns. The author of the " Rambler" was only tolerated 
 in Boswell's Life of him ; and it was as much as any one could do to 
 edge in a word for Junius. Lamb could not bear Gil Bias. This was 
 a fault. I remember the greatest triumph I ever had was in persuading 
 him, after some years' difficulty, that Fielding was better than Smollett. 
 On one oceasion he was for making out a list of persons &mous in 
 history that one would wish to see : at the head of whom were Pontius 
 Pilate, Sir Thomas Brown, and Dr. Faustus ; but we black-balled most 
 of his list. With what a gusto would he describe his favourite authors, 
 Donne, or Sir Philip Sidney, and call their most crabbed passages deli- 
 cious 1 He tried them on his palate as epicures taste olives, and his 
 observations had a smack in tliem like a roughness on the tongue. 
 With what discrimination he hinted a defect in what he admired most ; 
 as in saying that the display of the sumptuous banquet in ' Paradise 
 Lost' was not in true keeping, as the simplest fare was all that was 
 necessary to tempt the extremity of hunger ; and stating that Adam 
 and Eve in ' Paradise Lost' were too much like married people. There 
 was no fuss or cant about him, nor were his sweets or his sours ever 
 diluted witli one particle of affectation. I cannot say that the party at 
 Lamb's were all of one description. There were honorary members — 
 lay brothers. Wtt and good fellotxiship was the motto inscribed over 
 
lamb's suppers. 83 
 
 That Person were to come into it, we should all fall 
 down and kiss the hem of his garment." 
 
 Lamh's intention of spending the rest of his days 
 in the Middle Temple was not to be realized. The 
 inconvenience of being in chambers began to be felt 
 as he and his sister grew older, and in the autumn of 
 this year they removed to lodgings in Russell Street, 
 Covent Garden, the corner house. Being now in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of the theatres, Lamb re- 
 newed the dramatic associations of his youth, which 
 the failure of one experiment had not chilled. 
 Although he rather loved to dwell on the recollections 
 of the actors who had passed from the stage, than to 
 mingle with the happy crowds who hailed the succes- 
 
 the door. When a stranger came in, it was not asked, 'Has he 
 written anything,' We were above that pedantry, but we waited to 
 see what he could do. If he could take a hand at picquet he was 
 welcome to sit down ; . . . we abhorred insipidity, aflectation, and 
 fine gentlemen. There was one of our party who never failed to mark 
 'two for his nob' at cribbage, and he was thought no mean person. 
 This was Ned Philips, and a better fellow in his way breathes not. 
 There was Godwin, who asserted some incredible matter of fact as a 
 likely paradox, and settled all controversies by an ipse dixit, 3. fiat of 
 his brain — the Baron Munchausen of politics and practical philosophy. 
 There was Captain Bumey, who had yoii at a disadvantage by never 
 understanding you. There was Jem White, the author of ' FalstafF's 
 Letters,' who the other day left this dull world to go in search of more 
 kindred spirits, * turning like the latter end of a lover's lute.' There 
 was Ayrton, who sometimes dropped in, the Will Honeycomb of our 
 set ; and Mr. Reynolds, who being of a quiet turn, loved to hear a 
 noisy debate. An utterly misinformed person might have supposed 
 this a scene of vulgar confusion and uproar. While the most critical 
 question was pending, while the most difficult problem in philosophy 
 was solving. Philips cried out, 'That's game!' and Mai-tin Bumey 
 muttered a quotation over the last remains of a veal pie at a side-table." 
 — Plain Speaker, i., p. 79. — F. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 lamb's suppers. 
 
 sive triumphs of Mr. Kean, he formed some new and 
 steady theatrical attachments. His chief favourites 
 of this time were Miss Kelly, Miss Burrell of the 
 Olympic, and Munden. The first, then the sole sup- 
 port of the English Opera, became a frequent guest 
 in Great Russell Street, and charmed the circle there 
 by the heartiness of her manners, the delicacy and 
 gentleness of her remarks, and her unaffected sensi- 
 bility, as much as she had done on the stage. Miss 
 Burrell, a lady of more limited powers, but with a 
 frank and noble style, was discovered by Lamb on 
 one of the visits which he paid, on the invitation of 
 his old friend EUiston, to the Olympic, where the 
 lady performed the hero of that happy parody of Mon- 
 crieff 's, " Giovanni in London." To her Lamb devoted 
 a little article, which he sent to the Examiner, in 
 which he thus addresses her : — " But Giovanni, free, 
 fine, frank-spirited, single-hearted creature, turning 
 all the mischief into fun as harmless as toys, or 
 children's make believe." Miss Burrell soon married 
 a person named Gould, and disappeared from the stage. 
 To Munden in prose, and Miss Kelly in verse. Lamb 
 has done ample justice. 
 
 Among the frequent guests in Inner Temple Lane 
 was Mr. Ayrton, the director of the music at 
 the Italian Opera. At this time Lamb's interest was 
 strongly excited for Mr. Kenney, on the production of 
 his comedy entitled " A Word to the Ladies." He 
 had engaged to contribute the prologue ; but the 
 promise pressed hard upon him, and he procurf d the 
 requisite quantity of verse from a very inferior hand. 
 Kenney, who had married Holcroft's widow,' had 
 
 ' Daughter of Mercier, the author of the " Tableau de Paris." — F. 
 
IAMB S SUPPERS. 85 
 
 more than succeeded to him in Lamb's regards. 
 Holcroft had considerable dramatic skill ; great force 
 and earnestness of style, and noble sincerity and 
 uprightness of disposition ; but he was an austere 
 observer of morals and manners ; and even his gro- 
 tesque characters were hardly and painfully sculptured ; 
 while Kenney, with as fine a perception of the ludi- 
 crous and the peculiar, was more airy, more indulgent, 
 more graceful, and exhibited more frequent glimpses 
 of " the gayest, happiest attitude of things." The 
 comedy met with less success than the reputation of 
 the author and brilliant experience of the past had 
 rendered probable, and Lamb had to perform the office 
 of comforter, as he had done on the more unlucky 
 event to Godwin. 
 
 Another of Lamb's new acquaintances was Mr. 
 Charles Oilier, a young bookseller of considerable 
 literary talent, which he has since exhibited in the 
 original and beautiful tale of " Inesilla," who pro- 
 posed to him the publication of his scattered writings 
 in a collected form. Lamb acceded ; and nearly all 
 he had then written in prose and verse, were pub- 
 lished this year by Mr. Oilier and his brother, in two 
 small and elegant volumes, of which early copies 
 were despatched to Southey and Wordsworth. 
 
 The widening circle of Lamb's literary friends also 
 embraced additional authors and actors, — famous, or 
 just bursting into fame. He welcomed in the author 
 of the " Dramatic Scenes," who chose to appear in 
 print as Barry Cornwall, a spirit most congenial with 
 his own in its serious moods — one whose genius he 
 had assisted to impel towards its kindred models, the 
 great dramatists of Elizabeth's time, and in whose 
 success he received the first and best reward of the 
 
86 lamb's suppers. 
 
 efforts he had made to inspire a taste for these old 
 masters of humanity. Mr. Macready, who had just 
 emancipated himself from the drudgery of represent- 
 ing the villains of tragedy, by his splendid performance 
 of Richard, was introduced to him by his old friend 
 Charles Lloyd, who had visited London for change of 
 scene, under great depression of spirits. Lloyd owed 
 a debt of gratitude to Macready which exemplified 
 the true uses of the acted drama with a force which 
 it would take many sermons of its stoutest opponents 
 to reason away. A deep gloorn had gradually over- 
 cast his mind, and threatened wholly to encircle it, 
 when he was induced to look in at Covent Garden 
 Theatre, and witness the performance of "Bob Roy." 
 The picture which he then beheld of the generous 
 outlaw, — the frank, gallant, noble bearing, — ^the air 
 and movements, as one " free of mountain solitudes," 
 — the touches of manly pathos and irresistible cordi- 
 ality, delighted and melted him, won him from his 
 painful introspections, and brought to him the un- 
 wonted relief of tears. He went home " a gayer and 
 a wiser man ;" returned again to the theatre, when- 
 ever the healing enjoyments could be renewed there ; 
 and sought the acquaintance of the actor who had 
 broken the melancholy spell in which he was enthralled, 
 and had restored the pulses of his nature to their 
 healthful beatings.' The year 1820 gave Lamb an 
 
 1 In Mr. Macready's recendy published Diary, is given a fuller 
 account of this curious incident. It seems that shortly after the per- 
 formance he received a sonnet, which, in some fervent lines, told him 
 what had been the effect of his acting : — 
 
 " That one whose brain was dry — whose dearest rest 
 Was death's pale dwelling — he hath felt it start, 
 Nature's first gush for years— at thy behest." 
 
lamb's suppers. 87 
 
 interest in Macready beyond that which he had 
 derived from the introduction of Lloyd, arising from 
 the power with which he animated the first produc- 
 tion of one of his oldest friends — " Virginius." 
 Knowles had been a friend and disciple of Hazlitt 
 from a boy, and Lamb had liked and esteemed him 
 as a hearty companion ; but he had not guessed at 
 the extraordinary dramatic power which lay ready for 
 kindling in his brain, and still less at the delicacy of 
 tact with which he had unveiled the sources of the 
 most profound affections. Lamb had almost lost his 
 taste for acted tragedy, as the sad realities of life 
 had pressed more nearly on him ; yet he made an 
 exception in favour of the first and happiest 
 part of " Virginius," those paternal scenes, which 
 stand alone in the modern drama, and which 
 Macready informed with the fulness of a father's 
 affection. 
 
 This perpetual influx of visitors whom he could not 
 repel, whom indeed he was always glad to welcome, 
 but whose visits unstrung him, induced him to take 
 lodgings at Dalston, to which he occasionally retired 
 when he wished for repose.' The deaths of some 
 
 Not long after he and the author met, when Lloyd told him what had 
 been his sufferings for four years, "a torpor of feeling, and, as it 
 were, a numbness of his faculties." But the relief, as might be ex- 
 pected, was only temporary, and he soon sank back into a state of 
 incurable monomania. Macready met Lamb at Talfourd's, and was 
 particularly " arrided" by his speech, " that the last breath he drew 
 he wished might be through a pipe, and exhaled in a pun." — F. 
 
 ^ In 1820 Charles Lamb and his sister paid a visit to Cambridge. 
 " It was a pleasure," says the amiable Crabb Robinson, who met them 
 there, *'to be with them. All Lamb^s enjoyments are so pure and 
 hearg^"— F. 
 
88 lamb's dUpfers. 
 
 who were dear to him cast a melancholy tinge on his 
 mind, as may be seen in his letters.' 
 
 ' That some such retreat was called for, is plain from the round of 
 entertainments — if such it may be called— in which brother and sister 
 lived. Here was Mr. C. Robinson's experience of a weeic only. On 
 November 13th he met Wordsworth at Lamb's; on the i8th he dined 
 with them at Mr. Monkhouse's; on the zoth he was again at 
 Lamb's to meet Wordsworth ; on the next evening came Miss Xelly, 
 Wordsworth again, Stoddart, Barry Cornwall, Talfourd, etc. This 
 series of little festivities — duly celebrated with punch and supper — was 
 wholly unsuited to such excitable natures : and though Sir T. Talfourd 
 puts the matter as delicately as he can, there is no doubt but that 
 ffight became a matter of absolute necessity. Then a reaction 
 about as prejudicial followed, and we find the unhappy Mary Lamb 
 chafing against the restraint, and sighing for the old pleasures. " I 
 had rather," she says in one of her letters, " live in Russell Street all 
 my life, and never set my foot but on the London pavement, than be 
 doomed always to enjoy the silent pleasures I now do. We go to bed 
 at ten o'clock — late hours are life-shortening things ; but I would rather 
 run all risks, and sit every night — at some places I could name — 
 luiihing in vain at eleven tf clock for the entrance of the supper- 
 tray, than be alivays up and alive at eight 0'' clock breakfast, as I 
 am here." When staying at their Dalston Cottage they lost their bro- 
 ther, John Lamb, in November, i8zi. Mr. Crabb Robinson, who 
 visited them, found Mary Lamb " pale and thin," and just recovered 
 from one of her attacks. " They feel their brother's loss, and seem 
 softened by afRiction, and to wish for society." Miss Wordsworth 
 was surprised to see how much they took this affliction to heart, con- 
 sidering " there had been so little personal or iamily communication." 
 — F. 
 
( 89 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 [1820.] 
 
 The "London Magazine" — Wainwright's 
 Story. 
 
 Lamb's association with Hazlitt in the year 1820 intro- 
 duced him to thai oi the London Magazine, which sup- 
 plied the finest stimulus his intellect had ever received, 
 and induced the composition of the Essays fondly 
 and familiarly known under the fantastic title of Elia. 
 The adoption of this signature was purely accidental. 
 His first contribution to the magazine was a descrip- 
 tion of the Old South Sea House, where Lamb had 
 passed a few months' noviciate as a clerk, thirty 
 years before, and of its inmates who had long passed 
 away; and remembering the name of a gay, light- 
 hearted foreigner, who fluttered there at that time, he 
 subscribed his name to the essay. It was afterwards 
 affixed to subsequent contributions ; and Lamb used 
 it until, in his " Last Essays of Elia," he bade it a 
 last farewell.^ Never was a periodical work com- 
 menced with happier auspices, numbering a list of 
 contributors more original in thought, more fresh in 
 spirit, more sportive in fancy, or directed by an editor 
 better qualified by nature and study to preside, than 
 this " London." There was Lamb, with humanity 
 
 1 "To be pronounced Ell-ii," he writes to one of his correspondents 
 — F. 
 
go THE "LONDON MAGAZINE.'" 
 
 ripened among town-bred experiences, and pathos 
 matured by sorrow, at his wisest, sagest, airiest, 
 iwdiscreetest, best ; Barry Cornwall, in the first bloom 
 of his modest and enduring fame, streaking the 
 darkest passion with beauty; John Hamilton Rey- 
 nolds, lighting up with the wildest eccentricities and 
 most striking features of many-coloured life with 
 vivid fancy ; and, with others of less note, Hazlitt, 
 whose pen, unloosed from the chain which earnest 
 thought and metaphysical dreamings had woven, gave 
 radiant expression to the results of the solitary 
 musings of many years. Over these contributors 
 John Scott presided, himself a critic of remarkable 
 candour, eloquence, and discrimination, unfettered by 
 the dogmas of contending schools of poetry and art ; 
 apt to discern the good and beautiful in all ; and 
 having, as editor, that which Kent recognised as Lear, 
 which subjects revere in kings, and boys admire in 
 schoolmasters, and contributors should welcome in 
 editors — authority; — not manifested in a worrying, 
 teasing, intolerable interference in small matters, but 
 in a judicious and steady superintendence of the 
 whole ; with a wise allowance of the occasional 
 excesses of wit and genius. In this respect, Mr. 
 Scott differed entirely from a celebrated poet,' who 
 was induced, just a year after, to undertake the 
 Editorship of the New Monthly Magazine, an office 
 for which, it may be said, with all veneration for his 
 poetic genius, he was the most unfit person who 
 could be found in the wide world of letters — ^who 
 regarded a magazine as if it were a long affidavit, or 
 a short answer in Chancery, in which the absolute 
 
 < Thomas Campbell.— F. 
 
THE "LONDON MAGAZINE. gi 
 
 truth of every sentiment and the propriety of eveiy 
 jest were verified by the editor's oath or solemn 
 affirmation ; who stopped the press for a week at a 
 comma; balanced contending epithets for a fortnight; 
 and, at last, grew rash in despair, and tossed the 
 nearest, and often the worst article, " unwhipped of 
 justice," to the impatient printer. Mr. Scott, indeed, 
 was more fit to preside over a little commonwealth of 
 authors than to hold a despotic rule over subject con- 
 tributors; he had not the airy grace of Jeffrey by 
 which he might give a certain familiar liveliness to 
 the most laborious disquisitions, and shed the glancing 
 light of fancy among party manifestoes ; — nor the 
 boisterous vigour of Wilson, riotous in power, reck- 
 less in wisdom, fusing the production of various 
 intellects, into one brilliant refiection of his own 
 master mind ; — and it was well that he wanted these 
 weapons of a tyranny which his chief contributors 
 were too original and too sturdy to endure. He 
 heartily enjoyed his position ; duly appreciated his 
 contributors and himself; and when he gave audience 
 to some young aspirant for periodical honours at a 
 late breakfast, amidst the luxurious confusion of 
 newspapers, reviews, and uncut novels, lying about 
 in fascinating litter, and carelessly enunciated schemes 
 for bright successions of essays, he seemed destined 
 for many years of that happy excitement in which 
 thought perpetually glows in unruffled but energetic 
 language, and is assured by the echoes of the world. 
 Alas ! a few days after he thus appeared the object 
 of admiration and envy to a young visitor, in his 
 rooms in York Street, he was stretched on a bed of 
 mental agony — the foolish victim of the guilty custom 
 of a world which would have laughed at him for re- 
 
92 THE "LONDON MAGAZINE.'' 
 
 garding himself as within the sphere of its opinion, 
 if he had not died to shame it ! In a luckless hour, 
 instead of seeking to oppose the bitter personalities 
 of Blackwood by the exhibition of a serener power, 
 he rushed with spurious chivalry into a personal 
 contest ; caught up the weapons which he had himself 
 denounced, and sought to unmask his opponents and 
 draw them beyond the pale of literary courtesy; 
 placed himself thus in a doubtful position in which 
 he could neither consistently reject an appeal to the 
 conventional arbitrament of violence nor embrace it ; 
 lost his most legitimate opportunity of daring the 
 unhallowed strife, and found another with an anta- 
 gonist connected with the quarrel only by too zealous 
 a friendship ; and, at last, met his death almost by 
 lamentable accident, in the uncertain glimmer of 
 moonlight, from the hand of one who went out resolved 
 not to harm him !' Such was the melancholy result 
 
 ' "Mr. Lockhart, the reputed author of 'Peter's Letters to his 
 Kinsfolk,' having been violently and personally attacked in the London 
 Magazine, came to London for the purpose of obtaining from Mr. 
 Scott an explanation, an apology, or a meeting. Mr. Scott declined 
 unless Mr. Lockhart would first deny that he was the editor of Black- 
 luooSs Magazine. This Mr. Lockhart did not consider it necessary 
 to do, and the correspondence ended with a note from Mr. Lockhart 
 containing very strong and unqualified expressions touching Mr. Scott's 
 personal character and courage. Scott published his account of the 
 afTair, and Mr. Lockhart published his, in which he stated that a copy 
 had been sent to Mr. Scott. The copy circulated by Mr. Lockhart 
 contained a denial of his being the editor of Blackivood's Magazine. 
 The copy sent to Scott did not contain this denial. Scott on this 
 charged Mr. Lockhart with falsehood. The discrepancy between the 
 copies arose from an oversight in printing the statement. But Scott's 
 charge produced a reply from Mr. Christie, who had acted as Mi, 
 Lockhart's friend in the affair, and Mr. Christie's reply led to a 
 challenge from Scott, which was accepted. The parties met at Chalk 
 
THE "LONDON MAGAZINE." 93 
 
 — first of a controversy too envenomed — and after- 
 wards of enthralment in usages, absurd in all, but 
 most absurd when applied by a literary man to a 
 literary quarrel. Apart from higher considerations, it 
 may befit a life destined for the listless excesses of 
 gaiety to be cast on an idle brawl ; — " a youth of folly, 
 an old age of cards" may be no great sacrifice to 
 preserve the hollow truce of fashionable society ; but 
 for men of thought — whose minds are their posses- 
 sion, and who seek to live in the minds of others by 
 sympathy with their thoughts — for them to hazard a 
 thoughtful being because they dare not own that they 
 prefer life to death — contemplation to the grave — the 
 preparation for eternity to the unbidden entrance on 
 its terrors, would be ridiculous if it did not become 
 tragical. " Sir, I am a metaphysician !" said Hazlitt 
 once, when in a fierce dispute respecting the colours 
 of Holbein and Vandyke, words almost became 
 things ; " and nothing makes an impression upon me 
 but abstract ideas;" and woeful, indeed, is the 
 mockery when thinkers condescend to be duellists ! 
 The Magazine did not perish with its Editor.' 
 
 Farm at nine o'clock at night, an unusual hour chosen on Mr. Scott's 
 suggestion. Two shots were exchanged : Mr. Christie fired wide the 
 first time, intentionally, but on the second fire his ball entered Mr. 
 Scotf s side, and the wound was fatal, Mr. Scott dying on the zyth." — 
 Life of Haydon. — F. 
 
 ' Mr. Procter furnishes some agreeable reminiscences oj- The 
 London. "The London Magazine was established in January, i8zo; 
 the publishers being Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, and its editor 
 being Mr. John Scott, who had formerly edited The Champion news- 
 paper, and whose profession was exclusively that of a man of letters. 
 
 " Mr. John Scott was the writer of several articles entitled • The 
 living Authors ;' of a good many of the earlier criticisms ; of some of 
 the papers on politics, and of some which may be termed • Contro- 
 
94 THE "LONDON MAGAZINE.'' 
 
 Though its unity of purpose was lost, it was still 
 rich in essays of surpassing individual merit ; among 
 
 versial.' The essays on Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Godwin, and 
 Lord Byron, are from his liand. He contributed also the critical 
 papers, on the writings of Keats, Shelley, Leigh Hunt, and Hazlitt. 
 Mr. Hazlitt wrote all the articles which appear under the head 
 ' Drama ;' the twelve essays entitled ' Table Talk ;' and the papers 
 on Fonthill Abbey, and on the Angerstein pictures, and the Elgin 
 marbles. Mr. Thomas Carlyle was author of the ' Life and Writings 
 of Schiller,' in the eighth, ninth, and tenth volumes of the Magazine. 
 Mr. de Quincy's contributions were the ' Confessions of au Opium 
 Eater ;' also various papers specified as being ' by the Opium Eater ;' 
 the essay on Jean Paul Richter, and papers translated from the German, 
 or dealing with German literature. The Reverend Henry Francis 
 Cary (the translator of Dante) wrote the Notices of the Early French 
 poets ; the addition to Orford's ' Royal and Noble Authors ;' and, I 
 believe, the continuations of Johnson's ' Lives of the Poets.' Mr. 
 Allan Cunningham (the Scottish poet) was author of the 'Twelve 
 Tales of Lyddal Cross,' of the series of stories or papers styled 
 ' Traditional Literature,' and of various other contributions in poetry 
 and prose. Mr. John Poole contributed the 'Beauties of the living 
 Dramatists,' being burlesque imitations of modern writers for the 
 stage, viz., Morton, Dibdin, Reynolds, MoncriefT, etc. Mr. John 
 Hamilton Reynolds wrote, I believe, in every number of the periodical, 
 after it came into the hands of Taylor and Hessey, who were his 
 friends. All the papers with the name of Henry Herbert affixed were 
 written by him ; also the descriptive accounts of the Coronation, 
 Greenwich Hospital, The Cockpit Royal, The Trial of Thurtell, etc. 
 Mr. Thomas Hood fleshed his maiden sword here ; and his first poems 
 of length, 'Lycus the Centaur' and 'The Two Peacocks of Bedfont' 
 may be found in the Magazine. Mr. George Darley (author of 
 ' Thomas S Becket,' etc.), wrote the several papers entitled ' Drama- 
 ticles,' some pieces of verse, and the Letters addressed to 'The 
 Dramatists of the Day.' Mr. Richard Ayton wrote ' The Sea 
 Reamers,' the article on 'Hundng,' and such papers as are distin- 
 guished by the signature • R. A.' Mr. Keats (the poet) and Mr. 
 James Montgomery contributed verses. Sir John Bowring (I believe) 
 translated into English verse the Spanish poetry, and wrote the several 
 papers which appear under the head of 'Spanish Romances.' Mr. 
 
THE "LONDON MAGAZINE." 95 
 
 which the masterly vindication of the true dramatic 
 style by Darley ; the articles of Gary, the admirable 
 
 Henry Southern (editor of The Retrospecti've Revieiu) wrote the 
 ' Conversations of Lord Byron,' and ' The Fanariotes of Constan- 
 tinople,' in the tenth volume. Mr. Walter Savage Landor was author 
 of the Imaginary Conversation between Southey and Person, in 
 volume eight. Mr. Julius (Archdeacon) Hare reviewed the works of 
 Landor in the tenth volume. Mr. Elton contributed many transla- 
 tions from Greek and Latin authors ; from the minor poems of Homer, 
 from Catullus, Nonnus, Propertius, etc. Messrs. Hartley Coleridge, 
 John Clare, Cornelius Webb, Bernard Barton, and others sent poems, 
 generally with the indicating name. I myself was amongst the crowd 
 of contributors ; and was author of various pieces, some in verse, and 
 others in prose, now under the protection of that great Power which 
 is called 'Oblivion.' Finally, the too celebrated Thomas Griffiths 
 Wainwright contributed various fantasies, on Art and Arts ; all or 
 most of which may be recognised by his assumed name of Janus 
 Weathercock. To show the difficulty of specifying the authorship of 
 all the articles contributed, — even Mr. Hessey (one of the proprietors) 
 was unable to do so ; and, indeed, shortly before his death, applied to 
 me for information on the subject. By the aid of the gentlemen who 
 contributed — each his quota — to the London Magazine, it acquired 
 much reputation, and a very considerable sale. During its career for 
 five~years, it had, for a certain style of essay, no superior (scarcely an 
 equal) amongst the periodicals of the day. Yet the Magazine was 
 successful, to an extent that preserved its proprietors from loss, perhaps 
 not greatly beyond that point. On the death of Mr. John Scott, the 
 Magazine, in July, i8zi, passed into the hands of Messrs. Taylor and 
 Hessey; the former being the gentleman who discovered the identity 
 of Junius with Sir Philip Francis; the latter being simply very 
 courteous to all, and highly respectable and intelligent. 
 
 " When Taylor and Hessey assumed the management of the London 
 Magazine, they engaged no editor. They were tolerably liberal pay- 
 masters : the remuneration for each page of prose (not very laborious), 
 being, if the writer were a person of repute or ability, one pound, and 
 for each page of verse, two pounds. Charles Lamb received (very fitly) 
 for his brief and charming essays, two or three times the amount of the 
 other writers. When they purchased the Magazine, the proprietors 
 
gS THE "LONDON MAGAZINE." 
 
 translator of Dante ; and the " Confessions of an 
 English Opium Eater," held a distinguished place. 
 Mr. De Quincy, whose youth had been inspired by 
 enthusiastic admiration of Coleridge, shown in con- 
 tributions to " The Friend," not unworthy of his 
 master, and substantial contributions of the blessings 
 of fortune, came up to London, and found an admiring 
 welcome from Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, the pub- 
 lishers into whose hands the London Magazine had 
 passed. After the good old fashion of the great 
 TRADE, these genial booksellers used to assemble their 
 contributors round their hospitable table in Fleet 
 Street, where Mr. De Quincy was introduced to his 
 new allies. Among the contributors who partook of 
 their professional festivities, was a gentleman whose 
 subsequent career has invested the recollection of his 
 appearances in the familiarity of social life with 
 fearful interest — Mr. Thomas Griffiths Wainwright. 
 He was then a young man; on the bright side of 
 thirty ; with a sort of undress military air, and the 
 conversation of a smart, lively, clever, heartless. 
 
 opened a house, in Waterloo Place, for the better circulation of the 
 publication. 
 
 "It was there that the contributors met once a month, over an excel- 
 lent dinner, given by the firm, and consulted and talked on literary- 
 matters together. I do not know that many important matters were 
 arranged, for the welfare of the Magazine, at these dinners ; but the 
 hearts of the contributors were opened, and with the expansion of the 
 heart the intellect widened also. 
 
 "Amongst others, Charles Lamb came to most of these dinners, 
 always dressed in black (his old snufT-coloured suit having been dis- 
 missed for years) ; always kind and genial ; conversational, not 
 talkative, but quick in repiy ; eating little, and drinking moderately 
 with the rest." 
 
WAINWRIGHT S STORY. 97 
 
 voluptuous coxcomb. It was whispered that he had 
 been an officer in the Dragoons ; had spent more 
 than one fortune ; and he now condescended to take 
 a part in periodical literature, with the careless grace 
 of an amateur who felt himself above it. He was an 
 artist also; sketched boldly and graphically; exhibited 
 a portfolio of his own drawings of female beauty, in 
 which the voluptuous trembled on the borders of the 
 indelicate ; and seized on the critical department of 
 the Fine Arts, both in and out of the Magazine, un- 
 disturbed by the presence or pretensions of the finest 
 critic on Art who ever wrote — William Hazlitt. On 
 this subject, he composed for the Magazine, under 
 the signature of "Janus Weathercock," articles of 
 flashy assumption — in which disdainful notices of 
 living artists were set off by fascinating references to 
 the personal appearance, accomplishments, and luxu- 
 rious appliances of the writer, ever the first hero of 
 his essay. He created a new sensation in the sedate 
 circle, not only by his braided surtouts, jewelled 
 fingers, and various neck-handkerchiefs, but by osten- 
 tatious contempt for everything in the world but 
 elegant enjoyment. We lost sight of him when the 
 career of the Magazine ended ; and Lamb did not live 
 to learn the sequel of his history. Lamb, who de- 
 lighted to find sympathy in dissimilitude, fancied that 
 he really liked him ; took, as he ever did, the genial 
 side of character ; and, instead of disliking the rake 
 in the critic, thought it jileasant to detect so much 
 taste and goodnature in a fashionable roue; and re- 
 garded all his vapid gaiety, which to severer observers 
 looked like impertinence, as the playful effusion of a 
 remarkably guileless nature. 
 
 Thus, when expatiatmg in his list of choicest 
 
gS wainwright's story. 
 
 friends in Elia's letter to Southey, he reckons W , 
 
 the light and warm, as light-hearted " Janus " of the 
 London; and two years afterwards, adverting to 
 the decline of the Magazine, in a letter to Mr. Barton, 
 he persists in his belief of Wainwright's light-heart- 
 edness as pertinaciously as all the half-conscious 
 dupes in Othello do in the assertion of lago's honesty: 
 
 "They have pulled down Hazlitt, P , and their 
 
 their best stay, kind, light-hearted W , their 
 
 ' Janus.' " In elucidation of this apparent lightness 
 of heart, it will not be uninstructive to trace the 
 remainder of this extraordinary person's history ; for 
 surely no contrast presented by the wildest romance 
 between a gay cavalier, fascinatmg Naples or Palermo, 
 and the same hero, detected as the bandit or demon 
 of the forest, equals that which time has unveiled 
 between what Mr. Wainwright seemed, and what he 
 was, Mr. Wainwright having ceased to contribute 
 to The London about the year 1825, when Lamb te- 
 stowed on him his parting eulogium, was scarcely 
 seen in our literary circle, though he retained the 
 acquaintance and regard of some of its members. 
 
 In the year 1830 he was residing at Linden House, 
 Turnham Green, in the possession of which he had 
 succeeded his uncle Dr. Griffiths, who for many years 
 edited a monthly publication, and whose death had 
 occurred about a year before, after a short illness, 
 while Mr. Wainwright and his wife were visiting at 
 his house on the occasion of her confinement with 
 her only child. He acquired some property at the 
 death of his uncle, by whose bounty, being early left 
 an orphan, he had been educated ; but his expensive 
 tastes soon brought him to severe pecuniary embar- 
 rassments and the verge of ruin. His wife's mother, 
 
wainwright's story. 99 
 
 who had died in Linden House after a short illness, 
 left two daughters by Mr. Abercrombie her second 
 husband, named Helen Frances Phoebe and Made- 
 line — Mrs. Wain Wright being the daughter of a former 
 husband named Ward. These young ladies being 
 left without provision, except a pension of £io a year 
 each, which had been granted to them as the desti- 
 tute daughters of a meritorious ofHcer, by the Board 
 of Ordnance, were invited by Mr. Wainwright to 
 visit him at Linden House, and at the beginning of 
 1830, with his wife and child formed his family. 
 
 About this time, he formed the remarkable scheme 
 of procuring the eldest of the young ladies to effect 
 insurances on her life, to the amount of many thou- 
 sands of pounds, for the period of three or two years. 
 Miss Helen Frances Phoebe Abercrombie was then a 
 lovely woman, nearly of the age of twenty-one, which 
 she attained 12th March, 1830, without expecta- 
 tions, except of some trifling possibility under a 
 settlement, and, except the proceeds of the pension, 
 without a shilling in the world ; while Mr. Wainwright, 
 who supplied the funds for this strange speculation, 
 was in reality still poorer, being steeped in debt, 
 impatient of privation, with ruin daily contracting its 
 circle around him. The first proposal was made by 
 Mr. Wainwright, on behalf of Miss Abercrombie, to 
 the Palladium Insurance Office, on the 28th March, 
 for ;f3000 for three years. On this occasion, Mr. 
 and Mrs. Wainwright and Miss Abercrombie called 
 together at the office, where the object of the insurance 
 was stated to be to enable them to recover some 
 property to which the young lady was entitled. This 
 proposal was accepted, and on the 20th of April 
 completed, by payment of the premium for one yea' 
 
100 WAINWRIGHT S STORY. 
 
 by the hand of Miss Abercrombie, then attended onlji 
 by Mrs. Wainwright, and the delivery of the policy. 
 On or about the same day, a similar insurance was 
 effected with the Eagle Insurance Office for ;f3000, 
 for the term of two years ; and the premium for one 
 year and stamp duty were paid by Miss Abercrombie 
 in her sister's presence. In the following October 
 four more policies were effected : with the Provident 
 for £'2000, with the Hope for £'2000, with the Imperial 
 for £'3000, and with the Pelican for £5000, each on the 
 life of Miss Abercrombie, and each for the period of 
 two years ; so that at the close of this month of Oc- 
 tober, the life of this poor girl, described by the 
 actuary of the Provident as " a remarkably healthy, 
 cheerful, beautiful young woman, whose life was one 
 of a thousand," was insured to the amount of £'18,000, 
 as to pfsooo for three years, and for the residue for 
 two years only. Premiums for one year, amounting 
 with the stamps to something more than £220, had 
 been paid ; the premiums which would be required to 
 keep the policies on foot for a second year amounting 
 to £200, and in the event of her surviving the brief 
 terms of insurance, the whole money would be lost. 
 On every visit to the offices. Miss Abercrombie was 
 accompanied by Mrs. Wainwright, and the appearance 
 of these two ladies together on such an errand, 
 sometimes awakened scruples, which the apparent 
 desirableness of the life for insurance to an office did 
 not always silence. At the Imperial, it was suggested 
 to Miss Abercrombie by Mr. Ingall, the actuary, that 
 " as she only proposed to make the insurance for two 
 years, he presumed it was to secure some property 
 she would come into at the expiration of that time ?" 
 to which Mrs. Wainwright replied: " Not exactly so : 
 
WAINWRIGHT'S story. 101 
 
 it is to secure a sum of money to her sister, which 
 she will be enabled to do by other means if she out- 
 lives that time. But I don't know much of her 
 affairs ; you had better speak to her about it." On 
 which Miss Abercrombie said, " That is the case." 
 By what means the ladies were induced to make these 
 statements can scarcely ever be guessed ; it is certain 
 that they were illusory. No reason existed for the 
 poor penniless girl securing £3000 for her sister, in case 
 of her own death within two years ; nor was there the 
 least chance of her receiving such a sum if living 
 at the end of that period. The sum of £18,000 did 
 not bound the limits of the speculation ; for in the 
 same month of October, a proposal to the Eagle to 
 increase the insurance by the addition of £2000 was 
 made and declined, and a proposal to the Globe for 
 £5000, and a proposal to the Alliance for some further 
 sum, met a similar fate. At the office of the Globe, 
 Miss Abercrombie, who, as usual, was accompanied 
 by Mrs. Wainwright, being asked the object of the 
 insurance, replied, that " she scarcely knew, but she 
 was desired to come there by her friends, who wished 
 the insurance done." On being furthei pressed, she 
 referred to Mrs. Wainwright, who said, " It is for 
 some money matters that are to be arranged, but 
 ladies don't know much about such things ;" and 
 Miss Abercrombie answered a question, whether she 
 was insured in any other office, in the negative. At 
 the Alliance, Helen was more severely tested by the 
 considerate kindness of Mr. Hamilton, who received 
 the proposal, and who was not satisfied by her state- 
 ment, that a writ was depending in Chancery which 
 would probably terminate in her favour, but that if 
 she should die in the interim the property would go 
 
102 WAINWRIGHT S STORY, 
 
 into another family, for which contingency she wished 
 to provide. The young lady, a little irritated at the 
 question, said, " I supposed that what you had to 
 inquire into was the state of my health, not the object 
 of the insurance ;" on which he informed her, " that a 
 young lady such as she was, had come to the office 
 two years before to effect an insurance for a short 
 time, and that it was the opinion of the Company she 
 had come to her death by unfair means." Poor 
 Helen replied, " She was sure there was no one about 
 her who would have any such object," Mr. Hamilton 
 said, " Of course not," but added, " that he was not 
 satisfied as to the object of the insurance, and unless 
 she stated in writing what it was, and the Directors 
 approved it, the proposal could not be entertained." 
 The ladies retired, and the office heard no more of the 
 proposal, nor of Miss Abercrombie, till they heard 
 that she was dead, and that the payment of other 
 policies on her life was resisted. Mr. Wainwright's 
 affairs soon approached a crisis, for he had given a 
 warrant of attorney in August, and a bill of sale on 
 his furniture at Linden House, both of which had 
 become absolute, and seizure under v;hich he had 
 postponed only till the 20th or 21st of December. 
 Early in that month he left Linden House, and took 
 furnished lodgings in Conduit Street, to which he was 
 accompanied by his wife and her two half-sisters. 
 On the 13th of that month. Miss Abercrombie called 
 on a solicitor named Lys, to whom she was a stranger, 
 and requested him to attest the execution of a will 
 she desired to make, as she was going abroad : he 
 complied, and she executed a will in favour of her 
 sister Madeline, making Mr. Wainwright its executor. 
 On the 14th, having obtained a form of assignment 
 
WAINWRIGHT S STORY. IO3 
 
 from the office of the Palladium, she called on another 
 solicitor, named Kirk, to whom she was also a 
 stranger, to perfect for her an assignment of the 
 policy of that office to Mr. Wainwright: this the 
 solicitor did, by writing in ink over words pencilled 
 in the handwriting of Mr. Wainwright, and witnessing 
 her signature. On that evening Miss Abercrombie 
 accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright and her sister 
 to the play, as she had done the preceding evening, and 
 partook of oysters, or lobsters, and porter, after their 
 return. The weather was wet, she had walked home 
 as she had done the evening before, and in the night 
 suffered from illness, which was attributed to cold. 
 She continued ill, however, and in a day or two Dr. 
 Locock, who was called in by Mr. Wainwright, found 
 her labouring under derangement of stomach, and pre- 
 scribed for her simple remedies. She continued 
 indisposed, but he entertained no serious apprehen- 
 sions, until he was sent for on the 21st, when she 
 died. On that morning a powder, which Dr. Locock 
 did not recollect ever prescribing, was administered 
 to her in jelly, and Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright quitted 
 her to take a long walk for some hours. Soon after 
 their departure she was seized with violent convul- 
 sions ; the physician was sent for, and was shocked 
 by her condition, and by her exclaiming, " Oh, Doctor! 
 these are the pains of death !" He administered 
 proper remedies for pressure on the brain, under which 
 she was then labouring. The symptoms subsided, 
 and he left her in a state of composure. The convul- 
 sions, however, soon returned with increased violence; 
 the attendant, in alarm, called in the assistant of a 
 neighbouring apothecary in the emergency ; the 
 youna: man did for her the best that human skill 
 
I04 wainwright's story. 
 
 could devise, but all assistance was in vain, and before 
 Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright returned from their walk, 
 she was dead. An examination of the body took 
 place with Mr. Wainwright's ready concurrence, 
 which, in Doctor Locock's apprehension, left no 
 reason to attribute the death to other than natural 
 causes. Its immediate cause was obviously pressure 
 on the brain, and the sums amounting to £18,000, 
 insured on her life, became payable to Mr. Wain- 
 wright as her executor, though except as to two of 
 the policies — those of the Palladium and the Hope— 
 which had been assigned to him by poor Helen, appa- 
 rently, at least, for the benefit of the sister. 
 
 Suspicion, however, was excited, the offices resisted 
 the claim. Mr. Wainwright left England for France, 
 where he spent several years ; and after delays occa- 
 sioned chiefly by proceedings in Equity, the question 
 of the validity of the policies was tried, before Lord 
 Abinger, on the 29th of June, 1835, in an action by 
 Mr. Wainwright as executor of Miss Abercrombie on 
 the Imperial's policy. Extraordinary as were the 
 circumstances under which the defence was made, it 
 rested on a narrow basis — on the allegation that the 
 insurance was not, as it professed to be, that of MisC 
 Abercrombie for her own benefit, but the insurance of 
 Mr. Wainwright, effected at his cost for some purpose 
 of his own, and on the falsehood of representations 
 she had been induced to make in reply to inquiries as 
 to insurances in other offices. The cause of her 
 death, if the insurance was really hers, was imma- 
 terial ; and though surely not immaterial in the con- 
 sideration of the question, whether the insurance was 
 her's or Mr. Wainwright's, was thrown out of the 
 case by Lord Abinger. That accomplished Judge, 
 
wainwright's story. 105 
 
 who had been the most consummate advocate of his 
 time, disposed always to pleasurable associations, 
 shrunk in a Civil Court from inquiries which, if they 
 had been directly presented on a criminal charge, 
 would have compelled his serious attention, stated 
 that there was no evidence of other crime than 
 fraud, and intimated that the defence had been injured 
 by a darker suggestion. The jury, partaking of the 
 Judge's disinclination to attribute the most dreadful 
 guilt to the plaintiff on a Nisi Prius record, and 
 perhaps scarcely perceiving how they could discover 
 for the imputed fraud an intelligible motive without 
 ■it, were unable to agree, and were discharged without 
 giving a verdict. The cause was tried again, before 
 the same Judge, on the 3rd December following ; when 
 the counsel for the defence, following the obvious 
 inclination of the Bench, avoided the most fearful 
 charge, and obtained a verdict for the Office without 
 hesitation, sanctioned by Lord Abinger's proffered 
 approval to the jury. In the meantime, Mr. Wain- 
 wright, leaving his wife and child in London, had 
 acquired the confidence and enjoyed the hospitality 
 of an English officer residing at Boulogne. While 
 he was thus associated, a proposal was made to the 
 Pelican Office to insure the life of his host for ;f 5000 ; 
 which, as the medical inquiries were satisfactorily 
 answered, was accepted. The Office, however, re- 
 ceived only one premium, for the life survived the 
 completion of the insurance only a few months, 
 falling after a very short illness. Under what cir- 
 cumstances Mr. Wainwright left Boulogne after this 
 event is unknown. He became a wanderer in France ; 
 and being brought under the notice of the Correctional 
 Police as passing under a feigned name, was arrested. 
 
io6 wainwright's story. 
 
 In his possession was found the vegetable poison 
 called strychnine, which leaves little trace of its pas- 
 sage in the frame of its victim ; and which, though 
 unconnected with any specific charge, increased his 
 liability to temporary restraint, and led to a six 
 months' incarceration at Paris. After his release, he 
 returned to revisit London, where, in June, 1837, soon 
 after his arrival, he was met in the street by Forrester 
 the police officer, who had identified him in France, 
 and was committed for trial on a charge of forgery. 
 
 The offence for which Mr. Wainwright was thus 
 apprehended was not very heinous of its kind, but his 
 guilt was clear, and the punishment at that time 
 capital. It consisted in the forgery of the names of 
 his own trustees to five successive powers of attorney 
 to sell out stock settled on himself and his wife before 
 their marriage, which his exigencies from time to 
 time had tempted him thus to realize. The Bank of 
 England, by whom he was prosecuted, consented to 
 forego the capital charges on his pleading guilty to 
 the minor offence of uttering in two of the cases, 
 which he did at the Old Bailey Sessions of July, 1837, 
 and received sentence of transportation for life. In 
 the meantime, proceedings were taken on behalf of 
 Miss Abercrombie's sister Madeline, who had married 
 a respectable bookseller named Wheatley, to render 
 the insurances available for her benefit; which induced 
 the prisoner to offer communications to the Insurance 
 Offices which might defeat a purpose entirely foreign 
 to his own ; and which he hoped might procure him, 
 through their intercession, a mitigation of the most 
 painful severities incident to his sentence. In this 
 expectation he was miserably disappointed ; for though 
 in pursuance of their promise the Directors of one of 
 
WAINWRIGHT S STORY. I07 
 
 the Offices made a communication to the Secretary 
 of State for the Home Department, the result, instead 
 of a mitigation, was an order to place him in irons, 
 and to send him to his place of punishment in a 
 vessel about to convey three hundred convicts. Thus 
 terminated the European career of the " kind and 
 light-hearted Janus 1" The time has not arrived for 
 exhibiting all the traits of this remarkable person. 
 Probably before it shall arrive the means of disclosing 
 them will be lost, or the objects forgotten ; but enough 
 may be found disclosed in the public proceedings, 
 from which we have taken thus far our narrative, to 
 supply an instructive contrast between his outer and 
 inner life ; and yet more instructive indications of the 
 qualities which formed the links of connection 
 between them. The defect in his moral nature con- 
 sisted, perhaps, chiefly in morbid self-esteem, so 
 excessive as to overwhelm all countervailing feelings, 
 and to render all the interests of others, all duties, all 
 sympathies, all regards, subservient to the lightest 
 efforts, or wishes, or enjoyments of the wretched 
 idol. His tastes appreciated only the most superficial 
 beauty; his vanities were the poorest and most empty; 
 vet he fancied himself akin to greatness ; and in one 
 of his communications from Newgate, in his last 
 hours of hope, he claimed for himself " a soul whose 
 nutriment is love and its offspring art, music, divine 
 song, and still holier philosophy." When writing 
 from the hold of the convict-ship to complain of his 
 being placed in irons, he said, " They think me a 
 desperado. Me 1 the companion of poets, philo- 
 sophers, artists, and musicians, a desperado ! You 
 will smile at this — no — I think you will fed for the 
 man educated and reared as a gentleman, now the 
 
io8 wainwright's story. 
 
 mate of vulgar ruffians and country bumpkins." 
 This shallow notion of being always " a gentleman" 
 — one abstracted ever from conventional vulgarities — 
 seems to have given him support in the extremity 
 of wretchedness and infamy ; the miserable reed he 
 leaned on, not the ruling passion — but the ruling folly. 
 " They pay me respect here, I assure you," said he 
 to an acquaintance who visited him in Newgate; 
 " they think I am here for ;f 10,000;" and on some of 
 the convicts coming into the yard with brooms to 
 perform their compulsory labour of sweeping it, he 
 raised himself up, pulled down his soiled wristbands, 
 and exclaimed, with a faint hilarity — " You see those 
 people, they are convicts like me ; but no one dares 
 offer me the broom 1" Circumstances were indeed 
 changed, but the man was the same as when he 
 elaborated artistic articles for The London.^ To 
 
 1 It may not be uninteresting, nor wholly uninstmctive, to place, in 
 contrast with this person's deplorable condition, a specimen of his com- 
 position when " topping the part" of a literary coxcomb. The fol- 
 lowing is a portion of an article under the head of " Sentimentalities 
 on the Fine Arts, by Janus Weathercock, Esq. To be continued 
 when he is in the humour," published in the London Magazine for 
 March, i8zo : — "I (Janus^ had made a tolerable dinner the other day 
 at George's, and with my mind full of my last article, was holding up 
 3. petit verre tHeau de vie de Dantzic to the waxen candle, watching 
 with scient eye the number of aureate pardcles, some swimming, some 
 sinking quiveringly, through the oily and luscious liquor, as if informed 
 with life, and gleaming like golden fish in the Whang-ho or Yellow 
 River (which, by the way, is only yellow from its mud) : so was I 
 employed, when suddenly I heard the day of the month (the 15th) 
 ejaculated in the next box. This at once brought me back from my 
 delicious reverie to a sense of duty. * Contributions must be forwarded 
 by the 1 8th, at the very latest ,' were the Editor's last words to Janus, 
 and he is incapable of forgetting them. I felt my vigorous personal 
 identity instantly annihilated, and resolved by some mystic process into 
 it part of that unimaginable plurality in unity wherewithal editors. 
 
WAINWRIGHT S STORY. lOg 
 
 the last he seemed to be undisturbed by remorse; 
 shocked only at the indignities of the penal condition 
 of one imbued with tastes so refined that all causes 
 
 reviewers, and at present pretty commonly authors, clothe themselves 
 when seated on the topmast tip of their topgallant masts, they pour 
 forth their oracular dicta on the groaning ocean of London, spread out 
 huge at their feet. Forthwith we (Janus) sneaked home alone, poked 
 in the top of our hollow fire, which spouted out a myriad of flames, 
 roaring pleasantly as, chasing one another, they rapidly escaped up the 
 chimney; exchanged our smart tight-waisted stiif-collared coat for an 
 easy chintz gown with pink ribbons ; lighted our new elegantly-gilt 
 French lamp, having a ground-glass globe painted with gay flowers 
 and gaudy butterflies ; hauled forth Port/olio No. 9, and established . 
 ourselves cosily on a Grecian couch ! Then we (Janus) stroked our 
 favourite tortoise-shell cat into a full and sonorous purr, and after that 
 our nurse or maid-servant — a good-natured Venetian-shaped girl 
 (having first placed on the table a genuine flask of as rich Montepul- 
 ciano as ever voyaged from fair Italia) — had gently but firmly closed 
 the door, carefully rendered air-tight by a gilt-leather binding (it is 
 quite right to be particular), we indulged ourselves in a complacent 
 consideration of the rather elegant figure we made, as seen in a large 
 glass placed opposite our chimney-mirror, without, however, moving 
 any limb except the left arm, which instinctively filled out a full cut- 
 glass of the liquor before us, while the right rested inactively on the 
 head of puss! 'It was a sight that turned all our gall into blood ' 
 Fancy, comfortable reader ! Imprimis, a very good-sized room ; item, a 
 gay Brussels carpet covered with garlands of flowers ; item, a fine ori- 
 ginal cast of the Venus de Medicis ; item, some choice volumes in still 
 more choice old French moroquin with water-tabby silk linings ; item, 
 some more volumes coated by the skill of Roger Payne and 'our 
 Charles Lewis ;' item, a piano by Tomkinson ; item, a Damascus sabre : 
 item, one cat; item, a large Newfoundland dog, friendly to the cat; item, 
 a few hot-house plants on a white marble slab ; item, a delicious melting 
 love-painting by Fuseli ; and last, not least, in our dear love, w«, myself, 
 (Janus !) Each and the whole seen by the Correggio-kind of light 
 breathed as it were through the painted glass of the lamp 1 1 ! Soothed 
 into that amiable sort of self-satisfaction so necessary to the bodying 
 out those deliciously voluptuous ideas, perfumed with languor, which 
 occasionally swim and undulate like gauzy clouds over the brain of the 
 
110 WAINWRIGHT'S STORY. 
 
 ought to give way to their indulgence. This vanity, 
 nurtured by selfishness and unchecked by religion, 
 
 most cold-blooded men, we put forth our hand to the folio which leant 
 against a chair by the sofa's side, and at haphazard extracted thence 
 Lancret's charming • Repas Italien,' T. P. le Bas. Sculp, : — 
 
 " * A summer party in the greenwood shade. 
 With lutes prepared and cloth on herbage laid, 
 And ladies' laughter coming thro' the air,' 
 
 " L. Hunt's ' Rimin.* 
 
 This completed the charm. We immersed a well-seasoned prime pen 
 into our silver inkstand three times, shaking oif the loose ink again 
 lingeringly. While holding the print fast in our left hand, we perused 
 it with half-shut eyes, dallying awhile with our delight." 
 
 This last portion of the strange history of Wainwright's, which has 
 an almost ghastly interest, was suppressed by Sir T, Talfourd in the 
 jater editions of his work, perhaps from a wish not to fiirtherprejudice 
 the condition of the criminal, then undergoing his sentence of trans- 
 portation. In Mr. Dickens' All the Tear Round, appeared a fuller 
 account of his infamous career, from which I take the following : — 
 
 " On the night the Norfolk gentleman in difGculties at Boulogne 
 died, Wainwright had insisted on making his friend's coffee, and passed 
 poison into the sugar. The poisoner had succeeded before this in win- 
 ning the affections of his friend's daughter, and gaining a supreme 
 influence in the house, 
 
 " Being asked in the jail how he could find it in his heart to murder 
 the trusting girl who had so confided in him (meaning Miss Abercrom- 
 bie). he reflected for a moment, and then returned, with a cool laugh : 
 • Upon my soul I don't know — unless it was that her legs were too 
 thick.' 
 
 " A more insupportable scoundrel never troubled this earth. He 
 had kept a Uiary, The insurance offices, by the masterly stroke of 
 sending to a French inn where he had lived, paying the bill he had left 
 unpaid, and demanding the effects he had left there, obtained possession 
 of it. Description of this demoniacal document cannot be attempted, 
 but it contained a kind of index to the details of his various crimes, set 
 forth with a voluptuous cruelty and a loathsome exultation worthy ol 
 the diseased vanity of such a masterpiece of evil, 
 
 " In 1842, the dandy convict was admitted as in-patientof the Gene- 
 ral Hospital in Hobart Town, where he remained some years. Whilst 
 
WAINWRIGHT'S story. Ill 
 
 became a disease, perhaps amounting to monomania, 
 and yielding one lesson to repay the world for his 
 
 an inmate ot the hospital, he forwarded to the Governor, Sir Eardley E. 
 Wilmot, the following memorial. It is too characteristic of the man 
 not to be given. The gilt has all gone now. The Governor's minute 
 on the memorial is very laconic: — *A T, L. (ticket-of-leave) would be 
 contrary to Act of Parlt. T. L. refused, ^rd class wages received f 
 — E. E. W." 
 
 " 'To His Excellency, Sir John Eardley Wilmot, Bart., Lieut.-Go- 
 vemor of Van Dieman's Land, etc. etc. 
 
 " « The humble petition of T. Griffiths Wainwright, praying the 
 indulgence of a ticket-of-leave. 
 
 " ' To palliate the boldness of this application he oflers the statement 
 ensuing. That seven years past he was arrested on a charge of forging 
 and acting on a power of attorney to sell stock thirteen years previous. 
 Of which (though looking for little credence) he avers his entire inno- 
 cence. He admits a knowledge of the actual committer, gained though 
 some years after the fact. Such, however, were their relative positions, 
 that to have disclosed it would have made him infamous where any 
 human feeling is manifest. Nevertheless, by his counsel's direction, 
 he entered the plea Not Guilty, to allow him to adduce the " circon- 
 stance attenuante," viz., that the money (£5200) appropriated was, 
 without quibble, his own, derived fi-om his parents. An hour before 
 his appearing to plead he was trepanned (through the just but deluded 
 Governor of Newgate) into withdrawing his plea, by a promise, in such 
 case, of a punishment merely nominal. The same purporting to issue 
 from y= Sani Parlour, but in fact from the agents of certain Insu- 
 rance Companies interested to a heavyamount(£i6,ooo)in compassing 
 his legal non-existence. He pleaded guilty — and was forthwith hurried, 
 stunned with such ruthless perfidy, to the hulks at Portsmouth, and 
 thence \a Jive days aboard the Susan, sentenced to Life in a land (to 
 him) a moral sepulchre. As a ground for your mercy he submits with 
 great deference his foregone condition of life during 43 years of free- 
 dom. A descent, deduced, through family tradition and Edmondson's 
 Heraldry, from a stock not the least honoured in Cambria. Nurtured 
 with all appliances of ease and comfo. t — schooled by his relative, the 
 well-known philologer and bibliomaniac, Chas. Burney, D.D., brother 
 to Mdme. D'Arblay, and the companion of Cooke. Lastly, such a 
 modest competence as afforded the mental necessaries of Literature, 
 Archeology, Music and the Plastic Arts ; while his pen and brush in- 
 
112 wainwright's story. 
 
 existence : that there is no state of the soul so dan- 
 gerous as that in which the vices of the sensualist 
 
 troduced him to the notice and friendship of men whose iame is Euro- 
 pean. The Catalogues of Somerset House Exhibitions, the Literary 
 Pocket Book, indicate his earlier pursuits, and the MS. left behind in 
 Paris, attest at least his industry. Their titles imply the objects to 
 which he has, to this date, directed all his energies : " A Philosophical 
 Theory of Design, as concerned \rith the Loftier Emotions, showing 
 its deep action on Society, atawn from the Phidean-Greek and early 
 Florentine Schools" (the resjlt of seventeen years' study), illustrated 
 with numerous plates, executed with conscientious accuracy, in one vol. 
 atlas folio. " An Esthetic and Psychological Treatise on the Beauti- 
 ful ; or the Analogies of Imagination and Fancy, as exerted in Poesy, 
 whether Verse, Painting, Sculpture, Music, or Architecture ;" to form 
 four vols, folio, with a profusion of engravings by the first artists of 
 Paris, Munich, Berlin, Dresden, and Wien. " An Art-Novel," in 
 tliree vols., and a collection of "Fantasie, Critical Sketches, etc., 
 selected partly from Blackiuood, the Foreign Revieiv, and the Lon- 
 don Magazine." All these were nearly ready for, one actually at 
 press. Deign, your Excellency ! to figure to yourself my actual con- 
 dition during seven years ; without friends, good name fthe breath of 
 life) or art (the fuel to it with me), tormented at once by memory and 
 ideas struggling for outward form and realization, barred upfrom increase 
 of knowledge, and deprived of the exercise of profitable or even of 
 decorous speech. Take pity, your Excellency! and grant me the 
 power to shelter my eyes from Vice in her most revolting and sordid 
 phase, and my ears from a jargon of filth and blasphemy that would 
 outrage the cynism {sic") of Parny himself. Perhaps this clinging to 
 the lees of a vapid life may seem as base, unmanly, arguing rather a 
 plebeian, than a liberal and gentle descent. But, your Excellency 1 the 
 wretched Exile has a child ! — and Vanity (sprung from the praise of 
 Flaxman, Charles Lamb, Stothard, Rd. Westall, Delaroehe, Corne- 
 lius, Lawrence, and the god of his worship, Fuseli) whispers that the 
 folloiuer of the Ideal might eren yet achieve another reputation than 
 that of a Faussaire. Seven years of steady demeanour may in some 
 degree promise that no indulgence shall ever be abused by your Excel- 
 lency's miserable petitioner, " ■ T. G. Wainwright.' 
 
 " Discharged from the hospital, the elegant-mannered poisoner set up 
 as an artist 9t Hobart Town, where sketches by him still exist. His 
 
WAINWRIGHT S STORY. II3 
 
 are envenomed by the groyelling intellect of the 
 scorner. 
 
 conversation to lady-sitters was often indelicate. A writer in a Mel- 
 bourne paper, 6th July, 1841, says of this dangerous and abandoned 
 wretch : • He rarely looked you in the face. His conversation and 
 manners were winning in the extreme ; he was never intemperate, but 
 nevertheless of grossly sensual habits, and an opium-eater. As to 
 moral character, he was a man of the very lowest stamp. He seemed 
 to be possessed by an ingrained malignity of disposition, which kept 
 him constantly on the very confines of murder, and he took a perverse 
 pleasure in traducing persons who had befriended him. There is a 
 terrible story of his savage malignity towards a fellow-patient in the 
 hospital, a convict, against whom he bore a grudge. The man was in 
 a state of collapse — his extremities were already growing cold. Death 
 had him by the throat, Wainwright's snakish eyes kindled with un- 
 earthly fire. He saw at once the fatal sign. He stole softly as a cat 
 to the man's pallet, and hissed his exultation in his dying ear : 
 
 " ' You are a dead man, you . In four-and-twenty hours your 
 
 soul will be in hell, and my arms will be up to that (touching his 
 elbow) in your body, dissecting you.' 
 
 " Twice this delight of society attempted to poison people who had 
 become obnoxious to him. Even in that polluted comer of the world 
 the man was dreaded, hated, and shunned. His sole friend and com- 
 panion was a cat, for which he evinced an extraordinary and senti- 
 mental afTecdon. He had always been fond of cats. In 1851, this 
 gentlemanly and specious monster was struck down in a moment, as 
 with a thunderbolt, by apoplexy. He had survived his victims sixteen 
 years." — All the Tear Round, Jan. 5, 1867. 
 
 Mr. Forster {Life of Dickeni, i. 161) thus describes a strange 
 rencontre to which he was witness. " We made together," he says, 
 " a circuit of nearly all the London prisons, and in coming to the pri- 
 soners under remand while going over Newgate, accompanied by 
 Macready and Mr, Hablot Browne, were startled by a sudden tragic 
 cry of ' My God ! there is Wainwright !' In the shabby-genteel 
 creature, with sandy disordered hair and dirty moustache, who had 
 turned quickly round with a defiant stare at our entrance, looking at once 
 mean and fierce, and quite capable of the cowardly murders he had 
 committed, Macready had been terrified to recognise a man familiarly 
 known to him in former years, and at whose table he had dined." Lord 
 Lytton has drawn Wainwright in his " I.ucretia ." — F. 
 
( "4 I 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 [1822-1813.] 
 
 V/siT TO Paris. — " Elia's" Letter to Southey. — 
 Islington. 
 
 In the summer of 1822 Lamb and his sister visited 
 Paris.' Soon after his return he became acquainted 
 with the poet of the Quakers, Bernard Barton, who, like 
 
 ' Lamb and his sister set off on their journey on June i8th, ac- 
 companied by a French gentleman, and a nurse, in case Mary Lamb 
 should be taken ill. She was a little nervous, but Lamb was in 
 high spirits. Her courage seemed wonderful to Mr. Crabb Robinson, 
 who furnished them with letters to friends in Paris, Their dismal 
 foreboding, and wise provision, were to be unhappily justified by the 
 event. " When at Amiens," says Mrs. Shelley in a letter, " poor Miss 
 L. was taken ill in her usual way, and Lamb was in despair. He met, 
 however, with some acquaintances, who got Miss L. into proper 
 hands ; and L. went on to Versailles, and stayed with the Kenneys." 
 This is alluded to by Moore, who, in his light way, adds a painiiil 
 touch, speaking of Miss Lamb as " the poor woman who went mad 
 with him in the diligence on the way to Paris." These and other 
 friends that Lamb met at Paris found him more reserved and silent than 
 was his wont ; which was not surprising, considering what was in his 
 thoughts. Charles had to leave her in Paris, and returned to England. 
 She found a warm friend in Mr. Payne, and Mr. Crabb Robinson 
 arriving towards the end of August, devoted some days to visiting the 
 sights of Paris with her. Charles Lamb could not speak a word of 
 French, and Mr. Procter relates, that " he had once intended to ask 
 the waiter for an egg {auf), but called, in his ignorance for eau- 
 de-vie, and that the mistake produced so pleasant a result, that his 
 inquiries afterwards for eau-de-vie were very frequent." — F. 
 
VISIT TO PARIS. 115 
 
 himself, was engaged in the drudgery of figures. The 
 pure and gentle tones of the poems of his new ac- 
 quaintance was welcome to Lamb, who had more 
 sympathy with the truth of nature in modest guise 
 than in the affected fury of Lord Byron, or the dreamy 
 extravagancies of Shelley. Lamb had written in 
 " Elia" of the Society of Friends with the freedom 
 of one, who, with great respect for the principles of 
 the founders of their faith, had little in common with 
 a sect who shunned the pleasures while they mingled 
 in the business of the world ; and a friendly expostu- 
 lation on the part of Mr. Barton led to such cordial 
 excuses as completely won the heart of the Quaker bard. 
 Some expression which Lamb let fall at their meeting 
 in London, from which Mr. Barton had supposed that 
 Lamb objected to a Quaker's writing poetry as incon- 
 sistent with his creed, induced Mr. Barton to write to 
 Lamb on his return to Woodbridge, who replied to 
 him. Encouraged by Lamb's kindness, Mr. Barton 
 continued the correspondence, which became the 
 most frequent in which Lamb had engaged for many 
 years. 
 
 How bitterly Lamb felt his East-India bondage, has 
 abundantly appeared from his letters during many 
 years. Yet there never was wanting a secret con- 
 sciousness of the benefits which it ensured for him, 
 the precious independence which he won by his hours 
 of toil, and the freedom of his mind, to work only "at 
 its own sweet will," which his confinement to the desk 
 obtained. This sense of the blessings which a fixed 
 income, derived from ascertained duties, confers, was 
 nobly expressed' in reference to a casual fancy in one 
 
 ' See the letter of Lamb, Jan. 9th, 1823. — F. 
 
 I 2 
 
Il6 VISIT TO PARIS. 
 
 of the letters of his fellow in clerkly as well as in 
 poetical labours, Bernard Barton — a fancy as alien to 
 the habitual thoughts of his friend, as to his own — for 
 no one has pursued a steadier course on the weary way 
 of duty than the poet whose brief dream of literary 
 engrossment incited Lamb to make a generous amends 
 to his ledger for all his unjust reproaches. The refer- 
 ences to the booksellers have the colouring of fantas- 
 tical exaggeration, by which he delighted to give effect 
 to the immediate feeling ; but making allowance for 
 this mere play of fancy, how just is his advice — how 
 wholesome for every youth who hesitates whether he 
 shall abandon the certain reward of plodding industry 
 for the splendid miseries of authorship ! ' 
 
 I It is singular that, some years before, Mr. Barton had received 
 similar advice from a very different poet — Lord Byron. As the letter 
 has never been published, and it may be interesting to compare the 
 expressions of the two men so different on tlie same subject, I subjoin 
 it here :— 
 
 " To Bernard Barton, Esq. 
 
 " St. James's Street, June i, 1812. 
 
 " Sir, — ^The most satisfactory answer to the concluding part of your 
 letter is, that Mr. Murray will republish your volume, if you still retain 
 your inclination for the experiment, which I trust will be successful. 
 Some weeks ago my friend Mr. Rogers showed me some of the stanzas 
 in MS., and I then expressed my opinion of their merit, which a 
 further perusal of the printed volume has given me no reason to revoke. 
 I mention this, as it may not be disagreeable to you to learn, that I 
 entertained a very favourable opinion of your powers before I was 
 aware that such sentiments were reciprocal. Waving your obliging 
 expressions as to my own productions, for which I thank you very 
 sincerely, and assure you that I think not lightly of the praise of one 
 whose approbation is valuable; will you allow me to talk to you 
 candidly, not critically, on the subject of yours i You will not suspect 
 me of a wish to discourage, since I pointed out to the publisher the 
 propriety of complying with your wishes. I think more highly of 
 youi poetical talents than it would perhaps gratify you to hear 
 
" elia's" letter to southey. 117 
 
 In the beginning of the year 1823, his Essays, col- 
 lected in a volume, under the title of " Elia," were pub- 
 lished by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, who had become 
 the proprietors of the London Magazine. The book 
 met with a rapid sale, while the magazine in which its 
 contents had appeared, declined. 
 
 In the same year, Lamb appeared, for the first and 
 only time of his life before the public, as an assailant : 
 and the object of his attack was one of his oldest and 
 fastest friends, Mr. Southey. It might, indeed, have 
 been predicted of Lamb, if ever he did enter the arena 
 of personal controversy, it would be with one who had 
 obtained a place in his affection ; for no motive less 
 powerful than the resentment of friendship which 
 
 expressed, for I believe, from what I observe of your mind, that you are 
 above flattery. To come to the point, you deserve success ; but we 
 Itnew before Addison wrote his Cato, that desert does not always com- 
 mand it. But suppose it attained, 
 
 ■ You I<:now what ills the author's life assail. 
 Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.' 
 Do not renounce writing, iut never truit entirely to authorship. If 
 you have a profession, retain it ; it will be like Prior's fellowship, a 
 last and sure resource. Compare Mr. Rogers with other authors of 
 the day ; assuredly he is among the first of living poets, but is it to that 
 he owes his station in society, and his intimacy in the best circles? — 
 no, it is to his prudence and respectability. The world (a bad one, I 
 own) courts him because he has no occasion to court it. He is 
 a poet, nor is he less so because he is something more. I am not 
 sorry to hear that you were not tempted by the vicinity of Capel 
 Lofft, Esq., — though, if he had done for you what he has for the 
 Bloomfields, I should never have laughed at his rage for patronising. 
 But a truly well-constituted mind will ever be independent. That 
 you may be so is my sincere wish ; and if others think as well of your 
 poetry as I do, you will have no cause to complain of your readers 
 Believe me, 
 
 " Your obliged and obedient servant, 
 
 " Byron." 
 
ti8 " elia's" letter to southey. 
 
 deemed itself wounded, could place him in a situation 
 so abhorrent to his habitual thoughts. Lamb had, up 
 to this time, little reason to love reviews or reviewers ; 
 and the connection of Southey with The Quarterly 
 Review, while he felt that it raised, and softened, and 
 refined the tone of that powerful organ of a great party, 
 sometimes vexed hini for his friend. His indignation 
 also had been enlisted on behalf of Hazlitt and Hunt, 
 who had been attacked in this work in a manner which 
 he regarded as unfair; for the critics had not been con- 
 tent with descanting on the peculiarities in the style 
 and taste of the one, or reprobating the political or per- 
 sonal vehemence of the other, — which were fair 
 subjects of controversy, — but spoke of them with 
 a contempt which every man of letters had a right to 
 resent, as unjust. He had been much annoyed by an 
 allusion to himself in an article on " Hazlitt's Political 
 Essays," which appeared in theReview for November, 
 1819, as "one whom we should wish to see in more 
 respectable company;" for he felt a compliment paid 
 him at the expense of a friend, as a grievance far 
 beyond any direct attack on himself. He was also 
 exceedingly hurt by a reference made in an article on 
 Dr. Reid's work " On Nervous Afifections," which 
 appeared in July, 1822, to an essay which he had con- 
 tributed some years before to a collection of tracts pub- 
 lished by his friend, Mr. Basil Montague, on the eifect 
 of spirituous liquors, entitled " The Confessions of a 
 Drunkard." The contribution of this paper is a 
 striking proof of the prevalence of Lamb's personal 
 regards over all selfish feelings and tastes ; for no one 
 was less disposed than he to Montague's theory or 
 practice of abstinence ; yet he was willing to gratify 
 his friend by this terrible picture of the extreme effects 
 
" ELIA S LETTER TO SOUTHEY. Iig 
 
 of intemperance, of which his own occasional devia- 
 tions from the right line of sobriety had given him 
 hints and glimpses. The reviewer of Dr. Reid, ad- 
 verting to this essay, speaks of it as a " fearful picture 
 of the consequences of intemperance, which we happen 
 to know is a true tale." How far it was from actual 
 truth the " Essays of Elia," the production of a later 
 day, in which the maturity of his feeling, humour, and 
 reason is exhibited, may sufficiently witness. These 
 articles were not written by Mr. Southey ;^ but they 
 prepared Lamb to feel acutely any attack from the 
 Review ; and a paragraph in an article in the number 
 for July, 1823, entitled " Progress of Infidelity," in 
 which he recognised the hand of his old friend, gave 
 poignancy to all the pajnful associations which had 
 arisen from the same work, and concentrated them in 
 one bitter feeling. After recording some of the con- 
 fessions of unbelievers of the wretchedness which 
 their infidelity brought on them, Mr. Southey thus 
 proceeded : — 
 
 " Unbelievers have not always been honest enough 
 thus to express their real feelings ; but this we know 
 concerning them, that when they had renounced their 
 birthright of hope, they have not been able to divest 
 themselves of fear. From the nature of the human 
 mind, this might be presumed, and in fact it is so. 
 They may deaden the heart and stupify the consci- 
 ence, but they cannot destroy the imaginative faculty. 
 There is a remarkable proof of this in ' Elia's Essays,' 
 a book which wants only a sounder religious feeling, 
 to be as delightful as it is original. In that upon 
 
 1 Dyer in his notice of Talfourd's work, in the Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine, says that the review was written by Dr. Gooch, of Berners 
 Street.— F. 
 
£20 " ELIA's" letter TO SOUTHEY. 
 
 ' Witches and the other Night Fears,' he says, ' It is 
 not book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants, 
 which create these terrors in children ; they can at 
 most but give them a direction. Dear little T. H., 
 who of all children has been brought up with the most 
 scrupulous exclusion of every taint of superstition, 
 who was never allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, 
 or scarcely to be told of bad men, or to hear or read 
 of any distressing story, finds all this world of fear, 
 from which he has been so rigidly excluded ab extra, 
 in his own " thick-coming fancies," and from his little 
 midnight pillow this nurse child of optimism will start 
 at shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which 
 the reveries of the well-damned murderer are tranquil- 
 lity.' — ^This poor child, instead of being trained up in 
 the way he should go, had been bred in the ways of 
 modern philosophy ; he had systematically been pre- 
 vented from knowing anything of the Saviour who 
 said, ' Suffer little children to come unto me, and for- 
 bid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven ;' 
 care had been taken that he should not pray to God, 
 nor lie down at night in reliance upon his good pro- 
 vidence ! Nor let it be supposed that terrors of 
 imagination belong to childhood alone. The repro- 
 bate heart, which has discarded all love of God, can- 
 not so easily rid itself of the fear of the devil ; and 
 even when it succeeds in that also, it will then create 
 a hell for itself. We have heard of unbelievers who 
 thought it probable that they should be awake in their 
 graves ; and this was the opinion for which they had 
 exchanged a Christian's hope of immortality !" 
 
 The allusion in this paragraph was really, as Lamb 
 was afterwards convinced, intended by Mr. Southey 
 to assist the sale of the book. In haste, having ex- 
 
ISLINGTON. 121 
 
 punged some word which he thought improper,' he 
 wrote, " sounder religious feeling," not satisfied with 
 the epithet, but meaning to correct it in the proof, 
 which unfortunately was never sent him. 
 
 Lamb saw it on' his return from a month's pleasant 
 holidays at Hastings, and expressed his first impres- 
 sion respecting it in a letter to his Quaker friend 
 Barton. But his angry feeling was a little diverted by 
 the execution of a scheme, rather suddenly adopted, of 
 removing to a neat cottage at Islington, where Lamb 
 first found himself installed in the dignity of a house- 
 holder.^ There an expostulation with Southey was 
 
 ' The "improper" word was ja»fr; almostas awkward an allusion as 
 GifTord's " poor maniac." Southey was horrified at what he had thus un- 
 consciously written, and, as stated in the text, felt that any substitution 
 would be more suitable, for the present at least. It must be said that the 
 Essays are open to his very temperate criticism, as it cannot be denied 
 that an under-current of amiable materialism runs through them. 
 Here the "gentle-hearted" Charles was a little unreasonable; especially 
 as he had allowed his friend and champion, Leigh Hunt, to malce the 
 same objection. " It is difficult," wrote the latter, in a number of the 
 Examiner, in 1819, "from his works to collect whether Mr. Lamb is 
 a professed Christian or not." This is far more severe than Southey's 
 " sounder religious feeling," which he had intended to soften away. 
 Lamb wrote that he did not intend to retort, but he later changed his 
 mind. Southey treated the attack with a sweetness that did infinite 
 credit to his goodnature and good humour. " The letter, I remem- 
 ber,'' says Mr. Procter, " produced a strong sensation in literary circles, 
 and Mr. Southey's acquaintances smiled, and his enemies rejoiced, at 
 him."— F. 
 
 " Mr. George Daniel, the well known " D. G." of " Cumberland's 
 Theatre," gives the following sketch of their life at Islington ;..— " He 
 planted, pruned, and grafted. The rose was his favourite flower. 
 • Commend me,' he said, ' to the sparrows for what our friend Ma- 
 tnews calls in his " At Home," " irregular appropriation." ' Seeing 
 his growing fondness for birds, I offered him a beautiful bullfinch en- 
 sconced in a handsome cage. But he declined the present. ' Every 
 
122 ISLINGTON. 
 
 written, and appeared in the London Magazine for 
 October, 1823. Lamb did not print it in any subse- 
 
 song that is sung from its wiry prison,' said he, ' I could never flattei 
 myself was meant for my ear ; but rather a wistful note to the passing 
 travellers of air that it were with them too ! This would malie me 
 self-reproachful and sad. Yet I should be loth to let the little captive 
 fly, lest, being unused to liberty, it should flutter itself to death, or 
 starve.' 
 
 "Ani witn wnat cheerfulness and gratitude he boasted that, for 
 the first time in his life, he was the absolute lord and master of a 
 whole house ! — of an undisturbed and well-conducted home ! I helped 
 him to arrange his darling folios (Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, 
 and Company !) in his pleasant dining-room ; to hang in the best light 
 his portraits of the poets, and his ' Hogarths' (the latter In oId-&shioned 
 ebony frames), in his newly-furnished drawing-room ; and to adorn the 
 mantelpieces with his Chelsea china shepherds and shepherdesses (&- 
 mily relics) which, like their owner, looked gayer and fresher for the 
 change of air ! He lived abstemiously, retired to rest at a reasonable 
 hour (the midnight chimes had hitherto been more familiar to him 
 than the lark's), and rose early. He took long summer walks in the 
 neighbouring fields, and returned with a gathering of wild flowers. 
 ' Every glimpse of beauty,' he said, ' was acceptable and precious to 
 colour our pale lives.' He lamented the encroachments of ' horrid 
 bricks and mortar ' on the green sward. 
 
 " • Merrie Islington' was endeared to Charles Lamb by many tender 
 recollections. Its rural walks, having been the scenes of his early and 
 transient courtship, still retained for him an inexpressible charm. I 
 have had many opportunities of friendly converse with the gifted 
 woman, his sister, when her intellect was unclouded, and I have beheld 
 her when that intellect was a ruin, and memory was alive only to the 
 horrors of the past. Lamb, referring to his many domestic trials, once 
 remarked to me, ' What a hard heart must mine be that these blows 
 cannot break it!' Yet he might have remembered that when the dark- 
 ness is deepest (midnight), the light is near. 
 
 " In the autumn of 18Z5, after dining at Colebrooke Cottage with 
 him and Robert Bloomfield, I accompanied the two poets to the cele- 
 brated ' Queen Elizabeth's Walk' at Stoke Newington, which had 
 become Lamb's favourite promenaae in summer, for its wild flowers, 
 upon which he could neve tread with indifference ; for its seclusion 
 
ISLINGTON. 123 
 
 quent collection of his essays ; but I have reason to 
 know that its publication will cause no painful feel- 
 
 and iti shade. He would watch the setting sun from the top of old 
 Canonbury Tower, and sit contemplating the starry heavens (for he 
 was a disciple of Plato, the great Apostle of the Beautiful I), until the 
 cold night air warned him to retire. He was hand and glove with 
 Goodman Symes, the then tenant of this venerable Tower, and a bro- 
 ther antiquary in a small way, who took pleasure in entertaining him 
 in the oak-panelled chamber where Goldsmith wrote his ' Traveller,' 
 and supped on butter-milk ; pointing at tlie same time to a small 
 coloured portrait of Shakespeare in a curiously carved gilt frame, which 
 Lamb would look at lovingly, and which, through the kindness of a 
 late friend, has since become mine. He was never weary of toiling up 
 and down the steep, winding, narrow stairs of this suburban pile, and 
 peeping into its sly corners and cupboards, as if he expected to discover 
 there some hitherto hidden clue to its mysterious origin t The ancient 
 hostelries of Islington and its vicinity he also visited. At the Old 
 Queen's Head he pufied his pipe, and quaffed his ale out of the huge 
 tankard. It was here that he chanced to fall in with that obese and 
 burly figure of fun, Theodore Hook, who came to take a last look at 
 this historical relic before it was pulled down. Hook accompanied 
 him to Colebrook Cottage, which was hard by. During the evening 
 Lamb (lightsome and lissom) proposed a race round the garden ; but 
 Hook (a cochon a I'angraisse, pursy and puffy, with a nose as radiant 
 as the red-hot poker in a pantomime, and whose gait was like the bab- 
 blings of a fat goose attempting to fly^ declined the contest, remarking 
 that he could outrun nobody but ' the constable.' In the Sir Hugh 
 Myddleton's Head ' Elia' would often introduce his own, for there he 
 would be sure to find, from its proximity to Sadler's Wells, some play- 
 going old crony with whom he could exchange a convivial * crack,* 
 and hear the celebrated Joe Grimaldi call for his < namesake' (a tum- 
 bler !) of ■ iiueet and pretty' (rum punch) ; challenging Boniface to 
 bring it to a ' rummer 1' Many a gleeful hour has he spent in this 
 once rural hostelrie (since razed and rebuilt) in fiimigation and fiin. 
 Though now a retired ' country gentleman,' luxuriating in the Per- 
 sian's Paradise, ■ something to see, and nothing to do,' he occasionally 
 enjoyed the amusements of the town. He had always been a great 
 sight-seer (as early as i8o2 he piloted the Wordsworths through Bar- 
 tlemy Fair), and the ruling passion still followed him to his Islingtoniau 
 
124 ISLINGTON. 
 
 ings in the mind of Mr. Southey, and as it forms the 
 only ripple on the kindliness of Lamb's personal and 
 literary life. Indeed, the feeling with which it was 
 received by him may be best described in his own words 
 in a letter to Mr. Moxon. " On my part there was not 
 even a momentary feeling of anger; I was very much 
 surprised and grieved, because I knew how much he 
 would condemn himself. And yet no resentful letter 
 was ever written less offensively : his gentle nature 
 may be seen in it throughout." ' Southey was right 
 in his belief in the revulsion Lamb's feelings would 
 undergo, when the excitement under which he had 
 written subsided ; for although he would retract 
 
 Tusculnm. ■ One who patronises,' said lie, ' as I do, St. Bartlemy, must 
 liave a liindred inkling for my Lord Mayor's Show. They both possess 
 the charm of antiquity.' Many a penny he has paid for a peep into a 
 puppet-show, and after his final retirement to Edmonton in the Spring 
 of 1 833, he, in my company, revisited its fair in the September follow- 
 ing, and renewed old acquaintanceship with the clowns and con- 
 jurors. 
 
 " This happy change of life and scene, this moral sunshine — (he 
 had vanquished evil by resisting it) — produced the best effects upon 
 his constitution (sickly frames are the homes of sickly fanciet) and 
 mind. Those spectre-haunted day and night dreams, (ghastly and 
 grotesque !) that he so fearfiilly describes, no longer distracted him, 
 and he lost that nervous irritability and restlessness which at one time 
 threatened to become a permanent disease. His eyes recovered their 
 lustre, his step its firmness, his pulse its regularity, and his appetite its 
 tone. ' I have the stomach,' said he, ' of a Heliogabalus and the gorge 
 of a garreteer 1' He had not become a ' sadder'— for he was as full of 
 felicitous absurdities as ever — ^but a ' wiser' man. All rejoiced at his 
 rejuvenescence." — F. 
 
 ' He also added : " My reply was to this efiect, that if he had inti- 
 mated to me that he was hurt by anything which had been said by me 
 in the Quarterly Review, I would in the next number have explained 
 or qualified it to his entire satisfaction ; but I would never make sport 
 for the Philistines by entering into a controversy with him." — F. 
 
ISLINGTON. 125 
 
 nothing he had ever said or written in defence of his 
 friends, he was ready at once to surrender every 
 resentment of his own. Southey came to London in 
 the following month, and wrote proposing to call at 
 Islington; and on the 21st of November Lamb thus 
 replied : — 
 
 "E. I. H., list November, iSzj. 
 
 " Dear Southey, — The kindness of your note has 
 melted away the mist which was upon me. I have 
 been fighting against a shadow. That accursed Q. R. 
 had vexed me by a gratuitous speaking, of its own 
 
 knowledge, that the ' Confessions of a D d' was a 
 
 genuine description of the state of the writer. Little 
 things that are not ill meant, may produce much ill. 
 That might have injured me alive and dead. I am in 
 a public office, and my life is insured. I was prepared 
 for anger, and I thought I saw, in a few obnoxious 
 words, a hard case of repetition directed against me. 
 I wish both magazine and review at the bottom of the 
 sea. I shall be ashamed to see you, and my sister 
 (though innocent) will be still more so ; for the folly 
 was done without her knowledge, and has made her 
 uneasy ever since. My guardian angel was absent 
 at that time. " C. L." 
 
 Southey went to Colebrook-cottage, as proposed ; 
 the awkwardness of meeting went off in a moment ; 
 and the affectionate intimacy, which had lasted for 
 almost twenty years, was renewed, to be interrupted 
 only by deatli. 
 
( 126 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 [1823.1833.] 
 
 New Friends. — Lamb's Emancipation. — Enfield, 
 — Edmonton. 
 
 Lamb was fond of visiting the Universities in the 
 summer vacation, and repeatedly spent his holiday 
 month at Cambridge with his sister. On one of these 
 occasions they met with a little girl, who being in a 
 manner alone in the world, engaged their sympathy, 
 and soon riveted their affections. Emma Isola was 
 the daughter of Mr. Charles Isola, who had been one 
 of the esquire bedells of the University ; her grand- 
 father, Agostino Isola, had been compelled to fly from 
 Milan, because a friend took up an English book in 
 his apartment, which he had carelessly left in view.' 
 This good old man numbered among his pupils. Gray 
 the poet, Mr. Pitt, and, in his old age, Wordsworth, 
 whom he instructed in the Italian language. His 
 little grand-daughter, at the time when she had the 
 
 ' He belonged to Emmanuel College, where he had taken a degree ; 
 and in a contest for the office of " Esquire Bedell," that took place in 
 1797, he was elected in preference to a very influential opponent, Mr. 
 Ellis, Fellow of King's College. His father was highly esteemed, and 
 in consequence there was a general desire to do something to advance 
 the son. The latter was of shy and retiring manners, and for the six- 
 teen years that he held his office, " was found ready to undertake every 
 duty that did not include dining with a large party." — Reminiscences of 
 Cambridge. — F. 
 
NEW FRIENDS. t27 
 
 good fortune to win the regard of Mr. Lamb, had lost 
 both her parents, and was spending her holidays with 
 an aunt, who lived with a sister of Mr. Ayrton, at 
 whose house Lamb generally played his evening 
 rubber during his stay at Cambridge. The liking 
 which both Lamb and his sister took for the little 
 orphan, led to their begging her of her aunt for the 
 next holidays ; their regard for her increased ; she 
 regularly spent the holidays with them till she left 
 school, and afterwards was adopted as a daughter, and 
 lived generally with them until 1833, when she mar- 
 ried Mr. Moxon. Lamb was fond of taking long walks 
 in the country, and as Miss Lamb's strength was 
 not always equal to these pedestrian excursions, she 
 became his constant companion in walks which even 
 extended " to the green fields of pleasant Hertford- 
 shire." 
 
 About this time. Lamb added to his list of friends, 
 Mr. Hood, the delightful humorist ;' Hone, lifted for 
 
 ' An American lady, Mrs. Balmanno, describes a dinner at the 
 Hoods, then living at Winchmore. Miss Kelly was of the party. 
 Lamb, the lady noted, was " always playing pranks on his sister, who 
 was dressed with qiiaker-like simplicity in a dove-coloured silk, with a 
 transparent kerchief of snow-white muslin folded across her bosom." 
 Her behaviour towards him was as of " some adoring disciple," her 
 eyes being always fixed on his face: even when he was talking at the 
 other end of the room, she would supply some word that he wanted. 
 On this occasion he was in high spirits, sauntering about the room, his 
 hands crossed behind his back, conversing in fits and starts, and all 
 attention to Miss Kelly. Affecting to seek a dish that would be easy 
 to carve, "so as to take the trouble off Mrs. Hood's hands," he selected 
 a lobster salad, observing that that was the thing. When pressed to 
 sing a song, he made a Latin speech, which was in favour, he said, of 
 Mrs. Hood, but really in praise of the Salad. — Memorials ofT. Hood. 
 
 Mr. Procter quotes the American N. P. Willis' account of his meeting 
 with Charles and Mary Lamb : — " He had been invited by a gentle- 
 
128 NEW FRIENDS. 
 
 a short time into political fame by the prosecution ol 
 his Parodies, and the signal energy and success oi 
 his defence, but now striving by unwearied researches, 
 which were guided by a pure taste and an honest 
 heart, to support a numerous family; and Ainsworth, 
 then a youth, who has since acquired so splendid a 
 reputation as the author of " Rookwood " and 
 " Crichton." Mr. Ainsworth, then resident at Man- 
 man in the Temple, Mr. R (Robinson ?) to meet Charles Lamb 
 
 and his sister at breakfast. The Lambs lived at that time ' a little 
 way out of London, and were not quite punctual.' At last, they 
 enter ; ' the gentleman in black small-clothes and gaiters, short and 
 very slight in person ; his head set on his shoulders with a thoughtful 
 forward bent, his hair just sprinkled with grey, a beautiful deep set 
 eye, an aquiline nosa, and a very indescribable mouth. Whether it 
 expressed most humour or feeling, goodnature or a kind of whimsical 
 peevishness, or twenty other things which passed over it by turns, I 
 cannot in the least be certain.' The guest places a large arm chair for 
 Mary Lamb; Charles puUs it away, saying, gravely, 'Mary, don't 
 take it ; it looks as if you were going to have a tooth drawn,' Miss 
 Lamb was at that time very hard of hearing, and Charles took advan- 
 tage of her temporary dea&iess to impute various improbabilities to 
 her, which however were so obvious as to render any denial or explana- 
 tion unnecessary, Willis told Charles that he had bought a copy of 
 the ' Elia' in America, in order to give to a friend. 'What did you 
 give for it ?' asked Lamb, ' About seven and sixpence.' • Permit me 
 to pay you that,' said Lamb, counting out the money with earnestness 
 on the table ; ' I never yet wrote anything that could sell. I am the 
 publisher's ruin. My last poem won't sell, — not a copy. Have you 
 seen it.' No; Willis had not. ' It's only eighteen-pence, and I'll give 
 you sixpence toward it,' said Lamb ; and he described where Willis 
 would find it, ' sticking up in a shop window in the Strand.' Lamb 
 ate nothing ; but inquired anxiously for some potted fish, which Mr. 
 
 R used to procure for him. There was none in the house ; he 
 
 therefore asked to see the cover of the pot which had contained it ; he 
 thought it would do him good. It was brought, and on it was 
 a picture of the fish. Lamb kissed it, and then left the table and 
 began to wander about the room, with an unceitain step." — F, 
 
NEW FRIENDS. I29 
 
 Chester, excited by an enthusiastic admiration of 
 Elia, had sent him some books. 
 
 In the year 1824, one of Lamb's last ties to the 
 theatre, as a scene of present enjoyment, was 
 severed. Munden, the rich peculiarities of whose 
 acting he has embalmed in one of the choicest 
 " Essays of Elia," quitted the stage in the mellow- 
 ness of his powers. His relish for Munden's acting 
 was almost a new sense ; he did not compare him 
 with the old comedians, as having common qualities 
 with them, but regarded him as altogether of a 
 different and original style. On the last night of his 
 appearance, Lamb was very desirous to attend, but 
 every place in the boxes had long since been secured, 
 and Lamb was not strong enough to stand the tre- 
 mendous rush, by enduring which, alone, he could 
 hope to obtain a place in the pit ; when Munden's 
 gratitude for his exquisite praise anticipated his wish, 
 by providing for him and Miss Lamb places in a cor- 
 ner of the orchestra, close to the stage. The play of 
 the " Poor Gentleman," in which Munden played 
 Sir Robert Bramble, had concluded, and the audi- 
 ence were impatiently waiting for the farce, in which 
 the great comedian was to delight them for the last 
 time, when my attention was suddenly called to 
 Lamb by Miss Kelly, who sat with my party far with- 
 drawn into the obscurity of one of the upper boxes, 
 but overlooking the radiant hollow which waved 
 below us, to our friend. In his hand, directly 
 beneath the line of stage-lights, glistened a hugh por- 
 ter-pot, which he was draining ; while the broad face 
 of old Munden was seen thrust out from the door by 
 which the musicians enter, watching the close of the 
 draught, when he might receive and hide the porten- 
 
130 NEW FRIENDS. 
 
 tous beaker from the gaze of the admiring neighbours. 
 Some unknown benefactor had sent four pots of stout 
 to keep up the veteran's heart during "his last trial ; 
 and, not able to drink them all, he bethought him of 
 Lamb, and without considering the wonder which 
 would be excited in the brilliant crowd who sur- 
 rounded him, conveyed himself the cordial chalice to 
 Lamb's parched lips. At the end of the same farce, 
 Munden found himself unable to deliver from memory 
 a short and elegant address which one of his sons had 
 written for him ; but, provided against accidents, took 
 it from his pocket, wiped his eyes, put on his specta- 
 cles, read it, and made his last bow. This was, per- 
 haps, the last night when Lamb took a hearty interest 
 in the present business scene ; for though he went 
 now and then to the theatre to gratify Miss Isola, or 
 to please an author who was his friend, his real stage 
 henceforth only spread itself out in the selectest 
 chambers of his memory.' 
 
 A New Series of the London Magazine was com- 
 menced with the year 1825, in an increased size and 
 price ; but the spirit of the work had evaporated, as 
 often happens to periodical works, as the store of rich 
 fancies with which its contributors had begun, was 
 in a measure exhausted. Lamb contributed another 
 theatrical paper, a " Memoir of Liston," who occa- 
 sionally enlivened Lamb's evening parties with his 
 society; and who, besides the interest which he 
 derived from his theatrical fame, was recommended 
 to Lamb by the cordial admiration he expressed for 
 Munden, whom he used to imitate in a style delight- 
 
 ' " It was on this occasion," says Mrs. Cowden Clarke. " that Marj 
 l,amb made the pun, ' Sic transit gloria Munden.'"— F 
 
lamb's emancipation. 131 
 
 fully blending his own humour with that of his some- 
 time rival. The " Memoir " is altogether a fiction, 
 giving a ludicrously improbable account of his hero's 
 pedigree, birth, and early habits. 
 
 This year is marked by one of the principal 
 events in Lamb's uneventful life ; his retirement from 
 the drudgery of the desk, with a pension equal to two- 
 thirds of his now liberal salary.^ Freedom now 
 gleamed upon him, and he became restless with the 
 approach of deliverance. In February, 1825, he had 
 completed his half century. 
 
 The first dawning hope of Lamb's emancipation 
 was suggested in a note to Manning, proposing a visit, 
 in which he refers to a certificate of non-capacity for 
 hard desk-work, given by a medical friend (Dr. Tut- 
 hill). " I dare not hope," he says, " for fear of disap- 
 pointment." The dream was realized — in April, 1825, 
 the "world-wearied clerk" went home for ever — with 
 what delight has been told in the elaborate raptures of 
 his " Superannuated Man," and in the letters already 
 published," as well as how imperfectly the emanci- 
 pation, so rapturously hailed, fulfilled its promises. 
 
 When the first enjoyment of freedom was over, it 
 may be doubted whether Lamb was happier for the 
 change. He lost a grievance on which he could 
 
 ' He was treated with liberality, his retiring pension being fixed at 
 £450 ; nine pounds being deducted to secure a provision for his sister 
 _F. 
 
 2 Some of his friends were aheady doubtful as to the result. Mr. 
 C. Robinson wrote thus to Miss Wordsworth in June : — " Nor can 1 
 give you the report you so naturally looked for of his conduct at so 
 great a change in his life. I do not doubt, T do not fear, that he will 
 be unable to sustain the weight of chance desires. He has no desire 
 to travel, ... he has a passion for solitude, and hitherto finds thai 
 his retiring has not brought him leisure," — F. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 lamb's emancipation. 
 
 lavish all the fantastical exaggeration of a sufferer 
 without wounding the feelings of any individual, and 
 perhaps the loss was scarcely compensated by the 
 listless leisure which it brought him. Whenever the 
 facile kindness of 6is disposition permitted, he fled 
 from those temptations of society, which he could 
 only avoid by flight ; and his evening hours of solitude 
 were hardly so sweet as when they were the reliefs 
 and resting-places of his mind, — "glimpses which 
 might make him less forlorn" of the world of poetry 
 and romance. His mornings were chiefly occupied 
 in long walks, sometimes extending to ten or twelve 
 miles, in which at this time he was accompanied by 
 a noble dog, the property of Mr. Hood, to whose 
 humours Lamb became almost a slave," and who, at 
 last, acquired so portentous an ascendancy that Lamb 
 
 ' The following allusion to Lamb's subserrience to Dash is extracted 
 from one of a series of papers, written in a most cordial spirit, and 
 with great characteristic power, by the friend to whom Dash was 
 assigned, which appeared in tlie Court Magazine. "During these 
 interminable rambles — heretofore pleasant in virtue of their profound 
 loneliness and freedom from restraint. Lamb made himself a perfect 
 slave to the dog — whose habits were of the most extravagantly errant 
 nature, for, generally speaking, the creature was half a mile off from 
 his companion either before or behind, scouring the fields or roads in 
 all directions, scampering up or down ' all manner of streets,' and 
 leaving Lamb in a perfect fever of irritation and annoyance ; for he 
 was afraid of losing the dog when it was out of sight, and yet could 
 not persuade himself to keep it in sight for a moment, by curbing its 
 roving spirit. Dash knew Lamb's weakness in these paruculars as well 
 as he did himself, and took a dog-like advantage of it. In the Regent's 
 Park, in particular. Dash haa his master completely at his mercy ; for 
 the moment they got into the ring, he used to get through the paling 
 on to the green sward, and disappear for a quarter or half an. hour 
 together, knowing perfectly well that Lamb did not dare move from 
 the spot where he (Dash) had disappeared, till such time as he thought 
 proper to show himself again. And they used to take this particular 
 
ENFIELD. 133 
 
 requested his friend Mr. Patmore to take him under 
 his care. At length the desire of assisting Mr. Hone, 
 in his struggle to support his family by antiquarian 
 research and modern pleasantry, renewed to him the 
 blessing of regular labour ; he began the task of 
 reading through the glorious heap of dramas collected 
 at the British Museum under the title of the " Garrick 
 Plays," to glean scenes of interest and beauty for the 
 work of his friend ; and the work of kindness brought 
 with it its own reward. " It is a sort of office work 
 to me," says Lamb, in a letter to Barton ; " hours 
 ten to four, the same. It does me good. Man must 
 have regular occupation that has been used to it." 
 
 But he now found that the cares of housekeeping 
 pressed too heavily on Mary Lamb, and presently 
 resolved to resign the dignity of a housekeeper for the 
 independence of a lodger.' A couple of old dwellers 
 in Enfield, hard by his cottage, had the good fortune 
 to receive them. The first result of the experiment 
 was happy, as it brought improved health to Mary 
 Lamb ; and in his letters addressed to Wordsworth, 
 and to Gilman (intended also for his great guest, 
 Coleridge), he described his landlord and landlady ; 
 expressing, also, with a fine solemnity, the feelings 
 which still held him to Enfield. 
 
 While Lamb was residing at Enfield, the friendship 
 which, in 1824, he had formed with Mr. Moxon, led 
 to very frequent intercourse, destined, in after years, 
 
 walk much oftener than they otherwise would, precisely because Dash 
 liked it and Lamb did not." Under his second master, we learn iiom 
 the same source, that Dash " subsided into the best bred and best 
 behaved of his species." 
 
 ' This "pressing too heavily," was, of course, connected with thsil 
 usual affliction. — F. 
 
134 ENFIELD. 
 
 to be rendered habitual, by the marriage of his friend 
 with the young lady whom he regarded almost as a 
 daughter. In 1828 Mr. Moxon, at the request of Mr. 
 Hurst, of the firm of Hurst, Chance, and Co., applied 
 to Lamb to supply an article for the " Keepsake," which 
 he, always disliking the flimsy elegancies of the 
 Annuals — sadly opposed to his own exclusive taste 
 for old, standard, moth-eaten books — had declined. 
 
 In the spring of the year, Mr. Murray, the eminent 
 publisher, through one of Lamb's oldest and most 
 cherished friends, Mr. Ayrton, proposed to him an- 
 other literary venture : that he should undertake a 
 continuation of his specimens of the Old English 
 Dramatists. The proposal was communicated by Mr. 
 Ayrton to Lamb, then at Enfield, and then too pain- 
 fully anxious for the recovery of Miss Isola, who was 
 dangerously ill in Suffolk, to make the arrangement 
 desired. His friend's letter he said, "revived some 
 old images ; Phillips,' (not the Colonel,) with his few 
 hairs bristling at the charge of a revoke, which he de- 
 clares impossible ; the old Captain's significant nod 
 over the right shoulder," (was it not ?)." 
 
 ' Edward Phillips, Esq., Secretary to the Speaker of the House of 
 Commo.is. The " Colonel" alluded to was the Lieutenant of Marines 
 who accompanied Capt. Cook in his last voyage, and was on shore with 
 that great man when he fell a victim to his humanity. On the death 
 of his commander. Lieutenant Phillips, himself wounded, swam off to 
 the boats ; but seeing one of his marines struggling in the water to 
 escape the natives who were pursuing him, gallantly swam back, pro- 
 tected his man at the peril of his ovra life, and both reached their boat 
 in safety. He afterwards married that accomplished and amiable 
 daughter of Dr. Burney, whose name so frequently occurs in the Diary 
 and Correspondence of her sister, Madame D'Atblay. 
 
 3 Admiral Burney died in i8zi, having been promoted to his rank 
 only a few weeks before. — F. 
 
ENFIELD. 135 
 
 " Have you seen," he wrote at this time, " a curious 
 letter in the Morning Chronicle, by C. L.,' the genius 
 of absurdity ?" 
 
 He continued occasional contributions to the New 
 Monthly, especially the series of " Popular Fallacies ;" 
 wrote short articles in the Athenaum ; and a great 
 many acrostics on the names of his friends. He had 
 now a neighbour in Mr. Serjeant Wilde, to whom he 
 was introduced by Mr. Burney, and whom he held in 
 high esteem, though Lamb cared nothing for forensic 
 eloquence, and thought very little of eloquence of any 
 kind ; which, it must be confessed, when printed is 
 the most vapid of all reading. What political interest 
 could not excite, personal regard produced in favour 
 of his new friend ; and Lamb supplied several versified 
 squibs and snatches of electioneering songs to grace 
 Wilde's contests at Newark. With these slender 
 avocations his life was dull, and only a sense of duty 
 induced him to persist in absence from London. 
 
 The following was addressed in 1829 to the Editor, 
 on occasion of his giving to a child the name of 
 " Charles Lamb," though withheld from an indisposi- 
 tion to intrude matters so personal to himself on the 
 
 ' Capel Lofft, a barrister residing in SuffoU:, a well-linown whig and 
 friend of Major Wyvil and Major Cartwriglit, who sometimes half 
 vexed Lamb by signing, as he had a right, their common initials to a 
 sonnet. He wrote a very vehement letter, contending that the deten- 
 tion of Napoleon on board a vessel off" the coast, preparatory to his 
 being sent to St. Helena, was illegal, and that the captain of the vessel 
 would be compelled to surrender him in obedience to a writ of Habeas 
 Corpus. — ^T. As this gentleman signed with the same initials, Lamb 
 was often to his annoyance, set down as the author of his compositions. 
 The Hon. George Lamb, another dilettante writer, was given in a 
 theatrical dictionary as the author of " Mr. H."- — F. 
 
136 ENFIELD. 
 
 reader, may now, on his drawing near the close of the 
 Bubject, find its place. 
 
 " To Mr. Talfourd. 
 
 " Dear Talfourd, — You could not have told me of a 
 more friendly thing than you have been doing. I am 
 proud of my namesake. I shall take care never to do 
 any dirty action, pick pockets, or anyhow get myself 
 hanged, for fear of reflecting ignominy upon your 
 young Chrisom. I have now a motive to be good. 
 I shall not omnis moriar ; — my name borne down the 
 black gulf of oblivion. 
 
 " I shall survive in eleven letters, five more than 
 Caesar. Possibly I shall come to be knighted, or more ! 
 Sir C. L. Talfourd, Bart. !" 
 
 * m in « * 
 
 It was signed, — "Charles Lamb-Philo-Talfourd." 
 He adds : " I come as near it as I can." ' 
 
 ' The child who bore the name so honoured by his parents, survived 
 his god-father only a year — dying at Brighton, whither he had been 
 talcen in the vain hope of restoration, on the 3rd December, 1 83 J. Will 
 the reader forgive the weakness which prompts the desire, in this place, 
 to link their memories together, by inserting a few verses, which, having 
 been only published at the end of the last small edition of the Editor's 
 dramas, may have n:iissed some of the friendly eyes for which they were 
 written ? 
 
 Our gentle Charles has pass'd away 
 From earth's short bondage free. 
 And left to us its leaden day 
 And mist-enshrouded sea. 
 
 Here, by the ocean's terraced side, 
 
 Sweet hours of hope were known, 
 When first the triumph of its tide 
 
 Seem'd omen of our own. 
 
 That eager joy the sea-breeze gave, 
 When first it raised his hair. 
 
ENFIELD. 137 
 
 Good tidings soon reached Lamb of Miss Isola's 
 health, and he went to Fornham to bring her, for a 
 
 Sunk with each day's retiring wave. 
 Beyond the reach of prayer. 
 
 The sun-blink that through drizzling mist. 
 
 To flickering hope akin, 
 Lone waves with feeble fondness kiss'd, 
 
 No smile as faint can win ; 
 
 Yet not in vain with radiance weak 
 
 The heavenly stranger gleams — 
 Not of the world it lights to speak. 
 
 But that from whence it streams. 
 
 That world onr patient sufTerer sought, 
 
 Serene witli pitying eyes. 
 As if his mounting spirit caught 
 
 The wisdom of the skies. 
 
 With boundless love it look'd abroad 
 
 For one bright moment given, 
 Shone with a loveliness that awed. 
 
 And quiver'd into Heaven. 
 
 A year made slow by care and toil 
 
 Has paced its weary round. 
 Since Death enrich'd with kindred spoil 
 
 The snow -clad, frost-ribb*d ground. 
 
 Then Lamb, with whose endearing name 
 
 Our boy we proudly graced. 
 Shrank from the warmth of sweeter lame 
 
 Than ever bard embraced. 
 
 Still *twas a mournful joy to think 
 
 Our darling might supply, 
 For years to us, a living link 
 
 With name that cannot die. 
 
 And though such fancy gleam no more 
 
 On earthly sorrow's night. 
 Truth's nobler torch unveils the shore 
 
 Which lends to both its light. 
 
138 ENFIELD. 
 
 month's visit, to Enfield.' In the following year he 
 ventured to try the experiment of lodging a little 
 while in London ; but Miss Lamb's malady compelled 
 him to return to the solitude of Enfield." He there- 
 fore gave up Colebrooke Cottage, and took what he 
 described in a notelet to me as " an old-looking gam- 
 bogish-coloured house," at Chase Side, Enfield. The 
 situation was far from picturesque, for the opposite 
 side of the road only presented some middling tene- 
 ments, two Dissenting-chapels, and a public-house 
 decorated with a swinging sign of a Rising Sun ; but 
 the neighbouring field-walks were pleasant, and the 
 country, as he liked to say, quite as good as West- 
 moreland.' 
 
 ^ It was on his tetum that Lamb's repartee to the query of the 
 statistical gentleman as to the prospects of the turnip crop, which had 
 been repeatedly published, was made. 
 
 ^ Mrs. Leishman was his landlady, though he boarded with the 
 family that lired next door. Even in their housekeeping, brother and 
 sister seem to have been most unfortunate. The loss of their maid 
 " Becky," who seems to have directed the household with a good- 
 natured tyranny, led to the boarding arrangement, which again turned 
 out unsatisfactory ; their caterers, according to Mr. Patmore, " charging 
 them for the plainest possible accommodation a price almost sufficient 
 to keep all the household twice over." One of the " extra teas" was 
 subjected to an "extra" charge, because "the elderly gentleman" 
 (Wordsworth) " had taken such a quantity of sugar in his tea." — F. 
 
 8 Mr. T. Westwood, who was living at Enfield during these last 
 days, recalls Lamb's kindness to him : describing their rambles in the 
 lanes ; " turning into more than one way-side hotel," where " for each 
 host and hostess he had his joke, and was clearly an honoured presence. 
 Later in the evening, when the lamp was lit, I ventured to slip into 
 his hand that worst of all literary scarecrows, a volume of my juvenile 
 verse. With his customary kindness and patience, he deciphered the 
 weary pages, bantered me occasionally on the misanthropic and other 
 despairing moods, and selected for commendation such as were simplest 
 and sincerest. In the latter contingency Mary Lamb was usually called 
 
ENFIELD. 139 
 
 The esteem which Lamb had always cherished for 
 Mr. Rogers, was quickened into a livelier feeling by 
 the generous interest which the poet took in the 
 success of Mr. Moxon, who was starting as a pub- 
 lisher, and had established a magazine entitled The 
 Englishman. This, although enriched with Lamb's 
 articles, and some others of great merit, did not meet 
 with a success so rapid as to requite the proprietor 
 for the labour and anxiety of its production. One of 
 his little notes to Mr. Moxon, on some long forgotten 
 occasion of momentary displeasure, the nature and 
 object of which is uncertain, — contains a fantastical 
 exaggeration of anger, which, judged by those whc 
 knew the writer, only illustrates the entire absence 
 of all the bad passions of hatred and contempt it 
 feigns. 
 
 In 1830, a small volume of poems, the gleanings of 
 some years, during which Lamb had devoted himself 
 to prose, under his name of " Elia," was published by 
 Mr. Moxon, under the title of " Album Verses," and 
 which Lamb, in token of his strong regard, dedicated 
 to the publisher. An unfavourable review of them 
 in the Literary Gazette produced some verses from 
 Southey, which were inserted in the Times, and of 
 which the following, as evincing his unchanged 
 friendship, may not unfitly be inserted here. The 
 residue, being more severe on Lamb's critics than 
 
 on for confirmation." He also mentions some little characteristic traits, 
 such as his mode of disposing of new books, for which he cared but 
 little. " One would come skimming to my feet through the branches of 
 the apple-trees (our gardens were contiguous), or a " Bernard Barton " 
 would be rolled downstairs after me from the library door, " Marcian 
 Colonna" I remember finding on my window sill ! "The Plea of the 
 Midsummer Fairies" I sicked up out of the strawberry-bed. 
 
r40 ENFIELD. 
 
 Lamb himself would have wished, may now be 
 spared. 
 
 " Charles Lamb, to those who know thee justly dear 
 For rarest genius, and for sterling worth, 
 Unchanging friendship, warmth of heart sincere. 
 And wit that never gave an ill thought birth. 
 Nor ever in its sport infix'd a sting ; 
 To us who have admired and loved thee long. 
 It is a proud as well as pleasant thing 
 To hear thy good report, now borne along 
 Upon the honest breath of public praise : 
 We know that with the elder sons of song, 
 In honouring whom thou hast delighted still, 
 Thy name shall keep its course to after days." 
 
 This year closed upon the grave of Hazlitt. Lamb 
 visited him frequently during his last illness, and 
 attended his funeral. They had taken great delight 
 in each other's conversation for many years ; and 
 though the indifference of Lamb to the objects of 
 Hazlitt's passionate love or hatred, as a politician, at 
 one time produced a coolness, the warmth of the de- 
 fence of Hazlitt in " Elia's Letter to Southey " re- 
 newed the old regard of the philosopher, and set all 
 to rights. Hazlitt, in his turn, as an Edinburgh Re- 
 viewer, had opportunities which he delighted to use, 
 of alluding to Lamb's Specimens and Essays, and 
 making him amends for the severity of ancient criti- 
 cism, which the editor, who could well afford the genial 
 inconsistency, was too generous to exclude. The 
 conduct, indeed, of that distinguished person to Haz- 
 litt, especially in his last illness, won Lamb's admira- 
 tion, and wholly effaced the recollection of the time 
 when, thirty years before, his play had been denied 
 critical mercy under his rule. Hazlitt's death did not 
 so much shock Lamb at the time, as it weighed down 
 
ENFIELD. 141 
 
 his spirits afterwards, when he felt the want of those 
 essays which he had used periodically to look for with 
 eagerness in the magazines and reviews which they 
 alone made tolerable to him ; and when he realized 
 the dismal certainty that he should never again enjoy 
 that rich discourse of old poets and painters with 
 which so many a long winter's night had been glad- 
 dened, or taste life with an additional relish in the 
 keen sense of enjoyment which endeared it to his 
 companion. 
 
 After the year 1830, Lamb's verses and essays were 
 chiefly given to his friends ; the former consisting of 
 album contributions, the latter of little essences of 
 observation and criticism. At this time, his old and 
 excellent friend, Dyer, was much annoyed by some of 
 his witticisms, — which, in truth, were only Lamb's 
 modes of expressing his deep-seated regard ; and at 
 the quotation of a couplet in one of his early poems, 
 which he had suppressed as liable to be misconstrued 
 by Mr. Rogers. Mr. Barker had unfortunately met 
 with the unexpurgated edition which contained this 
 dubious couplet, and in his " Memorials of Dr. Parr" 
 quoted the passage; which, to Mr. Dyer's delicate 
 feelings,' conveyed the apprehension that Mr. Rogers 
 
 * Mr. Dyer had complained to Mr. Lamb of some suggestions in 
 Elia, which annoyed him, not so much for his own sake as for the sake 
 of others, who, in the delicacy of his apprehensiveness, he thought might 
 feel aggrieved by imputations which were certainly not intended, and 
 which they did not deserve. One passage in Elia, hinting that he had 
 been hardly dealt with by schoolmasters, under whom he had been a 
 teacher in his younger days, hurt him ; as, in fact; he was treated by 
 them with tlie most considerate generosity and kindness. Another 
 passage which he regarded as implying that he had been underpaid by 
 booksellers also vexed him ; as his labours have always been highly 
 esteemed, and have, according to the rate of remuneration of learned 
 
142 ENFIELD. 
 
 would treat the suppression as colourable, and refer 
 the revival of the lines to his sanction. The follov/ 
 ing letter was written to dispel those fears from his 
 mind. 
 
 Coleridge, now in declining health, seems to have 
 feared, from a long intermission of Lamb's visits 
 to Highgate, that there was some estrangement 
 between them, and to have written to Lamb under 
 that fear. The answer shows how much he was mis- 
 taken. 
 
 " My dear Coleridge," Lamb wrote, " not an un- 
 kind thought has passed in my brain about you. But 
 I have been wofully neglectful of you, so that I do 
 not deserve to announce to you, that if I do not hear 
 from you before then, I will set out on Wednesday 
 morning to take you by the hand. I would do it this 
 moment, but an unexpected visit might flurry you. I 
 shall take silence for acquiescence ; and come. I am 
 glad you could write so long a letter. Old loves to, 
 and hope of kind looks from, the Gilmans when I 
 come. — Yours, semper idem, C. L." 
 
 " If you ever thought an offence, much more wrote 
 it, against me, it must have been in the times of 
 Noah, and the great waters swept it away. Mary's 
 most kind love, and maybe a wrong prophet of your 
 bodings ! — here she is crying for mere love over your 
 letter. I wring out less, but not sincerer showers." 
 
 men, been well compensated by Mr. Valpy and others. The truth is 
 that Lamb wrote Irom a vague recollection, without intending any per- 
 sonal reference at all to Mr. Dyer himself, and only seeking to illustrate 
 the pure, simple, and elevated character of a man of letters " unspotted 
 from the world." Probably no one has ever applied these suggestions 
 to the parties for whose reputation Mr. Dyer has been so honourably 
 anxious but himself; but it is due to his feelings to state that they are 
 founded in error. 
 
EDMONTON. 143 
 
 In the spring of 1833, Lamb made his last removal 
 from Enfield to Edmonton. He was about to lose the 
 society of Miss Isola, on the eve of marriage, and 
 determined to live altogether with his sister, whether 
 in her sanitj' or her madness. On the approach of 
 the wedding-day, fixed for the 30th July, Lamb turned 
 to the account of a half-tearful merriment, the gift of 
 a watch to the young lady whom he was about to lose. 
 
 To Mr. Moxon. 
 
 " July Z4th, 1833. 
 
 " For God's sake give Emma no more watches ; one 
 has turned her head. She is arrogant and insulting. 
 She said something very unpleasant to our old clock 
 in the passage, as if he did not keep time, and yet he 
 had made her no appointment. She takes it out 
 every moment to look at the moment-hand." 
 
 Miss Lamb was in the sad state of mental estrange- 
 ment up to the day of the wedding ; but then in the 
 constant companionship of her brother at Edmonton.^ 
 A cluster of little letters to the new married pair — the 
 first from Charles, introducing one from Mary — shows 
 the happy effect of the news on her mental health. 
 
 To Mr. and Mrs. Moxon. 
 
 "August, 1833. 
 " Dear Mr. and Mrs. Moxon, — Time very short. I 
 
 ^ His letters at this date are almost full of despair. To one he wrote 
 that her state of mind was " deplorable beyond example." And to 
 Wordsworth, in the following hopeless strain : " Mary is ill again ; her 
 illnesses encroach yearly. The last was three months, followed by two 
 of depression most dreadful. I look back on the earlier attacks with 
 longing ; nice little durations of six nueeks or so, folloiued by com- 
 plete restoration — shocking as they turre then to me." Indeed from 
 the date of their going to Edmonton the malady seems to have 
 settled on her ; to which it seems not unlikely that the solitude of the 
 place contributed. — F. 
 
144 EDMONTON. 
 
 wrote to Miss Fryer, and had the sweetest letter about 
 you, Emma, that ever friendship dictated. ' I am full 
 of good wishes, I am crying with good wishes,' she 
 says ; but you shall see it. 
 
 " Dear Moxon, — I take your writing most kindly, 
 and shall most kindly your writing from Paris. 
 
 " I want to crowd another letter to Miss Fryer into 
 the little time after dinner, before post-time. So with 
 twenty thousand congratulations, Yours, C. L. 
 
 " I am, calm, sober, happy. Turn over for the 
 reason. I got home from Dover Street, by Evans, 
 half as sober as a judge. I am turning over a new 
 leaf, as I hope you will now." 
 
 The turn of the leaf presented Miss Lamb's letter; 
 and at the foot is the following by Charles : — 
 
 " Wednesday. 
 
 " Dears', again, — Your letter interrupted a seventh 
 game at picquet which we were having, after walking 
 to Wright's and purchasing shoes. We passed 
 our time in cards, walks, and reading. We attack 
 Tasso soon. C. L. 
 
 " Never was such a calm, or such a recovery. 'Tis 
 her own words, undictated." 
 
 In this year the choicest essays, which Lamb had 
 written since the publication of Elia, were collected 
 and published — as with a melancholy foreboding — 
 under the title of " The Last Essays of Elia ; " by 
 Mr. Moxon. The work contains ample proof that 
 the powers of the author had ripened rather than 
 declined ; for the paper called " Blakesmoor in 
 H — shire," which embodies his recollection of the 
 old mansion in which his grandmother lived as 
 housekeeper ; those on EUiston. " Captain Jackson," 
 
EDMONTON. I45 
 
 and " The Old Margate Hoy," are among the most 
 original, the least constrained, and the most richly 
 coloured of his works. It was favourably noticed by 
 almost all the principal critics — by many enthusiasti- 
 cally and sincerely praised — and an admirable notice 
 in The Quarterly was published just after the fore- 
 boding of the title was fulfilled. His indisposition to 
 write, however, increased ; but in creating so much, 
 excellent in kind, so complete in itself, and so little 
 tinged with alloy, he had, in truth, done enough, and 
 had earned in literature, as in the drudgery of the 
 desk, a right to repose. Yet, still ready to obey the 
 call of friendship, he wrote both prologue and epilogue 
 to Knowles's play of " The Wife ;" the composition of 
 which must have been mere labour, as they are only 
 decently suited to the occasion, and have no mark or 
 likelihood to repay the vanity of the poet. 
 
 Miss Isola's marriage, which left Lamb and his 
 sister once more alone, induced them to draw a little 
 nearer to their friends; and they had fixed their 
 abode in Church Street, within reach of the Enfield 
 walks which custom had endeared to them.' There 
 with his sister he continued, regularly visiting Lon- 
 don and dining with Mr. Gary on every third^Wed- 
 nesday. Lamb and his sister were now, for the last 
 year of their united lives, always together. 
 
 He had now to sustain the severest of his losses. 
 After a long and painful illness — borne with an heroic 
 patience which concealed the intensity of his suffer- 
 ings from the bystanders, Coleridge died. As in the 
 instance of Hazlitt, Lamb did not feel the immediate 
 blow so acutely as he himself expected ; but the 
 
 1 The name of his landlady was Mrs Walden. — F. 
 
 L 
 
146 EDMONTON. 
 
 calamity sank deep into his mind, and #as, I believe, 
 seldom far from his thoughts. It had been arranged 
 that the attendance at the funeral should be confined 
 to the family of the departed poet and philosopher, 
 and Lamb, therefore, was spared the misery of going 
 through the dismal ceremony of mourning. For the 
 first week he forbore to write ; but at its close he 
 addressed the following short letter to one of the 
 family of him whom he once so justly denominated 
 Coleridge's " more than a friend." 
 
 " My dear Sir," he wrote to the Rev. Mr. Oilman, 
 " the sad week being over, I must write to you to say, 
 that I was glad of being spared from attending ; I 
 have no words to express my feelings with you all. I 
 can only say that when you think a short visit from 
 me would be acceptable, when your father and mother 
 shall be able to see me wiih comfort, I will come to 
 the bereaved house. Express to them my tenderest 
 regards and hopes that they will continue our friends 
 still. We both love and respect them as much as a 
 human being can, and finally thank them with our 
 hearts for what they have been to the poor departed. 
 " God bless you all. C. Lamb." 
 
 Shortly after, assured that his presence would be 
 welcome. Lamb went to Highgate. There he asked 
 leave to see the nurse who had attended upon Cole- 
 ridge ; and being struck and affected by the feeling 
 she manifested towards his friend, insisted on her 
 receiving five guineas from him, — a gratuity which 
 seemed almost incomprehensible to the poor woman, 
 but which Lamb could not help giving as an imme- 
 diate expression of his own gratitude. From her he 
 learned the effort by which Coleridge had suppressed 
 the expression of his sufferings, and the discovery 
 
EDMONTON, I47 
 
 affected him even more than the news of his death. 
 He would startle his friends sometimes by suddenly 
 exclaiming, " Coleridge is dead !" and then pass on 
 to common themes, having obtained the momentary 
 relief of oppressed spirits. He still continued, how- 
 ever, his monthly visits to Mr. Gary ; and was ready 
 to write an acrostic, or a complimentary epigram, at 
 the suggestion of any friend. 
 
 A quiet dinner at the British Museum ' with Mr. 
 Gary once a month, to which Lamb looked forward 
 with almost boyish eagerness, was now almost his 
 only festival. Lamb's regard for him had now 
 ripened into a fast friendship. In general, these were 
 occasions on which Lamb observed the strictest rules 
 of temperance ; but once accident of stomach or of 
 sentiment caused a woful deviation." In a little note 
 to his host about this time, he hints at one of his few 
 physical tastes. — " We are thinking," he says, " of 
 roast shoulder of mutton with onion sauce, but I 
 scorn to prescribe to the hospitalities of mine host." 
 The following, after these festivities had been inter- 
 rupted by Mr. Gary's visit to the Continent, is their 
 last memorial. 
 
 TO MR. CARY. 
 
 "Sept. iz, 1834. 
 " By Cot's plessing we will not be absence at the 
 grace." 
 
 " Dear G., — We long to see you, and hear account 
 of your peregrinations, of the Tun at Heidelburg, the 
 Clock of Strasburg, the statue at Rotterdam, the 
 
 ' Lamb was admitted to the Museum so far back as May 12th, 1804, 
 — " recommended" by Mr. Godwin. — F. 
 
 2 '< To be seen deliberately," he savs in his apologetic letter, ** to go 
 out of the house of a clergyman dnia'c!" — F. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 EDMONTON. 
 
 dainty Rhenish, and poignant Moselle wines, West- 
 phalian hams, and Botargoes of Altona. But perhaps 
 you have seen, not tasted any of these things. 
 
 " Yours, very glad to chain you back again to youi 
 proper centre, book and Bibliothecae, 
 
 " C. and M. Lamb." 
 
( 14-9 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Lamb's Wednesday Nights. — His Companions. — 
 Last Glimpses. 
 
 Two circles of rare social enjoyment — differing as 
 widely as possible in all external circumstances — but 
 each superior in its kind to all others, during the same 
 period frankly opened to men of letters — now existing 
 only in the memory of those who are fast departing 
 from us — may, without offence, be placed side by side 
 in grateful recollection ; they are the dinners at 
 Holland House and the suppers of " the Lambs" at 
 the Temple, Great Russell Street, and Islington. 
 Strange, at first, as this juxta-position may seem, 
 a little reflection will convince the few survivors who 
 have enjoyed both, that it involves no injustice to 
 either ; while with those who are too young to have 
 been admitted to these rare festivities, we may exercise 
 the privilege of age by boasting what good fellowship 
 was once enjoyed, and what "good talk" there was 
 once in the world ! 
 
 But let us call to mind the aspects of each scene, 
 before we attempt to tell of the conversation, which 
 will be harder to recall and impossible to characterise. 
 And first, let us invite the reader to assist at a dinner 
 at Holland House in the height of the London and 
 Parliamentary season, say a Saturday in June. It is 
 scarcely seven — for the luxuries of the house are 
 
150 lamb's WEDNESDAY NIGHTS. 
 
 enhanced by a punctuality in the main object of the 
 day, which yields to no dilatory guest of whatever 
 pretension — and you are seated in an oblong room, 
 rich in old gilding, opposite a deep recess, pierced by 
 large old windows through which the rich branches of 
 trees bathed in golden light, just admit the faint out- 
 line of the Surrey Hills. Among the guests are some 
 perhaps of the highest rank, always some of high 
 political importance, about whom the interest of busy 
 life gathers, intermixed with others eminent already 
 in literature or art, or of that dawning promise which 
 the hostess delights to discover and the host to smile 
 on. All are assembled for the purpose of enjoyment; 
 the anxieties of the minister, the feverish struggles of 
 the partisan, the silent toils of the artist or critic, are 
 finished for the week; professional and literary jea- 
 lousies are hushed ; sickness, decrepitude, and death 
 are silently voted shadows ; and the brilliant assem- 
 blage is prepared to exercise to the highest degree the 
 extraordinary privilege of mortals to live in the know- 
 ledge of mortality without its consciousness, and to 
 people the . present hour with delights, as if a man 
 lived and laughed and enjoyed in this world for ever. 
 Every appliance of physical luxury which the most 
 delicate art can supply, attends on each ; every faint 
 wish which luxury creates is anticipated ; the noblest 
 and most gracious countenance in the world smiles 
 vver the happiness it is diffusing, and redoubles it by 
 cordial invitations and encouraging words, which set 
 the humblest stranger guest at perfect ease. As the 
 dinner merges into the dessert, and the sunset casts 
 a richer glow on the branches, still, or lightly waving 
 in the evening light, and on the scene within, the 
 harmony of all sensations becomes more perfect ; a 
 
L.\MB's WEDNESDAY NIGHTS. I5I 
 
 delighted and delighting chuckle invites attention to 
 some jolly sally of the richest intellectual wit reflected 
 in the faces of all, even to the favourite page in green, 
 who attends his mistress with duty. like that of the 
 antique world ; the choicest wines are enhanced in 
 their liberal but temperate use by the vista opened in 
 Lord Holland's tales of bacchanalian evenings at 
 Brookes's, with Fox and Sheridan, when potations 
 deeper and more serious rewarded the Statesman's 
 toils and shortened his days ; until at length the 
 serener pleasure of conversation, of the now care- 
 lessly scattered groups, is enjoyed in that old, long, 
 unrivalled library in which Addison mused, and wrote, 
 and drank; where every living grace attends; " and 
 more than echoes talk along the walls." One happy 
 peculiarity of these assemblies was, the number of 
 persons in different stations and of various celebrity, 
 who were gratified by seeing, still more, in hearing 
 and knowing each other ; the statesman was relieved 
 from care by associations with the poet of whom he 
 had heard and partially read ; and the poet was elevated 
 by the courtesy which "bared the great heart," which 
 " beats beneath a star ;" and each felt, not rarely, the 
 true dignity of the other, modestly expanding under 
 the most genial auspices. 
 
 Now turn to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, at ten 
 o'clock, when the sedater part of the company are 
 assembled, and the happier stragglers are dropping 
 in from the play. Let it be any autumn or winter 
 month, when the fire is blazing steadily, and the 
 clean-swept hearth and whist-tables speak of the 
 spirit of Mrs. Battle, and serious looks require " the 
 rigour of the game." The furniture is old-fashioned 
 and worn ; the ceiling low, and not wholly unstained 
 
IS?. HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 by traces of " the great plant," though now virtuousl) 
 forborne : but the Hogarths, in narrow black frames, 
 abounding in infinite thought, humour, and pathos, 
 enrich the walls ; and all things wear an air of com- 
 fort and hearty English welcome. Lamb himself, yet 
 unrelaxed by the glass, is sitting with a sort of 
 Quaker primness at the whist-table, the gentleness of 
 his melancholy smile half lost in his intentness on 
 the game ; his partner, the author of " Political Jus- 
 tice," (the majestic expression of his large head not 
 disturbed by disproportion of his comparatively dimi- 
 nutive stature,) is regarding his hand with a philoso- 
 phic but not a careless eye ; Captain Burney, only 
 not venerable because so young in spirit, sits 
 between them ; and H. C. R., who alone now and 
 then breaks the proper silence, to welcome some 
 incoming guest, is his happy partner — true winner in 
 the game of life, whose leisure achieved early, is 
 devoted to his friends ! At another table, just 
 beyond the circle which extends from the fire, sit 
 another four. The broad, burly, jovial bulk of John 
 Lamb, the Ajax Telamon of the slender clerks of the 
 old South Sea House, whom he sometimes introduces 
 to the rooms of his younger brother, surprised to 
 learn from them that he is growing famous, confronts 
 the stately but courteous Alsager; while P., *' his few 
 hairs bristling " at gentle objurgation watches his 
 partner M. B., dealing, with " soul more white "^than 
 the hands of which Lamb once said, " M., if dirt 
 was trumps, what hands you would hold 1" In one 
 
 ' Lamb's Sonnet, dedicatoiy of his first volume of prose to this 
 cherished friend, thus concludes : 
 
 " Free from self-seeking, envy, low design, 
 I have not found a vt niter soul than thine." 
 
HIS COMPANIONS. 153 
 
 corner of the room, you may see the pale earnest 
 countenance of Charles Lloyd, who is discoursing 
 " of fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," with 
 Leigh Hunt ; and if you choose to listen, you will 
 scarcely "know which most to admire — the severe 
 logic of the melancholy reasoner, or its graceful eva- 
 sion by the tricksome fantasy of the joyous poet. 
 Basil Montague, gentle enthusiast in the cause of 
 humanity, which he has lived to see triumphant, is 
 pouring into the outstretched ear of George Dyer 
 some tale of legalised injustice, which the recipient 
 is vainly endeavouring to comprehend. Soon the 
 room begins to fill ; in slouches Hazlitt from the 
 theatre, where his stubborn anger for Napsleon's 
 defeat at Waterloo has been softened by Miss Ste- 
 phens's angelic notes, which might "chase anger, 
 and grief, and fear, and sorrow, and pain from mortal 
 or immortal minds ;" Kenney, with a tremulous 
 pleasure, announces that there is a crowded house to 
 the ninth representation of his new comedy, of which 
 Lamb lays down his cards to inquire ; or Ayrton , 
 mildly radiant, whispers the continual triumph oi 
 " Don Giovanni," for which Lamb, incapable ot 
 opera, is happy to take his word. Now and then an 
 actor glances on us from " the rich Cathay " of the 
 world behind the scenes, with news of its brighter 
 human-kind, and with looks reflecting the public 
 favour — Liston, grave beneath the weight of the 
 town's regards — or Miss Kelly, unexhausted in spirit 
 by alternating the drolleries of high farce with the 
 terrible pathos of melodrama, — or Charles Kemble 
 mirrors the chivalry of thought, and ennobles the 
 party by bending on them looks beaming with the 
 aristocracy of nature. Meanwhile Becky lays the 
 
154 HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 cloth on the side-table, under the direction of the 
 most quiet, sensible, and kind of women — who soon 
 compels the younger and more hungry of the guests 
 to partake largely of the cold roast lamb or boiled 
 beef, the heaps of smoking roasted potatoes, and the 
 vast jug of porter, often replenished from the foaming 
 pots, which the best tap of Fleet Street supplies. 
 Perfect freedom prevails, save when the hospitable 
 pressure of the mistress excuses excess ; and perhaps, 
 the physical enjoyment of the playgoer exhausted 
 with pleasure, or of the author jaded with the 
 labour of the brain, is not less than that of the guests 
 at the most charming of aristocratic banquets. As 
 the hot water and its accompaniments appear, and 
 the severities of whist relax, the light of conversation 
 thickens : Hazlitt, catching the influence of the spirit 
 from which he has lately begun to abstain, utters 
 some fine criticism with struggling emphasis ; Lamb 
 stammers out puns suggestive of wisdom, for happy 
 Barron Field to admire and echo ; the various driblets 
 of talk combine into a stream, while Miss Lamb 
 moves gently about to see that each modest stranger 
 is duly served ; turning, now and then, an anxious 
 loving eye on Charles, which is softened into a half 
 humorous expression of resignation to inevitable fate, 
 as he mixes his second tumbler ! This is on ordi- 
 nary nights, when the accustomed Wednesday-men 
 assemble ; but there is a difference on great extra 
 nights, gladdened by " the bright visitations " of 
 Wordsworth or Coleridge ; the cordiality of the wel- 
 come is the same, but a sedater wisdom prevails. 
 Happy hours were they for the young disciple of the 
 then desperate, now triumphant cause of Words- 
 worth's genius, to be admittea to the presence of the 
 
HIS COMPANIONS. 155 
 
 poet who had opened a new world for him in the un- 
 discovered riches of his own nature, and its affinities 
 with the outer universe ; whom he worshipped the 
 more devoutly for the world's scorn ; for whom he felt 
 the future in the instant, and anticipated the "All hail 
 hereafter !" which the great poet has lived to enjoy I 
 To win him to speak of his own poetry — to hear him 
 recite its noblest passages — and to join in his brave 
 defiance of the fashion of the age — was the solemn 
 pleasure of such a season ; and, of course, superseded 
 all minor disquisitions. So, when Coleridge came, 
 argument, wit, humour, criticism were hushed ; the 
 pertest, smartest, and the cleverest felt that all were 
 assembled to listen ; and if a card-table had been 
 filled, or a dispute begun before he was excited to 
 continuous speech, his gentle voice, undulating in 
 music, soon 
 
 " Suspended luhlst, and took with ravishment 
 The thronging audience.^ 
 
 ' Mr. Procter's recollections of these evenings are not less interest- 
 ing. " None of Lamb's intimates," he says, " were persons of title or 
 fashion, or of any political importance. They were reading men, or 
 authors, or old friends who had no name or pretensions. None of 
 them ever forsook him ; they loved him, and in return he had a strong 
 regard for them. When you went to Lamb's rooms on the Wednesday 
 evenings (his * At Home') you generally found the card-table spread 
 out. Lamb himself one of the players. On the corner of the table was 
 a snufT-box ; and the game was enlivened by sundry brief ejaculations 
 and pungent questions, which kept alive the wits of the party present. 
 When the conversation became general. Lamb's pait in it was very 
 effective. His short clear sentences always produced effect. He never 
 joined in talk unless he understood the subject; then, if the matter in 
 question interested him, he was not slow in showing earnestness : but I 
 never heard him argue or talk for argument's sake. If he was indif- 
 ferent to the question, he was »lent. 
 
 " The supper of cold meat, on these occasions, was always on tlia 
 
156 HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 The conversation which animated each of these 
 meniorable circles, approximated, in essence, much 
 
 side table ; not very formal, as may be imagined ; and every one might 
 rise, when it suited him, and cut a slice or take a glass of porter, with- 
 out reflecting on the abstinence of the rest of the company. Lamb 
 would, perhaps, call out and bid the hungry guest help himself without 
 ceremony. 
 
 " It was curious to observe the gradations in Lamb's manner to nis 
 various guests; although it was courteous to all. With Hazlitt he 
 tallied as though they met the subject in discussion on equal terms ; 
 with Leigh Hunt he exchanged repartees ; to Wordsworth he was 
 almost respectful ; with Coleridge he was sometimes jocose, sometimes 
 deferring; with Martin Burney fraternally &miliar; with Manning 
 afTectionate ; with Godwin merely courteous ; or if friendly, then in a 
 minor degree. The man whom I found at Lamb's house more fre- 
 quently than any other person was Martin Burney. Lamb was very 
 much attached to Martin, who was a sincere and able man, although 
 with a very unprepossessing physiognomy. His face was warped by 
 paralysis, which affected one eye and one side of his mouth. He was 
 plain and unaffected in manner, very difHdent and retiring: yet pro- 
 nouncing his opinions, when asked to do so, without apology or 
 hesitation. He was a barrister ; and travelled the western circuit at 
 the same time as Sir Thomas Wilde (afterwards Lord Truro), whose 
 briefs he used to read before the other considered them ; marking out 
 the principal facts and points for attention. Martin Burney had 
 excellent taste in books ; eschewed the showy and artificial, and looked 
 into the sterling qualities of writing. He frequently accompanied 
 Lamb in his visits to friends, and although very familiar with Charles, 
 be always spoke of him, with respect, as Mr. Lamb. The last time I 
 saw Burney was at the corner of a street in London, when he was 
 overflowing on the subject of RafTaelle and Hogarth. After a great 
 and prolonged struggle, he said, he had arrived at the conclusion that 
 RafTaelle was the greater man of the two. 
 
 " Notwithstanding Lamb's somewhat humble description of his friends 
 and familiars, some of them were men well known in literature. 
 Amongst others, I met there Messrs. Coleridge, Manning, Hazlitt, 
 Haydon, Wordsworth, Barron Field, Leigh Hunt, Clarkson, Sheridan 
 Knowles, Talfourd, Kenny, Godwin, the Burneys, Payne Collier, and 
 others whose names I need not chronicle. I met there, also, on one or 
 
HIS COMPANIONS. I57 
 
 more nearly than might be surmised from the dif- 
 ference in station of the principal talkers, and the 
 contrast in physical appliances ; that of the bowered 
 saloon of Holland House having more of earnestness 
 and depth, and that of the Temple-attic more of airy 
 grace than would be predicated by a superficial ob- 
 server. The former possessed the peculiar interest of 
 directly bordering on the scene of political conflict — 
 gathering together the most eloquent leaders of the 
 Whig party, whose repose from energetic action 
 spoke of the week's conflict, and in whom the mo- 
 ment's enjoyment deriyed a peculiar charm from the 
 perilous glories of the struggle which the morrow was 
 to renew — when power was just within reach, or held 
 with a convulsive grasp — like the eager and solemn 
 pleasure of the soldiers' banquet in the pause of vic- 
 tory. The pervading spirit of Lamb's parties was 
 also that of social progress ; but it was the spirit of 
 
 two occasions, Liston, and Miss Kelly, and, I believe, Rickman. 
 Politics were rarely discussed amongst them. Anecdotes, characteristic, 
 showing the strong and weak points of human nature, were frequent 
 enough. But politics (especially party politics) were seldom admitted. 
 Lamb disliked them as a theme for evening talk ; he perhaps did not 
 understand the subject scientifically. And when Hazlitt's impetuosity 
 drove him, as it sometimes did, into fierce expressions on public affairs, 
 these were usually received in silence ; and the matter thus raised up 
 for assent or controversy was allowed to drop. The beauty of these 
 evenings was that every one was placed upon an easy level. No 
 one out-topped the others. No one — not even Coleridge — ^was per- 
 mitted to out-talk the rest. No one was allowed to hector tlie other, 
 or to bring his own grievances too prominently forward; so as to 
 disturb the harmony of the night. I never in all my life, heard so 
 much unpretending good sense talked, as at Charles Lamb's social 
 parties. Often a piece of sparkling humour was shot out that illumi- 
 nated the whole evening. Sometimes there was a flight of high and 
 earnest talk, that took one halfway towards the stars."— F. 
 
158 HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 the dreamers and thinkers, not of the combatants of 
 the world — men who, it may be, drew their theories 
 from a deeper range of meditation, and embraced the 
 future with more comprehensive hope — but about 
 whom the immediate interest of party did not gather ; 
 whose victories were all within ; whose rewards were 
 visions of blessings for their species in the furthest 
 horizon of benevolent prophecy. If a profounder 
 thought was sometimes dragged to light in the dim 
 circle of Lamb's companions than was native to the 
 brighter sphere, it was still a rare felicity to watch 
 there the union of elegance with purpose in some 
 leader of party — the delicate, almost fragile grace of 
 illustration in some one, perhaps destined to lead 
 advancing multitudes or to withstand their rashness ; 
 — to observe the growth of strength in the midst of 
 beauty expanding from the sense of the heroic past, 
 as the famed Basil tree of Boccaccio grew from the 
 immolated relic beneath it. If the alternations in the 
 former oscillated between wider extremes, touching 
 on the wildest farce and most earnest tragedy of life ; 
 the rich space of brilliant comedy which lived ever 
 between them in the latter, was diversified by serious 
 interests and heroic allusions. Sydney Smith's wit 
 — not so wild, so grotesque, so deep-searching as 
 Lamb's — had even more quickness of intellectual 
 demonstration ; wedded moral and political wisdom 
 to happiest language, with a more rapid perception of 
 secret affinities ; was capable of producing epigram- 
 matic splendour reflected more permanently in the 
 mind, than the fantastic brilliancy of those rich con- 
 ceits which Lamb stammered out with his painful 
 smile. Mackintosh might vie with Coleridge in vast 
 and various knowledge; but there the competition 
 
LAST GLIMPSES. I59 
 
 between these great talkers ends, and the contrast 
 begins ; the contrast between facility and inspiration; 
 between the ready access to each ticketed and labelled 
 compartment of history, science, art, criticism, and 
 the genius that fused and renovated all. But then a 
 younger spirit appeared at Lord Holland's table to 
 redress the balance — not so poetical as Coleridge, but 
 more lucid — in whose vast and joyous memory all the 
 mighty past lived and glowed anew ; whose declama- 
 tions presented, not groups tinged with distant light, 
 like those of Coleridge, but a series of historical 
 figures in relief, exhibited in bright succession, as if 
 by dioramic art there glided before us embossed sur- 
 faces of heroic life.' Rogers too was there — con- 
 
 1 I take leave to copy the glowing picture of tlie evenings of Hol- 
 land House and of its admirable master, drawn by this &vourite guest 
 himself, from an article which aoorned the Mdinburgh Revlenv, just 
 after Lord Holland's death. 
 
 " The time is coming when, perhaps a few old men, the last sur- 
 vivors of our generation, will in vain seek, amidst new streets, and 
 squares, and railway stations, for the site of that dwelling which was 
 in their youth the favourite resort of wits and beauties — of painters and 
 poets — of scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. They will then re- 
 member, with strange tenderness, many objects once familiar to them 
 — the avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings ; the carving, 
 the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. With peculiar 
 fondness, they will recall that venerable chamber, in which all the 
 antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blended with all 
 that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room. 
 They will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded with the varied 
 learning of many lands and many ages ; those portraits in which were 
 preserved the features of the best and wisest Englishmen of two gene- 
 rations. They will recollect how many men who have guided the 
 politics of Europe — who have moved great assemblies by reason and 
 eloquence — who have put Ufe into bronze and canvas, or who have left 
 to posterity things so written as it shall not willingly let them die — 
 were there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in the society 
 
l6o LAST GLIMPSES. 
 
 necting the literature of the last age with this, 
 partaking of some of the best characteristics of both 
 — whose first poem sparkled in the closing darkness 
 of the last century " like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's 
 ear," and who was advancing from a youth which had 
 anticipated memory, to an age of kindness and hope ; 
 and Moore, who paused in the fluttering expression 
 
 of the most splendid of capitals. They will remember the singular 
 character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent and 
 accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They will 
 remember how the last debate was discussed in one comer, and the last 
 comedy of Scribe in another ; while Wilkie gazed with modest admi- 
 ration on Reynolds' Baretti ; while Mackintosh turned over Thomas 
 Aquinas to verify a quotation ; while Talleyrand related his conversa- 
 tions with Barras at the Luxemburg, or his ride with Lannes over the 
 field of Austerlitz. They will remember, above all, the grace — and 
 the kindness, far more admirable than grace — with which the princely 
 hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed. They will remem- 
 ber the venerable and benignant countenance, and thd cordial voice of 
 him who bade them welcome. They will remember that temper 
 which years of pain, of sickness, of lameness, of confinement, seemed 
 only to make sweeter and sweeter ; and that frank politeness, which at 
 once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest and most timid 
 writer or artist, who found himself for the first time among Ambas- 
 sadors and Earls. They will remember that constant flow of conversa- 
 tion, so natural, so animated, so various, so rich with observation and 
 anecdote; that wit which never gave a wound; that exquisite mimicry 
 which ennobled, instead of degrading ; that goodness of heart which 
 appeared in every look and accent, and gave additional value to every 
 talent and acquirement. They will remember, too, that he whose 
 name they hold in reverence was not less distinguished by the inflexible 
 uprightness of his political conduct, than by his loving disposition and 
 his winning manners. They will remember that, in the last lines 
 which he traced, he expressed his joy that he had done nothing un- 
 worthy of the friend of Fox and Grey; and they will have reason to 
 feel similar joy, if, in looking back on many troubled years, they cannot 
 accuse themselves of having done anything unworthy of men who were 
 distinguished by the friendship of Lord Holland." 
 
LAST GLIMPSES. l6l 
 
 of graceful trifles, to whisper some deep-toned thought 
 of Ireland's wrongs and sorrows. 
 
 Literature and art supplied the favourite topics to 
 each of these assemblies, — both discussed with earnest 
 admiration, but surveyed in different aspects. The 
 conversation at Lord Holland's was wont to mirror 
 the happiest aspects of the living mind ; to celebrate 
 the latest discoveries in science ; to echo the quar 
 terly decisions of imperial criticism ; to reflect the 
 modest glow of young reputations ; — all was gay, 
 graceful, decisive, as if the pen of Jeffrey could have 
 spoken ; or, if it reverted to old times, it rejoiced in 
 those classical associations which are always young. 
 At Lamb's, on the other hand, the topics were chiefly 
 sought among the obscure and remote ; the odd, the 
 quaint, the fantastic were drawn out from their dusty 
 recesses ; nothing could be more foreign to its em- 
 brace than the modern circulating library, even when 
 it teemed with the Scotch novels. Whatever the 
 subject was, however, in the more aristocratic, or the 
 humbler sphere, it was always discussed by those best 
 entitled to talk on it ; no others had a chance of being 
 heard. This remarkable freedom from bores was 
 produced in Lamb's circle by the authoritative texture 
 of its commanding minds ; in Lord Holland's, by the 
 more direct, and more genial influence of the hostess, 
 which checked that tenacity of subject and opinion 
 which sometimes broke the charm of Lamb's parties 
 by " a duel in the form of a debate." Perhaps beyond 
 any other hostess, — certainly far beyond any host. 
 Lady Holland possessed the task of perceiving, and 
 the power of evoking the various capacities which 
 lurked in every part of the brilliant circles over which 
 she presided, and restrained each to its appropriate 
 
 M 
 
l62 LAST GLIMPSES. 
 
 sphere, and portion of the evening. To enkindle the 
 enthusiasm of an artist on the theme over which he 
 had achieved the most facile mastery ; to set loose 
 the heart of the rustic poet, and imbue his speech 
 vi^ith the freedom of his native hills ; to draw from the 
 adventurous traveller a breathing picture of his most 
 imminent danger ; or to embolden the bashful soldier 
 to disclose his own share in the perils and glories of 
 some famous battle-field ; to encourage the generous 
 praise of friendship when the speaker and the subject 
 reflected interest on each other; or win from an 
 awkward man of science the secret history of a dis- 
 covery which had astonished the world ; to conduct 
 these brilliant developments to the height of satisfac- 
 tion, and then to shift the scene by the magic of a 
 word, were among her nightly successes. And if this 
 extraordinary power over the elements of social enjoy- 
 ment was sometimes wielded without the entire con- 
 cealment of its despotism ; if a decisive check some- 
 times rebuked a speaker who might intercept the 
 variegated beauty of Jeffrey's indulgent criticism, or 
 the jest announced and self- rewarded in Sydney Smith's 
 cordial and triumphant laugh, the authority was too 
 clearly exerted for the evening's prosperity, and too 
 manifestly impelled by an urgent consciousness of the 
 value of these golden hours which were fleeting within 
 its confines, to sadden the enforced silence with more 
 than a momentary regret. If ever her prohibition — 
 clear, abrupt, and decisive, — indicated more than a 
 preferable regard for livelier discourse, it was when a 
 depreciatory tone was adopted towards genius, or 
 goodness, or honest endeavour, or when some friend, 
 personal or intellectual, was mentioned in slighting 
 phrase. Habituated to a generous partisanship, by 
 
LAST GLIMPSES. 163 
 
 Strong sympathy with a great political cause, she car- 
 ried the fidelity of her devotion to that cause into her 
 social relations, and was ever the truest and the 
 fastest of friends. The tendency, often more idle 
 than malicious, to soften down the intellectual claims 
 of the absent, which so insidiously besets literary con- 
 versation, and teaches a superficial insincerity, even 
 to substantial esteem and regard, and which was 
 sometimes insinuated into the conversation of Lamb's 
 friends, though never into his own, found no favour in 
 her presence; and hence the conversations over which 
 she presided, perhaps beyond all that ever flashed with 
 a kindred splendour, were marked by that integrity 
 of good nature which might admit of their exact 
 repetition to every living individual whose merits were 
 discussed, without the danger of inflicting pain. Under 
 her auspices, not only all critical, but all personal talk 
 was tinged with kindness ; the strong interest which 
 she took in the happiness of her friends, shed a pecu- 
 liar sunniness over the aspects of life presented by the 
 common topics of alliances, and marriages, and pro^ 
 motions ; and there was not a hopeful engagement, 
 or a happy wedding, or a promotion of a friend's son, 
 or a new intellectual triumph of any youth with whose 
 name and history she was familiar, but became an event 
 on which she expected and required congratulation as 
 on a part of her own fortune. Although there was 
 necessarily a preponderance in her society of the senti- 
 ment of popular progress, which once was cherished 
 almost exclusively by the party to whom Lord Hol- 
 land was united by sacred ties, no expression of 
 triumph in success, no virulence in sudden disappoint- 
 ment, was ever permitted to wound the most sensi- 
 tive ears of her conservative guests. It might be 
 
 M 2 
 
164 LAST GLIMPSES. 
 
 that some placid comparison of recent with former 
 times, spoke a sense of freedom's peaceful victory ; 
 or that, on the giddy edge of some great party struggle, 
 the festivities of the evening might take a more serious 
 cast, as the news arrived from the scene of contest, 
 and the pleasure might be deepened by the peril ; but 
 the feeling was always restrained by the supremacy 
 given to those permanent solaces for the mind, 
 in the beautiful and the great, which no political 
 changes disturb. Although the death of the noble 
 master of the venerated mansion closed its portals for 
 ever on the exquisite enjoyments to which they had 
 been so generously expanded, the art of conversation 
 lived a little longer in the smaller circle which Lady 
 Holland still drew almost daily around her ; honour- 
 ing his memory by following his example, and strug- 
 gling against the perpetual sense of unutterable be- 
 reavement, by rendering to literature that honour and 
 those reliefs, which English aristocracy has too often 
 denied it ; and seeking consolation in making others 
 proud and happy. That lingering happiness is extinct 
 now ; Lamb's kindred circle — kindred, though so dif- 
 ferent — dispersed almost before he died; the "thoughts 
 that wandered through eternity," are no longer ex- 
 pressed in time ; the fancies and conceits, " gay crea- 
 tures of the element " of social delight, " that in the 
 colours of the rainbow lived, and played in the plighted 
 ilouds," flicker only in the backward perspective of 
 waning years ; and for the survivors, I may venture to 
 afSrm, no such conversation as they have shared in 
 either circle will ever be theirs again in this world !^ 
 
 ' This ekborace comparison between the Holland House coterie 
 And Lamb's supper parties, is admitted to be rather &r-ietched, — F. 
 
( i6S ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Lamb's Friends and Companions. ^ 
 
 Before closing these Memorials of Charles and 
 Mary Lamb, it may be permitted me to glance sepa- 
 rately at some of the friends who are grouped around 
 them in memory, and who, like them, live only in 
 recollection, and in the works they have left behind 
 them. 
 
 George Dyer was one of the first objects of Lamb's 
 youthful reverence, for he had attained the stately 
 rank of Grecian in the venerable school of Christ's 
 Hospital, when Charles entered it, a little, timid, 
 affectionate, child ; but this boyish respect, once 
 amounting to awe, gave place to a familiar habit of 
 loving banter, which, springing from the depths of 
 old regard, approximated to schoolboy roguery, and, 
 now and then, though very rarely, gleamed on the 
 consciousness of the ripe scholar. No contrast could 
 be more vivid than that presented by the relations of 
 each to the literature they both loved ; one divining 
 its inmost essences, plucking out the heart of its 
 mysteries, shedding light on its dimmest recesses ; 
 the other devoted, with equal assiduity, to its exter- 
 nals. Books, to Dyer, " were a real world, both pure 
 and good ;" among them he passed, unconscious oi 
 time, from youth to extreme age, vegetating on their 
 
i66 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 dates and forms, and " trivial fond records," in the 
 learned air of great libraries, or the dusty confusion 
 of his own, with the least possible apprehension of 
 any human interest vital in their pages, or of any 
 spirit of wit or fancy glancing across them. His 
 life was an Academic pastoral. Methinks I see his 
 gaunt, awkward form, set off by trousers too short, 
 like those outgrown by a gawky lad, and a rusty coat 
 as much too large for the wearer, hanging about him 
 like those garments which the aristocratic Milesian 
 peasantry prefer to the most comfortable rustic dress ; 
 his long head silvered over with, short yet straggling 
 hair, and his dark grey eyes glistening with faith and 
 wonder, as Lamb satisfies the curiosity which has 
 gently disturbed his studies as to the authorship of 
 the Waverley Novels, by telling him, in the strictest 
 confidence, that they are the works of Lord Castle- 
 reagh, just returned from the Congress of Sovereigns 
 at Vienna I Off he runs, with animated stride and 
 shambling enthusiasm, nor stops till he reaches 
 Maida Hill, and breathes his news into the startled 
 ear of Leigh Hunt, who, " as a public writer," ought 
 to be possessed of the great fact with which George 
 is laden 1 Or shall I e.ideavour to revive the bewil- 
 dered look with which, just after he had been an- 
 nounced as one of Lord Stanhope's executors and 
 residuary legatees, he received Lamb's grave inquiry, 
 " Whether it was true, as commonly reported, that 
 he was to be made a Lord ?" " O dear no ! Mr. 
 Lamb," responded he with earnest seriousness, but 
 not without a moment's quivering vanity, " I could 
 not think of such a thing ; it is not true, I assure 
 you." " I thought not," said Lamb, " and I contra- 
 dict it wherever I go ; but the Government will not 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 167 
 
 ask your consent ; they may raise you to the peerage 
 without your even knowing it." " I hope not, Mr. 
 Lamb ; indeed, indeed, I hope not ; it would not suit 
 me at all," responded Dyer, and went his way, musing 
 on the possibility of a strange honour descending on 
 his reluctant brow. Or shall I recall the visible pre- 
 sentment of his bland unconsciousness of evil when 
 his sportive friend taxed it to the utmost, by suddenly 
 asking what he thought of the murderer Williams, 
 who, after destroying two families in Ratcliffe High- 
 way, had broken prison by suicide, and whose body 
 had just before been conveyed, in shocking proces- 
 sion, to its cross-road grave 1 The desperate attempt 
 to compel the gentle optimist to speak ill of a mortal 
 creature produced no happier success than the answer, 
 " Why I should think, Mr. Lamb, he must have been 
 rather an eccentric character." This simplicity of a 
 nature not only unspotted by the world, but almost 
 abstracted from it, will seem the more remarkable, 
 when it is known that it was subjected, at the entrance 
 of life, to a hard battle with fortune. Dyer was the 
 son of very poor parents, residing in an eastern 
 suburb of London, Stepney or Bethnal-greenward, 
 where he attracted the attention of two elderly ladies 
 as a serious child, with an extraordinary love for 
 books. They obtained for him a presentation to 
 Christ's Hospital, which he entered at seven years of 
 age ; fought his way through its sturdy ranks to its 
 head ; and, at nineteen, quitted it for Cambridge, with 
 only an exhibition and his scholarly accomplishments 
 to help him. On he went, however, placid, if not 
 rejoicing, through the difficulties of a life illustrated 
 only by scholarship; encountering tremendous labours; 
 unresting yet serene; until at eighty-five he breathed 
 
i68 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 out the most blameless of lives, which began in a 
 struggle to end in a learned dream ! ' 
 
 Mr. Godwin, who during the happiest period of 
 Lamb's weekly parties, was a constant assistant at 
 his whist-table, resembled Dyer in simplicity of manner 
 and devotion to letters ; but the simplicity was more 
 superficial, and the devotion more profound than the 
 kindred qualities in the guileless scholar; and, instead 
 of forming the entire being, only marked the surface 
 of a nature beneath which extraordinary power lay 
 hidden. As the absence of worldly wisdom subjected 
 Dyer to the sportive sallies of Lamb, so a like defi- 
 ciency in Godwin exposed him to the coarser mirth 
 of Mr. Home Tooke, who was sometimes inclined to 
 seek relaxation for the iron muscles of his imper- 
 
 1 Mr. Crabb RobinBon gives a pleasant sketch of George Dyer : — 
 " One of the best creatures morally that ever breathed. He was son 
 of a watchman at Wapping, and put to a charity school by some pious 
 Dissenting people. He was a scholar, but to the end of his days (and 
 he lived to be eighty-five) was a bookseller's drudge. He led a life of 
 literary labour in poverty — made indexes, corrected the press, and gave 
 lessons in Latin and Greek." Wordsworth considered his Life of R. 
 Robinson to be one of the best works of biography in the language. 
 Reid's epigram is well known : 
 
 " The world all say, my gentle Dyer, 
 
 Thy odes so very much want fire ; 
 
 Repair the fault, my gentle Dyer, 
 
 And throw thy odes into the fire." 
 
 It is said that he would " literally give away his last guinea." Lord 
 Stanhope made him one of his six executors and residuary legatees, 
 with Charles Fox. Dyer was the first to declare that he rejected the 
 legacy and renounced the executorship ; but the heir insisted on his 
 accepting a small annuity. Finally, in his old age he married his 
 laundress, with the encouragement and advice of his friends, and died 
 in March, 1841. Mrs. Dyer died at the age of ninety-nine having 
 survived four husbands. — F. 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 169 
 
 turbable mind in trying to make a philosopher look 
 foolish. To a stranger's gaze the author of the " Po- 
 litical Justice " and " Caleb Williams," as he appeared 
 in the Temple, always an object of curiosity except to 
 his familiars, presented none of those characteristics 
 with which fancy had invested the daring speculator 
 and relentless novelist ; nor, when he broke silence, 
 did his language tend to reconcile the reality with the 
 expectation. The disproportion of a frame which, 
 low of stature, was surmounted by a massive head 
 which might befit a presentable giant, was rendered 
 almost imperceptible, not by any vivacity of expres- 
 sion (for his countenance was rarely lighted up by 
 the deep-seated genius within), but by a gracious 
 suavity of manner which many " a fine old English 
 gentleman" might envy. His voice was small ; the 
 topics of his ordinary conversation trivial, and dis- 
 cussed with a delicacy and precision which might 
 almost be mistaken for finical ; and the presence of the 
 most interesting persons in literary society, of which 
 he had enjoyed the best, would not prevent him from 
 falling after dinner into the most profound sleep. 
 This gentle, drowsy, spiritless demeanour, presents a 
 striking contrast to a reputation which once filled 
 Europe with its echoes ; but it was, in truth, when 
 rightly understood, perfectly consistent with those 
 intellectual elements which in some raised the most 
 enthusiastic admiration, and from others elicited the 
 wildest denunciations of visionary terror. 
 
 In Mr. Godwin's mind, the faculty of abstract reason 
 so predominated over all others, as practically to ex- 
 tinguish them ; and his taste, akin to this faculty, 
 sought only for its development through the medium 
 of composition for the press. He had no imagination. 
 
170 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 no fancy, no wit, no humour ; or if he possessed any 
 of those faculties, they were obscured by that of pure 
 reason ; and being wholly devoid of the quick sensi- 
 bility which irritates speech into eloquence, and of 
 the passion for immediate excitement and applause, 
 which tends to its presentment before admiring assem- 
 blies, he desired no other audience than that which 
 he could silently address, and learned to regard all 
 things through a contemplative medium. In this 
 sense, far more than in the extravagant application 
 of his wildest theories, he levelled all around him ; 
 admitted no greatness but that of literature ; and 
 neither desired nor revered any triumphs but those 
 of thought. If such a reasoning faculty, guided 
 by such a disposition, had been applied to abstract 
 sciences, no effect remarkable beyond that of rare 
 excellence would have been produced ; but the appa- 
 rent anomalies of Mr. Godwin's intellectual history 
 arose from the application of his power to the pas- 
 sions, the interests, and the hopes of mankind, at a 
 time when they enkindled into frightful action, and 
 when he calmly worked out his problems among their 
 burning elements with the " ice-brook's temper," and 
 the severest logic. And if some extreme conclusions 
 were inconsistent with the faith and the duty which 
 alone can sustain and regulate our nature, there was 
 no small compensation in the severity of the process 
 to which the student was impelled, for the slender 
 peril which might remain lest the results should be 
 practically adopted. A system founded on pure reason, 
 which rejected the impulses of natural affection, the 
 delights of gratitude, the influences of prejudice, the 
 bondage of custom, the animation of personal hope ; 
 which appealed to no passion — which suggested no 
 
LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. I7I 
 
 Juxury — which excited no animosities — and which 
 offered no prize for the observance of its laws, except 
 a participation in the expanding glories of progressive 
 humanity, was little calculated to allure from the 
 accustomed paths of ancient ordinance any man dis- 
 posed to walk in them by the lights from heaven. On 
 the other hand, it was a healthful diversion from those 
 seductions in which the heart secretly enervates and 
 infects the understanding, to invite the revolutionary 
 speculator to the contemplation of the distant and the 
 refined ; by the pursuit of impracticable error to brace 
 the mind for the achievement of everlasting truth ; 
 and on the " heat and flame of the distemper" of an 
 impassioned democracy to " sprinkle cool patience." 
 The idol Political Justice, of which he was the slow 
 and laborious architect, if it for a while enchanted, 
 did not long enthral or ever debase its worshippers ; 
 " its bones were marrowless, its blood was cold," — 
 but there was surely " speculation in its eyes" which 
 " glared withal" into the future. Such high casuistry 
 as it evoked has always an ennobling tendency, even 
 when it dallies with error ; the direction of thought 
 in youth is of less consequence than the mode of its 
 exercise ; and it is only when the base interests and 
 sensual passions of mortality pander to the under- 
 standing that truth may fear for the issue. 
 
 The author of this cold and passibnless intellectual 
 phantasy looked out upon the world he hoped to in- 
 form from recesses of contemplation which the out- 
 ward incidents of life did not disturb, and which, when 
 closed, left him a common man, appearing to super- 
 ficial observers rather below than above the level of 
 ordinary talkers. To his inward gaze the stupendous 
 changes which agitated Europe, at the time he wrote. 
 
172 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 were silent as a picture. The pleasure of his life was 
 to think of; its business was to write; all else in it 
 was vanity. Regarding his own being through the 
 same spiritualising medium, he saw no reason why 
 the springs of its existence should wear out, and, in 
 the spring-time of his speculation, held that maa 
 might become immortal on earth by the effort of the 
 will. His style partook of the quality of his intellect 
 and the character of its purposes — it was pure, simple, 
 colourless. His most imaginative passages are in- 
 spired only by a logic quickened into enthusiasm by 
 the anticipation of the approaching discovery of truth 
 — the dawning Eureka of the reasoner ; they are usu- 
 ally composed of " line upon line and precept upon 
 precept," without an involution of style, or an eddy 
 in the thought. He sometimes complained, though 
 with the benignity that always marked his estimate of 
 his opponents, that Mr. Malthus's style was too richly 
 ornamented for argument ; and certainly, with all its 
 vivacity of illustration it lacks the transparent sim- 
 plicity of his own. The most palpable result which 
 he ever produced by his writings was the dark theory 
 in the first edition of the work on Population, which 
 was presented as an answer to his reasoning on be- 
 half of the perfectibility of man ; and he used to smile 
 at his ultimate triumph, when the writer, who had 
 only intended a striking paradox, tamed it down to the 
 wisdom of economy, and adapted it to Poor-law uses ; 
 neutralised his giant spectres of Vice and Misery by 
 the practical intervention of Moral Restraint ; and left 
 the optimist, Godwin, still in unclouded possession ot 
 the hope of universal peace and happiness, postponed 
 only to that time when passion shall be subjected to 
 reason, and population no more rising like a resistless 
 
LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 173 
 
 tide, between adamantine barriers to submerge the re- 
 novated earth, shall obey the commands of wisdom ; 
 rise and fall as the means of subsistence expand or 
 contract ; and only contribute an impulse to the uni- 
 versal harmony. 
 
 The persons of Mr. Godwin's romances — stranger 
 still — are the naked creations of the same intellectual 
 power, marvellously endowed with galvanic life. 
 Though with happier symmetry, they are as much 
 made out of chains and links of reasoning, as the 
 monster was fashioned by the chemistry of the student, 
 in the celebrated novel of his gifted daughter. Falk- 
 land, and Caleb Williams, are the mere impersonations 
 of the unbounded love of reputation, and irresistible 
 curiosity ; these ideas are developed in each with 
 masterly iteration — to the two ideas all causes give 
 way ; and materials are subjected, often of remarkable 
 coarseness, to the refinement of the conception. Haz- 
 litt used to observe of these two characters, that the 
 manner they are played into each other, was equal to 
 anything of the kind in the drama ; and there is no 
 doubt that the opposition, though at the cost of pro- 
 bability, is most powerfully maintained : but the effect 
 is partly owing to the absence of all extrinsic interest 
 which could interfere with the main purpose ; the 
 beatings of the heart become audible, not only from 
 their own intensity, but from the desolation which the 
 author has expanded around them. The consistency 
 in each is that of an idea, not of a character ; and if 
 the effect of form and colour is produced, it is, as in 
 Jine engraving, by the infinite minuteness and delicacy 
 of the single strokes. In like manner, the incidents by 
 which the author seeks to exemplify the wrongs in- 
 flicted by power on goodness in civilised society, are 
 
174 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 utterly fantastical ; nothing can be more minute, 
 nothing more unreal ; the youth being involved by a 
 web of circumstances woven to immesh him, which 
 the condition of society that the author intends to re- 
 pudiate, renders impossible ; and which, if true, would 
 prove not that the framework of law is tyrannous, but 
 that the will of a single oppressor may elude it. The 
 subject of " St. Leon " is more congenial to the 
 author's power ; but it is, in like manner, a logical 
 development of the consequences of a being prolonged 
 on earth through ages ; and, as the dismal vista ex- 
 pands, the skeleton speculators crowd in to mock and 
 sadden us 1 
 
 Mr. Godwin was thus a man of two beings, which 
 held little discourse with each other — the daring in- 
 ventor of theories constructed of air-drawn diagrams 
 — and the simple gentleman, who suffered nothing to 
 disturb or excite him, beyond his study. He loved to 
 walk in the crowded streets of London, not like Lamb, 
 enjoying the infinite varieties of many-coloured life 
 around him, but because he felt, amidst the noise, 
 and crowd, and glare, more intensely the impertur- 
 bable stillness of his own contemplations. His means 
 of comfortable support were mainly supplied by a shop 
 in Skinner Street, where, under the auspices of " M. 
 J. Godwin and Co.," the prettiest and wisest books for 
 children issued, which old-fashioned parents presented 
 to their children, without suspecting that the graceful 
 lessons of piety and goodness which charmed away 
 the selfishness of infancy, were published, and some- 
 times revised, and now and then written, by a philo- 
 sopher whom they would scarcely venture to name I 
 He met the exigencies which the vicissitudes of busi- 
 ness sometimes caused, with the trusting simplicity 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 175 
 
 which marked his course — he asked hia friends for aid 
 without scruple, considering that their means were 
 justly the due of one who toiled in thought for their 
 inward life, and had little time to provide for his own 
 outward existence ; and took their excuses, when 
 offered, without doubt or offence. The very next day 
 after I had been honoured and delighted by an intro- 
 duction to him at Lamb's chambers, I was made still 
 more proud and happy by his appearance at my own 
 on such an errand — which my poverty, not my will, 
 rendered abortive. After some pleasant chat on in- 
 different matters, he carelessly observed, that he had 
 a little bill for £150 falling due on the morrow, which 
 he had forgotten till that morning, and desired the 
 loan of the necessary amount for a few weeks. At 
 first, in eager hope of being able thus to oblige one 
 whom I regarded with admiration akin to awe, I began 
 to consider whether it was possible for me to raise 
 such a sum ; but, alas 1 a moment's reflection sufficed 
 to convince me that the hope was vain, and I was 
 obliged, with much confusion, to assure my distin- 
 guished visitor how glad I should have been to serve 
 him, but that I was only just starting as a special 
 pleader, was obliged to write for magazines to help 
 me on, and had not such a sum in the world. " Oh 
 dear,'' said the philosopher, " I thought you were a 
 young gentleman of fortune — don't mention it — don't 
 mention it ; I shall do very well elsewhere :" — and 
 then, in the most gracious manner, reverted to our 
 former topics ; and sat in my small room for half an 
 hour, as if to convince me that my want of fortune 
 made no difference in his esteem. A slender tribute 
 to the literature he had loved and served so well, was 
 accorded to him in the old age to which he attained, 
 
176 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 by the gift of a sinecure in the Exchequer, of about 
 £200 a-year, connected with the custody of the Re- 
 cords ; and the last time I saw him, he was heaving 
 an immense key to unlock the musty treasures of 
 which he was guardian — how unlike those he had 
 unlocked, with finer talisman, for the astonishment 
 and alarm of one generation, and the delight of all 
 others ! 
 
 John Thelwall, who had once exulted in the ap- 
 pellation of Citizen Thelwall, having been associated 
 with Coleridge and Southey in their days of enthusi- 
 astical dreaming, though a more precise and practical 
 reformer than either, was introduced by them to Lamb, 
 and was welcomed to his circle, in the true Catholicism 
 of its spirit, although its master cared nothing for the 
 Roman virtue which Thelwall devotedly cherished, 
 and which Home Tooke kept in uncertain vibration 
 between a rebellion and a hoax. Lamb justly esteemed 
 Thelwall as a thoroughly honest man ; — not honest 
 merely in reference to the moral relations of life, but 
 to the processes 'of thought; one whose mind, acute, 
 vigorous, and direct, perceived only the object imme- 
 diately before it, and, undisturbed by collateral cir- 
 cumstances, reflected, with literal fidelity, the impres- 
 sion it received, and maintained it as sturdily against 
 the beauty that might soften it, or the wisdom that 
 might mould it, as against the tyranny that would 
 stifle its expression. " If to be honest as the world 
 goes, is to be one man picked out often thousand," to be 
 honest as the mind works is to be one man of a million ; 
 and such a man was Thelwall. Starting with imper- 
 fect education from the thraldom of domestic oppres- 
 sion, with slender knowledge, but with fiery zeal, into 
 the dangers of political enterprise, and treading fear- 
 
i,amb's friends and companions. 177 
 
 lessly on the verge of sedition, he saw nothing before 
 him but powers which he assumed to be despotism 
 and vice, and rushed headlong to crush them. The 
 point of time — just that when the accumulated force 
 of public opinion had obtained a virtual mastery over 
 the accumulated corruptions of ages, but when power, 
 still unconvinced of its danger, presented its boldest 
 front to opposing intellect, or strove to crush it in the 
 cruelty of awaking fear — gave scope for the ardent 
 temperament of an orator almost as poor in scholastic 
 cultivation as in external fortune ; but strong in in- 
 tegrity, and rich in burning words. 
 
 Thus passionate, Thelwall spoke boldly and vehe- 
 mently — at a time when indignation was thought to 
 be a virtue ; but there is no reason to believe he ever 
 meditated any treason except that accumulated in 
 the architectural sophistry of Lord Eldon, by which 
 he proved a person who desired to awe the Govern- 
 ment into a change of policy to be guilty of compassing 
 the king's death — as thus : — that the king must resist 
 the proposed alteration in his measures — that resist- 
 ing he must be deposed — and that being deposed, he 
 must necessarily die ; — though his boldness of speech 
 placed him in jeopardy even after the acquittals of 
 his simple-minded associate Hardy, and his enig- 
 matical instructor Tooke, who forsook him, and left 
 him, when acquitted, to the mercy of the world. His 
 life, which before this event had been one of self- 
 denial and purity remarkable in a young man who 
 had imbibed the impulses of revolutionary France, 
 partook of considerable vicissitude. At one time, he 
 was raised by his skill in correcting impediments of 
 Speech, and teaching elocution as a science, into 
 elegant competence — at other times saddened by the 
 
178 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 difficulties of poorly requited literary toil and wholly 
 unrequited patriotism ; but he preserved his integrity 
 and his cheerfulness — " a man of hope and forward- 
 looking mind even to the last." Unlike Godwin, 
 whose profound thoughts slowly struggled into form, 
 and seldom found utterance in conversation, — speech 
 was, in him, all in all, his, delight, his profession, his 
 triumph, with little else than passion to inspire or 
 colour it. The flaming orations of his " Tribune," 
 rendered more piquant by the transparent masquerade 
 of ancient history, which, in his youth, "touched 
 monied worldlings with dismay," and infected the 
 poor with dangerous anger, seemed vapid, spiritless, 
 and shallow when addressed through the press to the 
 leisure of the thoughtful. The light which glowed 
 with so formidable a lustre before the evening audience, 
 vanished on closer examination, and proved to be 
 only a harmless phantom-vapour which left no traces 
 of destructive energy behind it. 
 
 Thelwall, in person small, compact, muscular — 
 with a head denoting indomitable resolution, and 
 features deeply furrowed by the ardent workings of 
 the mind, — was as energetic in all his pursuits and 
 enjoyments as in political action. He was earnestly 
 devoted to the Drama, and enjoyed its greatest repre- 
 sentations with the freshness of a boy who sees a play 
 for the first time. He hailed the kindred energy of 
 Kean with enthusiastic praise j but abjuring the nar- 
 rowness of his political vision in matters of taste, did 
 jiTtice to the nobler qualities of Mrs. Siddons and 
 her brothers. In literature and art also, he relaxed 
 the bigotry 6f his liberal intolerance, and expatiated 
 in their wider fields with a taste more catholic. 
 Here Lamb was ready with his sympathy, which in- 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 179 
 
 deed even the political zeal, that he did not share, 
 was too hearted to repel. Although generally detest- 
 ing lectures on literature as superficial and vapid 
 substitutes for quiet reading, and recitations as unreal 
 mockeries of the true Drama, he sometimes attended 
 the entertainments, composed of both, which Thelwall, 
 in the palmy days of his prosperity, gave at his house 
 in Lincoln's Inn Fields, not on politics, which he 
 'nad then forsaken for elocutionary science, though 
 maintaining the principles of his youth, but partly on 
 elocution, and partly on poetry and acting, into 
 which he infused the fiery enthusiasm of his nature. 
 Sometimes, indeed, his fervour animated his disqui- 
 sitions on the philosophy of speech with greater 
 warmth than he reserved for more attractive themes ; 
 the melted vowels were blended into a rainbow, or 
 dispersed like fleecy clouds ; and the theory of lan- 
 guage was made interesting by the honesty and vigour 
 of the speaker. Like all men who have been chiefly 
 self-taught, he sometimes presented common-places 
 as original discoveries, with an air which strangers 
 mistook for quackery ; but they were unjust ; to the 
 speaker these were the product of his own meditation, 
 though familiar to many, and not rarely possessed 
 the charm of originality in their freshness. Lamb at 
 least, felt that it was good, among other companions 
 of richer and more comprehensive intelligence, to 
 have one friend who was undisturbed by misgiving 
 either for himself or his cause ; who enunciated wild 
 paradox and worn-out common-place with equal con- 
 fidence ; and who was ready to sacrifice ease, fortune, 
 fame — everything but speech, and, if it had been pos- 
 sible, even that — to the cause of truth or friendship. 
 William Hazlitt was, for many years, one of the 
 
 N 3 
 
i8o lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 brightest and most constant ornaments of Lamb's 
 parties ; — linked to him in the firm bond of intel- 
 lectual friendship — which remained unshaken in spite 
 of some superficial differences, " short and far be- 
 tween," arising from Lamb's insensibility to Hazlitt's 
 political animosities, and his adherence to Southey, 
 Wordsworth, and Coleridge, who shared them. Haz- 
 litt in his boyhood had derived from his father that 
 attachment to abstract truth for its own sake, and 
 that inflexible determination to cherish it, which 
 naturally predominated in the being of the minister 
 of a small rural congregation, who cherished religious 
 opinions adverse to those of the great body of his 
 countrymen, and waged a spiritual warfare throughout 
 his peaceful course. Thus disciplined, he was intro- 
 duced to the friendship of youthful poets, in whom 
 the dawn of the French Revolution had enkindled 
 hope, and passion, and opinions tinctured with hope 
 and passion, which he eagerly embraced ; and when 
 changes passed over the prospects of mankind, which 
 induced them, in maturer years, to modify the doc- 
 trines they had taught, he resented these defections 
 almost as personal wrongs, and, when his pen found 
 scope, and his tongue utterance, wrote and spoke of 
 them with such bitterness as can only spring from 
 the depths of old affection. No writer, however, 
 except Wilson, did such noble justice to the poetry of 
 Wordsworth, when most despised, and to the genius 
 of Coleridge, when most obscured; he cherished a 
 true admiration for each in " the last recesses of the 
 mind," and defended them with dogged resolution 
 against the scorns and slights of the world. Still the 
 superficial difference was, or seemed, too wide to 
 admit of personal intercourse; and I do not think 
 
lamb's friends and companions. i8i 
 
 that during the many years which elapsed between 
 my introduction to Lamb, and Hazlitt's death, he ever 
 met either of the poets at the rooms of the mac they 
 united in loving. 
 
 Although Mr. Hazlitt was thus staunch in his 
 attachment to principles which he reverenced as true, 
 he was by no means rigid in his mode of maintaining 
 and illustrating them ; but, on the contrary, frequently 
 diminished the immediate effect of his reason ing? 
 by the prodigality and richness of the allusions with 
 which he embossed them. He had as unquenchabl : 
 a desire for truth as others have for wealth, or power, 
 or fame ; he pursued it with sturdy singleness of pur- 
 pose ; and enunciated it without favour or fear. But, 
 besides that love of .truth, that sincerity in pursuing 
 it, and that boldness in telling it, he had also a fervent 
 aspiration after the beautiful ; a vivid sense of plea- 
 sure, and an intense consciousness of his own 
 individual being, which sometimes produced obstacles 
 to the current of speculation, by which it was broken 
 into dazzling eddies or urged into devious windings. 
 Acute, fervid, vigorous, as his mind was, it wanted 
 the one great central power of Imagination, which 
 brings all the other faculties into harmonious action ; 
 multiplies them into each other ; makes truth visible 
 in the forms of beauty, and substitutes intellectual 
 vision for proof. Thus, in him, truth and beauty 
 held divided empire. In him, the spirit was willing, 
 but the flesh was strong ; and, when these contend, 
 it is not difficult to anticipate the result ; " for the 
 power of beauty shall sooner transform honesty from 
 what it is into a bawd, than the person of honesty 
 shall transform beauty into its likeness." This 
 " sometime paradox " was vividly exemplified in Haz- 
 
i82 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 litt's personal history, his conversation, and his 
 writings. To the solitudes of the country in which 
 he mused on fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," 
 a temperament of unusual ardour had given an intense 
 interest, akin to that with which Rousseau has ani- 
 mated and oppressed the details of his early years. 
 
 He had not then, nor did he find till long after- 
 wards, power to embody his meditations and feelings 
 in words. The consciousness of thoughts which he 
 could not hope adequately to express, increased his 
 natural reserve, and he turned for relief to the art of 
 painting, in which he might silently realise his dreams 
 of beauty, and repay the loveliness of nature by fixing 
 some of its fleeting aspects in immortal tints. A few 
 old prints from the old masters awakened the spirit 
 of emulation within him ; the sense of beauty became 
 identified in his mind with that of glory and duration ; 
 while the peaceful labour he enjoyed calmed the 
 tumult in his veins, and gave steadiness to his pure 
 and distant aim. He pursued the art with an earnest- 
 ness and patience which he vividly describes in his 
 essay, " On the pleasure of Painting ;" and to which 
 he frequently reverted in the happiest moods of his 
 conversation ; and, although in this, his chosen pur- 
 suit, he failed, the passionate desire for success, and 
 the long struggle to attain it, left deep traces in his 
 mind, heightening his keen perception of external 
 things, and mingling with all his speculations airy 
 shapes and hues which he had vainly striven to 
 transfer to canvas. A painter may acquire a fine 
 insight into the nice distinctions of character, — he 
 may copy manners in words as he does in colours, — 
 bur it may be apprehended that his course as a severe 
 reasoner will be somewhat " troubled with thick- 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 183 
 
 coming fancies." And if the successful pursuit of 
 art may thus disturb the process of abstract contem- 
 plation, how much more may an unsatisfied ambition 
 ruffle it; bid the dark threads of thought glitter with 
 radiant fancies unrealized, and clothe the diagrams of 
 speculation with the fragments of picture which the 
 mind cherishes the more fondly, because the hand 
 refused to realize ? What wonder, if, in the mind of 
 an ardent youth, thus struggling in vain to give palp- 
 able existence to the shapes of loveliness which 
 haunted him, " the homely beauty of the good old 
 cause" should assume the fascinations not properly 
 its own ? 
 
 This association of beauty with reason diminished 
 the immediate effect of Mr. Hazlitt's political essays, 
 while it enhanced their permanent value. It was the 
 fashion, in his lifetime, to denounce him as a sour 
 Jacobin ; but no description could be more unjust. 
 Under the influence of some bitter feeling, or some 
 wayward fancy, he occasionally poured out a furious 
 invective against those whom he regarded as the 
 enemies of liberty, or as apostates from her cause ; 
 but, in general, the force of his expostulation, or his 
 reasoning, was diverted (unconsciously to himself) 
 by figures and phantasies, by fine and quaint allu- 
 sions, by quotations from his favourite authors, 
 introduced with singular felicity, as respects the direct 
 link of association, but tending, by their very beauty, 
 to unnerve the mind of the reader, and substitute the 
 sense of luxury for clear conviction, or noble anger. 
 In some of his essays, where the reasoning is most 
 cogent, every other sentence contains some exquisite 
 passage from Shakespeare, or Fletcher, or Words- 
 worth, trailing after it a line of golden associations; 
 
184 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 or some reference to a novel, over which we have a 
 thousand times forgotten the wrongs of mankind; 
 till, in the recurring shocks of pleasurable surprise, 
 the main argument is forgotten. When, for example, 
 he compares the position of certain political waverers 
 to that of Clarissa Harlowe confronting the ravisher 
 who would repeat his outrage, with the penknife 
 pointed to her breast, and her eyes uplifted to Hea- 
 ven, and describes them as having been, like her, 
 trepanned into a house of ill-fame, near Pall Mall, 
 and there defending their soiled virtue with their 
 penknives ; what reader, at the suggestion of the 
 stupendous scene which the allusion directly revives, 
 can think or care about the renegade of yesterday ? 
 Here, again, is felt the want of that Imagination, 
 which brings all things into one, tinges all our 
 thoughts and sympathies with one hue, and rejects 
 every ornament which does not heighten or prolong 
 the feeling which it seeks to embody. 
 
 Even when he retaliates on Southey for attacking 
 his old co-patriots, the poetical associations which 
 bitter remembrance suggests, almost neutralise the 
 vituperation ; he brings every " flower which sad em- 
 broidery wears to strew the laureate hearse," where 
 ancient regards are interred ; and merges all the cen- 
 sure of the changed politician in praise of the simple 
 dignity and the generous labours of a singularly noble 
 and unsullied life. So little does he regard the unity 
 of sentiment in his compositions, that in his " Letter 
 to Gifford," after a series of just and bitter retorts on 
 his maligner as " the fine link which connects litera- 
 ture with the police," he takes a fancy to teach that 
 " ultra-crepidarian critic " his own theory of the na- 
 tural disinterestedness of the human mind, and de- 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 185 
 
 velops it, not in the dry, hard, mathematical style in 
 which it was first enunciated, but " o'er informed " 
 with the glow of sentiment, and terminating in an 
 eloquent rhapsody. This latter portion of the letter is 
 one of the noblest of his effusions, but it entirely de- 
 stroys the first in the mind of the reader ; for who, 
 when thus contemplating the living wheels on which 
 human benevolence is borne onwards in its triumphant 
 career, and the spirit with which they are instinct, can 
 think of the literary wasp which had settled for a mo- 
 ment upon them, and who had just before been merci- 
 lessly transfixed with minikin arrows ? 
 
 But the most signal example of the influences which 
 " the show of things " exercised over Mr. Hazlitt's 
 mind was the setting up the Emperor Napoleon as his 
 idol. He strove to justify this predilection to himself 
 by referring it to the revolutionary origin of his hero, 
 and the contempt with which he trampled upon the 
 claims of legitimacy, and humbled the pride of kings. 
 But if his •' only love " thus sprung " from his only 
 hate," it was not cherished in its blossom by antipa- 
 thies. If there had been nothing in his mind which 
 tended to aggrandisement and glory, and which would 
 fain reconcile the principles of freedom with the lavish 
 accumulation of power, he might have desired the 
 triumph of young tyranny over legitimate thrones ; 
 but he would scarcely have watched its progress and 
 its fall " like a lover and a child." His feeling for 
 Bonaparte in exile was not a sentiment of respect for 
 fallen greatness ; not a desire to trace " the soul of 
 goodness in things evil;" not a loathing of the treat- 
 ment the Emperor received from " his cousin kings " 
 in the day of adversity; but entire affection mingling 
 with the current of the blood, and pervading the moral 
 
i86 lamb's friends and companions, 
 
 and iritellectual being. Nothing less than this strong 
 attachment, at once personal and refined, would have 
 enabled him to encounter the toil of collecting and 
 arranging facts and dates for four volumes of narrative 
 which constitute his "Life of Napoleon ;" — a drudgery 
 too abhorrent to his habits of mind as a thinker, to be 
 sustained by any stimulus which the prospect of re- 
 muneration or the hope of applause could supply. It 
 is not so much in the ingenious excuses which he dis- 
 covers for the worst acts of his hero — offered even for 
 the midnight execution of the Duke d'Enghien and 
 the invasion of Spain — that the stamp of personal 
 devotion is obvious, as in the graphic force with 
 which he has delineated the short-lived splendours of 
 the Imperial Court, and " the trivial fond records " he 
 has gathered of every vestige of human feeling by 
 which he could reconcile the Imperial Cynic to the 
 species he scorned. The first two volumes of his 
 work, although redeemed by scattered thoughts of 
 true originality and depth, are often confused and 
 spiritless ; the characters of the principal revolu- 
 tionists are drawn too much in the style of awkward, 
 sprawling caricatures ; but when the hero casts all his 
 rivals into the distance, erects himself the individual 
 enemy of England, consecrates his power by religious 
 ceremonies, and defines it by the circle of a crown, 
 the author's strength becomes concentrated ; his nar- 
 rative assumes an epic dignity and fervour ; dallies 
 with the flowers of usurped prerogative, and glows 
 with " the long-resounding march and energy divine." 
 How happy and proud is he to picture the meeting of 
 the Emperor with the Pope, and the grandeurs of the 
 coronation ! How he grows wanton in celebrating 
 the fetes of the Tuileries, as " presenting all the ele- 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 187 
 
 gance of enchanted pageants," and laments them as 
 " gone like a fairy revel 1" How he " lives along the 
 line " of Austerlitz, and rejoices in its thunder, and 
 hails its setting sun, and exults in the minutest de- 
 tails of the subsequent meeting of the conquered 
 sovereigns at the feet of the conqueror I How he ex- 
 patiates on the fatal marriage with " the deadly Aus- 
 trian'' (as Mr. Cobbett justly called Maria Louisa), 
 as though it were a chapter in romance, and sheds 
 the grace of beauty on the imperial picture I How he 
 kindles with martial ardour as he describes the prepa- 
 rations against Russia; musters the myriads of bar- 
 barians with a show of dramatic justice ; and fondly 
 lingers among the brief triumphs of Moskwa on the 
 verge of the terrible catastrophe ! The narrative of 
 the disastrous expedition is, indeed, written with a 
 master's hand; we see the "grand army" marching 
 to its destruction through the immense perspsctive : 
 the wild hordes flying before the terror of its " coming ;'' 
 the barbaric magnificence of Moscow towering in the 
 remote distance ; and when we gaze upon the sacri- 
 ficial conflagration of the Kremlin, we feel that it is 
 worthy to become the funeral pile of the conqueror's 
 glories. It is well for the readers of this splendid 
 work, that there is more in it of the painter than of the 
 metaphysician ; that its style glows with the fervour 
 of battle, or stiffens with the spoils of victory ; yet we 
 wonder that this monument to imperial grandeur 
 should be raised from the dead level of jacobinism by 
 an honest and profound thinker. The solution is, 
 that although he was this, he was also more — that, in 
 opinion, he was devoted to the cause of the people : 
 but that, in feeling, he required some individual object 
 of worship ; that he selected Napoleon as one in whose 
 
i88 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 origin and career he might at once impersonate his 
 principles and gratify his affections ; and that he ad- 
 hered to his own idea with heroic obstinacy, when 
 the " child and champion of the Republic " openly 
 sought to repress all feeling and thought, but such as 
 he could cast in his own iron moulds, and scoffed at 
 popular enthusiasm even while it bore him to the 
 accomplishment of his loftiest desires. 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt had little inclination to talk or write 
 about contemporary authors, and still less to read 
 them. He was with difficulty persuaded to look into 
 the Scotch novels, but when he did so, he found them 
 old in substance though new in form, read them with 
 as much avidity as the rest of the world, and expressed 
 better than any one else what all the world felt about 
 them. His hearty love of them, however, did not 
 diminish, but aggravate his dislike of the political 
 opinions so zealously and consistently maintained, of 
 their great author: and yet the strength of his hatred 
 towards that which was accidental and transitory only 
 set off the unabated power of his regard for the great 
 and the lasting. Coleridge and Wordsworth were not 
 moderns to him, for they were the inspirers of his 
 youth, which was his own antiquity, and the feel- 
 ings which were the germ of their poetry had sunk 
 deep into his heart. With the exception of the works 
 of these, and of his friends Barry Cornwall and Sheri- 
 dan Knowles, in whose successes he rejoiced, he held 
 modern literature in slight esteem, and regarded the 
 discoveries of science and the visions of optimism with 
 an undazzled eye. His " large discourse of reason " 
 looked not before, but after. He felt it a sacred duty, 
 as a lover of genius and art, to defend the fame of the 
 mighty dead. When the old painters were assailed 
 
lamb's friends and companions, i8g 
 
 in "The Catalogue Raisonne of the British Institu- 
 tion," he was "touched with noble anger." All his own 
 vain longings after the immortality of the works which 
 were libelled, — all the tranquillity and beauty they had 
 shed into his soul, — all his comprehension of the 
 sympathy and delight of thousands, which, accumu- 
 lating through long time, had attested their worth — 
 were fused together to dazzle and subdue the daring 
 critic who would disturb the judgment of ages. So, 
 when a popular poet assailed the fame of Rousseau, 
 seeking to reverse the decision of posterity on what 
 that great though unhappy writer had achieved by 
 suggesting the opinion of people of condition in his 
 neighbourhood on the figure he made to their appre- 
 hensions while in the service of Madame de Warrens, 
 he vindicated the prerogatives of genius with the true 
 logic of passion. Few things irritated him more than 
 the claims set up for the present generation to be wiser 
 and better than those which have gone before it. He 
 had no power of imagination to embrace the golden 
 clouds which hung over the Future, but he rested and 
 expatiated in the Past. To his apprehension human 
 good did not appear a slender shoot of yesterday, like 
 the beanstalk in the fairy tale, aspiring to the skies, 
 and leading to an enchanted castle, but a huge growth 
 of intertwisted fibres, grassing the earth by number- 
 less roots of custom, habit, and affection, and bear- 
 ing vestiges, of " a thousand storms, a thousand 
 thunders." 
 
 When I first met Hazlitt, in the year 1815, he was 
 staggering under the blow of Waterloo. The re-ap- 
 pearance of his imperial idol on the coast of France, 
 and his triumphant march to Paris, like a fairy vision, 
 had excited his admiration and sympathy to the 
 
igo lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 utmost pitch ; and though in many respects sturdily 
 English in feeling, he could scarcely forgive the valour 
 of the conquerors ; and bitterly resented the captivity 
 of the Emperor in St. Helena, which followed it, as 
 if he had sustained a personal wrong. On this subject 
 only, he was " eaten upwith passion ;" on all others 
 he was the fairest, the most candid of reasoners. His 
 countenance was then handsome, but marked by a 
 painful expression ; his black hair, which had curled 
 stiffly over his temples, had scarcely received its first 
 tints of grey ; his gait was awkward ; his dress was 
 neglected; and, in the company of strangers, his bash- 
 fulness was almost painful — but when, in the society 
 of Lamb and one or two others, he talked on his 
 favourite themes of old English books, or old Italian 
 pictures, no one's conversation could be more delight- 
 ful. The poets, from intercourse with whom he had 
 drawn so much of his taste, and who had contributed 
 to shed the noble infection of beauty through his 
 reasoning faculties, had scarcely the opportunity of 
 appreciating their progress. It was, in after years, 
 by the fireside of " the Lambs," that his tongue was 
 gradually loosened, and his passionate thoughts found 
 appropriate words. There, his struggles to express 
 the fine conceptions with which his mind was filled 
 were encouraged by entire sympathy ; there he began 
 to stammer out his just and original conceptions of 
 Chaucer and Spenser, and other English poets and 
 prose writers, more talked of, though not better 
 known, by their countrymen ; there he was thoroughly 
 understood and dexterously cheered by Miss Lamb, 
 whose nice discernment of his first efforts in conver- 
 sation were dwelt upon by him with affectionate 
 gratitude, even when most out of humour with the 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 191 
 
 world. When he mastered his diiHdence, he did not 
 talk for effect, to dazzle, or surprise, or annoy, but 
 with the most simple and honest desire to make his 
 view of the subject in hand entirely apprehended by 
 his hearer. There was sometimes an obvious struggle 
 to do this to his own satisfaction ; he seemed labour- 
 ing to drag his thought to light from its deep lurking- 
 place ; and, with timid distrust of that power of 
 expression which he had found so late in life, he often 
 betrayed a fear lest he had failed to make himself 
 understood, and recurred to the subject again and 
 again, that he might be assured he had succeeded. 
 With a certain doggedness of manner, he showed 
 nothing pragmatical or exclusive ; he never drove a 
 principle to its utmost possible consequences but, like 
 Locksley, " allowed for the wind." For some years 
 previous to his death he observed an entire abstinence 
 from fermented liquors, which he had once quaffed 
 with the proper relish he had for all the good things 
 of this life, but which he courageously resigned when 
 he found the indulgence perilous to his health and 
 faculties. The cheerfulness with which he made this 
 sacrifice was one of the most amiable traits in his 
 character. He had no censure for others, who, in 
 the same dangers, were less wise or less resolute j 
 nor did he think he had earned, by his own constancy, 
 any right to intrude advice which he knew, if wanted, 
 must be unavailing. Nor did he profess to be a con- 
 vert to the general system of abstinence, which was 
 advanced by one of his kindest and staunchest friends ; 
 he avowed that he yielded to necessity ; and instead 
 of avoiding the sight of that which he could no longer 
 taste, he was seldom so happy as when he sat with 
 friends at their wine, participating the sociality of the 
 
iga lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 time, and renewing his own past enjoyment in that 
 of his companions, without regret and without envy. 
 Like Dr. Johnson, he made himself poor amends for 
 the loss of wine by drinking tea, not so largely, indeed, 
 as the hero of Boswell, but at least of equal potency; 
 for he might have challenged Mrs. Thrale and all her 
 sex to make stronger tea than his own. In society, 
 as in politics, he was no flincher. He loved " to hear 
 the chimes at midnight," without considering them 
 as a summons to rise. At these seasons, when in his 
 happiest mood, he used to dwell on the conversational 
 power of his friends, and live over again the delightful 
 hours he had passed with them ; repeat the pregnant 
 puns that one had made ; tell over again a story 
 with which another had convulsed the room ; or ex- 
 patiate on the eloquence of a third ; always best pleased 
 when he could detect some talent which was unre- 
 garded by the world, and giving alike, to the celebrated 
 and the unknown, due honour. 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt delivered three courses of lectures at 
 the Surrey Institution, on " The English Poets ; " on 
 " The English Comic Writers," and on " The Age of 
 Elizabeth," which Lamb (under protest against lec- 
 tures in general) regularly attended, an earnest ad- 
 mirer, amidst crowds with whom the lecturer had " an 
 imperfect sympathy." They consisted chiefly of Dis- 
 senters, who agreed with him in his hatred of Lord 
 Castlereagh, and his love of religious freedom, but 
 who " loved no plays ;" of Quakers, who approved 
 him as the earnest opponent of slavery and capital 
 punishment, but who " heard no music ;" of citizens, 
 devoted to the main chance, who had a hankering 
 after " the improvement of the mind ;" but to whom 
 his favourite doctrine of its natural disinterestednes> 
 
LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. ig3 
 
 was a riddle; of a few enemies who came to sneer; 
 and a few friends, who were eager to learn and to 
 admire. The comparative insensibility of the bulk of 
 his audience to his finest passages sometimes pro- 
 voked him to awaken their attention by points which 
 broke the train of his discourse ; after which, he could 
 make himself amends by some abrupt paradox which 
 might set their prejudices on edge, and make them 
 fancy they were shocked. He startled many of them 
 at the onset, by observing, that, since Jacob's dream, 
 " the heavens have gone farther off, and become 
 astronomical ;" a fine extravagance, which the ladies 
 and gentlemen who had grown astronomical them- 
 selves under the preceding lecturer, felt called on 
 to resent as an attack on their severer studies. 
 When he read a well-known extract from Cowper, 
 comparing a poor cottager with Voltaire, and 
 had pronounced the line ; " A truth the brilliant 
 Frenchman never knew,'' they broke into a joyous 
 shout of self-gratulation, that they were so much 
 wiser than the scornful Frenchman. When he passed 
 by Mrs. Hannah More with observing that " she had 
 written a great deal which he had never read," a voice 
 gave expression to the general commiseration and 
 surprise, by calling out " More pity for you 1" They 
 were confounded at his reading with more emphasis, 
 perhaps, than discretion, Gay's epigrammatic lines on 
 Sir Richard Blackstone, in which scriptural persons 
 are too freely hitched into rhyme ; but he went dog- 
 gedly on to the end, and, by his perseverance, bafHed 
 those who, if he had acknowledged himself wrong, 
 by stopping, would have visited him with an outburst 
 of displeasure which he felt to be gathering. He once 
 had a more edifying advantage over them. He was 
 
 o 
 
194 LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 
 
 enumerating the humanities which endeared Dr. John- 
 son to his mind, and at the close of an agreeable 
 catalogue, mentioned, as last and noblest, " his car- 
 rying the poor victim of disease and dissipation on 
 his back, through Fleet Street," at which a titter arose 
 from some, who were struck by the picture, as ludi- 
 crous, and a murmur from others, who deemed the 
 allusion unfit for ears polite: he paused for an instant, 
 and then added, in his sturdiest and most impressive 
 manner, — " an act which realizes the parable of the 
 Good Samaritan ;" at which his moral and his delicate 
 hearers shrunk, rebuked into deep silence. He was 
 not eloquent, in the true sense of the term ; for his 
 thoughts were too weighty to be moved along by the 
 shallow stream of feeling which an evening's excite- 
 ment can rouse. He wrote all his lectures, and read 
 them as they were written ; but his deep voice and 
 earnest manner suited his matter well. He seemed 
 to dig into his subject, and not in vain. In delivering 
 his longer quotations, he had scarcely continuity 
 enough for the versification of Shakespeare and Milton, 
 " with linked sweetness long drawn out;" but he gave 
 Pope's brilliant satire and delightful compliments, 
 which are usually complete within the couplet, with 
 an elegance and point which the poet himself, could 
 he have heard, would have felt as indicating their 
 highest praise. 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt, having suffered for many years from 
 derangement of the digestive organs, for which per- 
 haps a moderate use pf fermented liquors would have 
 been preferable to abstinence, solaced only by the 
 intense tincture of tea in which he found refuge, worn 
 out at last, died on i8th Sept., 1830, at the age of 
 fifty-two. Lamb frequently visited him during his 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 195 
 
 Bufferings, which were not, as has been erroneously 
 suggested, aggravated by the want of needful com- 
 forts ; for although his careless habits had left no 
 provision for sickness, his friends gladly acknowledged, 
 by their united aid, the deep intellectual obligations 
 due to the great thinker. In a moment of acute 
 pain, when the needless apprehension for the future 
 rushed upon him, he dictated a brief and peremptory 
 letter to the editor oi the Edinburgh Review, requiring 
 a considerable remittance, to which he had no claim 
 but that of former remunerated services, which the 
 friend, who obeyed his bidding, feared might excite 
 displeasure ; but he mistook Francis Jeffrey; the sum 
 demanded was received by return of post, with the 
 most anxious wishes for Hazlitt's recovery — just too 
 late for him to understand his error. Lamb joined a 
 few friends in attending his funeral in the churchyard 
 of St. Anne's, Soho, where he was interred, and felt 
 his loss — not so violently at the time, as mournfully 
 in the frequent recurrence of the sense that a chief 
 source of intellectual pleasure was stopped. His 
 personal frailties are nothing to us now; his thoughts 
 survive; in them we have his better part entire, and 
 in them must be traced his true history. The real 
 events of his life are not to be traced in its external 
 changes ; as his engagement by the Morning Chronicle, 
 or his transfer of his services to the Times, or his intro- 
 duction to the Edinburgh Review; but in the progress 
 and development of his fine understanding as nurtured 
 and checked and swayed by his affections. His war- 
 fare was within ; its spoils are ours ! 
 
 One of the soundest and most elegant scholars whom 
 the school of Christ's Hospital ever produced, Mr. 
 Thomas Barnes, was a frequent guest at Lamb's 
 
 o 2 
 
196 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 chambers in the Temple; and though the responsibi- 
 lities he undertook, before Lamb quitted that, his 
 happiest abode, prevented him from visiting often at 
 Great Russell Street, at Islington, or Enfield, he was 
 always ready to assist by the kind word of the powerful 
 journal in which he became most potent, the expand- 
 ing reputation of his schoolmate and friend. After 
 establishing a high social and intellectual character at 
 Cambridge, he had entered the legal profession as a 
 special pleader, but was prevented from applying the 
 needful devotion to that laborious pursuit by violent 
 rheumatic affections, which he solaced by writing cri- 
 tiques and essays of rare merit. So shattered did he 
 appear in health, that when his friends learned that he 
 had accepted the editorship of the Times newspaper, 
 they almost shuddered at the attempt as suicidal, and 
 anticipated a speedy ruin to his constitution from the 
 pressure of constant labour and anxiety, on the least 
 healthful hours of toil. But he had judged better 
 than they of his own physical and intellectual re- 
 sources, and the mode in which the grave responsibility 
 and constant exertion of his office would affect both ; 
 for the regular effort consolidated his feverish strength, 
 gave evenness and tranquillity to a life of serious exer- 
 tion, and supplied, for many years, power equal to the 
 perpetual demand; affording a striking example how, 
 when finely attuned, the mind can influence the body 
 to its uses. The facile adaptation of his intellect to 
 his new duties was scarcely less remarkable than the 
 mastery it achieved over his desultory habits and 
 physical infirmities ; for, until then, it had seemed 
 more reiined than vigorous — more elegant than 
 weighty — too fastidious to endure the supervision 
 and arrangement of innumerable reports, paragraphs, 
 
LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. I97 
 
 and essays ; but, while a scholarly grace was shed by 
 him through all he wrote or moulded, the needful 
 vigour was never wanting to the high office of super- 
 intending the great daily miracle; to the discipline of 
 its various contributors ; or to the composition of 
 articles which he was always ready, on the instant of 
 emergency, to supply. 
 
 Mr. Barnes, linked by school associations with Leigh 
 Hunt, filled the theatrical department of criticism in 
 the Examiner during the period when the Editor's 
 imprisonment for alleged libel on the Prince Regent 
 precluded his attendance on the theatres. It was no 
 easy office of friendship to supply the place of Hunt 
 in the department of criticism, he may be almost said 
 to have invented ; but Mr. Barnes, though in a dif- 
 ferent style, well sustained the attractions of the 
 " Theatrical Examiner." Fortunately the appearance 
 of Mr. Kean during this interval enabled him to 
 gratify the profound enthusiasm of his nature, with- 
 out doing violence to the fastidious taste to which it 
 was usually subjected. He perceived at once the 
 vivid energy of the new actor; understood his faults 
 to be better than the excellences of ordinary aspirants ; 
 and hailed him with the most generous praise — the 
 more valuable as it proceeded from one rarely induced 
 to render applause, and never yielding it except on the 
 conviction of true excellence. Hazlitt, who contributed 
 theatrical criticism, at the same time, to the Morning 
 Chronicle, and who astounded the tame mediocrity of 
 Mr. Perry's subordinates by his earnest eulogy, and 
 Barnes, had the satisfaction of first appreciating this 
 unfriended performer, and, while many were offended 
 by the daring novelty of his style, and more stood 
 aloof with fashionable indifference from a deserted 
 
igS lamb's friends and companions, 
 
 theatre, of awakening that spirit which retrieved the 
 fortunes of Old Druiy — which revived, for a brilliant 
 interval, the interest of the English stage, and which 
 bore the actor on a tide of intoxicating success that 
 " knew no retiring ebb" till it was unhappily checked 
 by his own lamentable frailties.' 
 
 The manners of Mr. Barnes, though extremely 
 courteous, were so reserved as to aeem cold to 
 strangers ; but they were changed, as by magic, by 
 
 1 As the essays of Mr. Barnes have never been collected, I take leave 
 to present to the reader the conclusion of his article in the Examiner 
 of February zyth, 1814, on the first appearance of Mr. Kean in 
 Richard : — 
 
 " In the heroic parts, he animated every spectator with his own 
 feelings ; when he exclaimed ' that a thousand hearts were swelling in 
 his bosom,' the house shouted to express their accordance to a truth so 
 nobly exemplified by the energy of his voice, by the grandeur of his 
 mien. His death-scene was the grandest conception, and executed in 
 the most impressive manner ; it was a piece of noble poetry, expressed 
 by action instead of language. He fights desperately : he is disarmed 
 and exhausted of all bodily strength : he disdains to fall, and his strong 
 volition keeps him standing: he fixes that head, full of intellectual and 
 heroic power, directly on the enemy : he bears up his chest with an 
 expression which seems swelling with more than human spirit : he 
 holds his uplifted arm, in calm but dreadful defiance of his conqueror. 
 But he is but man, and he falls after this sublime effort senseless to the 
 ground. We have felt our eyes gush on reading a passage of exquisite 
 poetry. We have been ready to leap at sight of a noble picture, but 
 we never felt stronger emotion, more overpowering sensations, than 
 were kindled by the novel sublimity of this catastrophe. In matters of 
 mere taste, there will be a difference of opinion ; but here there was 
 no room to doubt, no reason could be imprudent enough to hesitate. 
 Every heart beat an echo responsive to this call of elevated nature, and 
 yearned with fondness towards the man who, while he excited admira- 
 tion for himself made also his admirers glow with a warmth of con- 
 scious 'uperiority, because they were able to appreciate such an exalted 
 degree of excellence." 
 
LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. igg 
 
 the contemplation of moral or intellectual beauty, 
 awakened in a small circle. I well remember him, 
 late one evening, in the year 1816, when only two or 
 three friends remained with Lamb and his sister, long 
 after "we had heard the chimes at midnight," holding 
 inveterate but delighted controversy with Lamb, re- 
 specting the tragic power of Dante as compared with 
 that of Shakespeare. Dante was scarcely known to 
 Lamb ; for he was unable to read the original, and 
 Gary's noble translation was not then known to him ; 
 and Barnes aspired to the glory of affording him a 
 glimpse of a kindred greatness in the mighty Italian 
 with that which he had conceived incapable of human 
 rivalry. The face of the advocate of Dante, heavy 
 when in repose, grew bright with earnest admiration 
 as he quoted images, sentiments, dialogues, against 
 Lamb, who had taken his own immortal stand on Lear,, 
 and urged the supremacy of the child-changed father 
 against all the possible Ugolinos of the world. Some 
 reference having been made by Lamb to his own expo- 
 sition of Lear, which had been recently published in 
 a magazine, edited by Leigh Hunt, under the title of 
 The Reflector, touched another and a tenderer string 
 of feeling, turned a little the course of his enthusiasm 
 the more to inflame it, and brought out a burst of 
 affectionate admiration for his friend, then scarcely 
 known to the world, which was the more striking for 
 its contrast with his usually sedate demeanour. 1 
 think I see him now, leaning forward upon the little 
 table on which the candles were just expiring in their 
 sockets, his fists clenched, his eyes flashing, and his 
 face bathed in perspiration, exclaiming to Lamb, "And 
 do I not know, my boy, that you have written about 
 Shakespeare, and Shakespeare's own Lear, finer than 
 
200 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 any one ever did in the world, and won't I let the world 
 know it?" He was right; there is no criticism in the 
 world more worthy of the genius it estimates than that 
 little passage referred to on Lear; few felt it then like 
 Barnes; thousands have read it since, here, and tens 
 of thousands in America ; and have felt as he did ; and 
 will answer for the truth of that excited hour. 
 
 Mr. Barnes combined singular acuteness of under- 
 standing with remarkable simplicity of character. If 
 he was skilful in finding out those who duped others, 
 he made some amends to the world of sharpers by 
 being abundantly duped himself. He might caution 
 the public to be on their guard against impostors of 
 every kind, but his heart was open to every species of 
 delusion which came in the shape of misery. Poles 
 — real and theatrical — refugees, pretenders of all kinds, 
 found their way to the Times inner office, and though 
 the inexorable editor excluded their lucubrations from 
 the precious space of its columns, he rarely omitted to 
 make them amends by large contributions from his 
 purse. The intimate acquaintance with all the varie- 
 ties of life forced on him by his position in the midst 
 of a moving epitome of the world, which vividly 
 reflected them all, failed to teach him distrust or dis- 
 cretion. He was a child in the centre of the most 
 feverish agitations ; a dupe in the midst of the quickest 
 apprehensions ; and while, with unbending pride, he 
 repelled the slightest interference with his high func- 
 tions from the greatest quarters, he was open to every 
 tale from the lowest which could win from him personal 
 aid. Earely as he was seen in his later years in 
 Lamb's circle, he is indestructibly associated with it 
 in the recollection of the few survivors of its elder 
 days ; and they will lament with me that the influ- 
 
LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 201 
 
 ences for good which he shed largely on all the 
 departments of busy life, should have necessarily left 
 behind them such slender memorials of one of the 
 kindest, the wisest, and the best of men who have 
 ever enjoyed signal opportunities of moulding public 
 opinion, and who have turned them to the noblest and 
 the purest uses. 
 
 Among Lamb's early acquaintances and constant 
 admirers was an artist whose chequered career and 
 melancholy death gave an interest to the recollections 
 with which he is linked independent of that which 
 belongs to his pictures — Benjamin Robert Haydon. 
 The ruling misfortune of his life was somewhat akin 
 to that disproportion in Hazlitt's mind to which I 
 have adverted, but productive in his case of more 
 disastrous results — the possession of two different 
 faculties not harmonized into one, and struggling 
 for mastery — in that disarrangement of the faculties 
 in which the unproductive talent becomes not a mere 
 negative, but neutralises the other, and even turns its 
 good into evil. Haydon, the son of a respectable 
 tradesman at Plymouth, was endowed with two capa- 
 cities, either of which exclusively cultivated with the 
 energy of his disposition, might have led to fortune 
 — the genius of a painter, and the passionate logic of 
 a controversialist ; talents scarcely capable of being 
 blended in harmonious action except under the aus- 
 pices of prosperity such as should satisfy the artist by 
 fame, and appease the literary combatant by triumph. 
 
 The combination of a turbulent vivacity of mind 
 with a fine aptitude for the most serene of arts was 
 rendered more infelicitous by the circumstances of 
 the young painter's early career. He was destined 
 painfully to work his way at once through the lower 
 
202 lamb's friends AND COMPANIONS. 
 
 elements of his art and the difficulties of adverse 
 fortune ; and though by indomitable courage and 
 unwearied industry he became master of anatomic 
 science, of colouring, and of perspective, and achieved 
 a position in which his efforts might be fairly pre- 
 sented to the notice of the world, his impetuous 
 temperament was yet further ruffled by the arduous 
 and complicated struggle. With boundless intellec- 
 tual ambition, he sought to excel in the loftiest 
 department of his art ; and undertook the double 
 responsibility of painting great pictures and of cre- 
 ating the taste which should appreciate, and enforcing 
 the patronage which should reward them. 
 
 The patronage of high art, not then adopted by the 
 Government, and far beyond the means of individuals 
 of the middle class, necessarily appertained to a few 
 members of the aristocracy, who alone could encou- 
 rage and remunerate the painters of history. Although 
 the beginning of Mr. Haydon's career was not un- 
 cheered by aristocratic favour, the contrast between 
 the greatness of his own conceptions and the humility 
 of the course which prudence suggested as necessary 
 to obtain for himself the means of developing them 
 on canvas, fevered his nature, which, ardent in grati- 
 tude for the appreciation and assistance of the wealthy 
 to a degree which might even be mistaken for servility 
 was also impatient of the general indifference to the 
 cause of which he sought to be, not only the orna- 
 ment, but unhappily for him, also the champion. 
 Alas I he there " perceived a divided duty." Had he 
 been contented silently to paint — to endure obscurity 
 and privation for a while, gradually to mature his 
 powers of execution and soften the rigour of his style 
 and of his virtue, he might have achieved works, not 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 203 
 
 • only as vast in outline and as beautiful in portions as 
 those which he exhibited, but so harmonious in their 
 excellences as to charm away opposition, and ensure 
 speedy reputation, moderate fortune, and lasting fame. 
 But he resolved to battle for that which he believed to 
 be " the right," he rushed into a life-long contest with 
 the Royal Academy ; frequently suspended the gentle 
 
 ■■ labours of the pencil for the vehement use of the pen ; 
 and thus gave to his course an air of defiance which 
 prevented the calm appreciation of his nobler works, 
 and increased the mischief by reaction. Indignant 
 of the scorns " that patient merit of the unworthy 
 takes," he sometimes fancied scorns which impatient 
 merit in return imputes to the worthy; and thus 
 instead of enjoying the most tranquil of lives (which 
 a painter's should be), led one of the most animated, 
 restless, and broken. The necessary consequence of 
 this disproportion was a series of pecuniary embar- 
 rassments, the direct result of his struggle with 
 fortune ; a succession of feverish triumphs and dis- 
 appointments, the fruits of his contest with power ; 
 and worse perhaps than either, the frequent diversion 
 of his own genius from its natural course, and the 
 hurried and imperfect development of its most ma- 
 jestic conceptions. To paint as finely as he some- 
 times did in the ruffled pauses of his passionate 
 controversy, and amidst the terrors of impending 
 want, was to display large innate resources of skill 
 and high energy of mind ; but how much more un- 
 questionable fame might he have attained if his 
 disposition had permitted him to be content with 
 charming the world of art, instead of attempting also 
 to instruct or reform it 1 
 
 Mr. Haydon's course, though thus troubled, was 
 
204 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 one of constant animation, and illustrated by hours 
 of triumph, the more radiant because they were 
 snatched from adverse fortune and a reluctant people. 
 The exhibition of a single picture by an artist at war 
 with the Academy which exhibited a thousand pictures 
 at the same price — creating a sensation not only 
 among artists and patrons of art, but among the most 
 secluded literary circles — and engaging the highest 
 powers of criticism — was, itself, a splendid occurrence 
 in life ; — and, twice at least, in the instance of the 
 Entry into Jerusalem, and the Lazarus, was crowned 
 with signal success. It was a proud moment for the 
 daring painter, when, at the opening of the first of 
 these Exhibitions, while the crowd of visitors, distin- 
 guished in rank or talent, stood doubting whether in 
 the countenance of the chief figure the daring attempt 
 to present an aspect differing from that which had 
 enkindled the devotion of ages — to mingle the human 
 with the Divine, resolution with sweetness, dignified 
 composure with the anticipation of mighty suffering 
 — had not failed, Mrs. Siddons walked slowly up to the 
 centre of the room, surveyed it in silence for a minute 
 or two, and then ejaculated, in her deep, low, thrilling 
 voice, " It is perfect!" quelled all opposition, and re- 
 moved the doubt, from his own mind at least, for ever. 
 Although the great body of artists to whose corpo- 
 rate power Mr. Haydon was so passionately opposed, 
 naturally stood aside from his path, it was cheered 
 by the attention and often by the applause of the 
 chief literary spirits of the age, who were attracted by 
 a fierce intellectual struggle. Sir Walter Scott, Words- 
 worth, Hazlitt, Godwin, Shelley, Hunt, Coleridge, 
 Lamb, Keats, — and many young writers for periodical 
 works, in the freshness of unhacknied authorship — 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 205 
 
 took an interest in a course so gallant though so 
 troublous, which excited their sympathy yet did not 
 force them to the irksome duty of unqualified praise. 
 Almost in the outset of his career, Wordsworth ad- 
 dressed to him a sonnet, in heroic strain, associating 
 the artist's calling with his own ; making common 
 cause with him, " while the whole world seems 
 adverse to desert ;" admonishing him " still to be 
 strenuous for the bright reward, and in the soul admit 
 of no decay ;" and, long after, when the poet had, by 
 a wiser perseverance, gradually created the taste 
 which appreciated his works, he celebrated, in another 
 sonnet, the fine autumnal conception in the picture 
 of Napoleon on the rock of St. Helena, with his back 
 to the spectator, contemplating the blank sea, left 
 desolate by the sunken sun. The Conqueror of Na- 
 poleon also recognised the artist's claims, and supplied 
 him with another great subject in the contemplation 
 of the solitude of Waterloo by its hero, ten years after 
 the victory. 
 
 Mr. Haydon's vividness of mind burst out in his 
 conversation, which, though somewhat broken and 
 rugged, like his career, had also, like that, a vein ot 
 beauty streaking it. Having associated with most of 
 the remarkable persons of his time, and seen strange 
 varieties of " many-coloured life " — gifted with a rapid 
 perception of character and a painter's eye for effect, — 
 he was able to hit off, with startling facility, sketches 
 in words which lived before the hearer. His anxieties 
 and sorrows did not destroy the buoyancy of his 
 spirits or rob the convivial moment of its prosperity ; 
 so that he struggled, and toiled, and laughed, and 
 triumphed, and failed, and hoped on, till the waning 
 of life approached and found him still in opposition to 
 
2o6 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 the world, and far from the threshold of fortune. The 
 object of his literary exertions was partially attained ; 
 the national attention had been directed to high art ; 
 but he did not personally share in the benefits he had 
 greatly contributed to win. Even his cartoon of the 
 Curse in Paradise failed to obtain a prize when he 
 entered the arena with unfledged youths for compe- 
 titors ; and the desertion of the exhibition of his two 
 pictures of Aristides and Nero, at the Egyptian Hall, 
 by the public, for the neighbouring exposure of the 
 clever manikin, General Tom Thumb, quite van- 
 quished him. It was indeed a melancholy contrast ; 
 — the unending succession of bright crowds throng- 
 ing the levees of the small abortion, and the dim 
 and dusty room in which the two latest historical 
 pictures of the veteran hung for hours without a 
 visitor. Opposition, abuse, even neglect he could 
 have borne, but the sense of ridicule involved in 
 such a juxta-position drove him to despair. No one 
 who knew him ever apprehended from his disasters 
 such a catastrophe as that which closed them. He 
 had always cherished a belief in the religion of our 
 Church, and avowed it among scoffing unbelievers; 
 and that belief he asserted even in the wild fragments 
 he penned in his last terrible hour. His friends 
 thought that even the sense of the injustice of the 
 world would have contributed with his undimmed con- 
 sciousness of his own powers to enable him to endure. 
 In his domestic relations also he was happy, blessed 
 in the affection of a wife of great beauty and equal 
 discretion, who, by gentler temper and serener ws- 
 dom than his own, had assisted and soothed him m 
 all his anxieties and griefs, and whose image was so 
 identified in his mind with the beautiful as to impress 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 2C7 
 
 its character on all the forms of female loveliness he 
 had created. Those who knew him best feel the 
 strongest assurance, that notwithstanding the appear- 
 ances of preparation which attended his extraordinary 
 suicide, his mind was shattered to pieces — all distorted 
 and broken — with only one feeling left entire, the per- 
 version of which led to the deed, a hope to awaken 
 sympathy in death for those whom living he could not 
 shelter. The last hurried lines he wrote, entitled 
 " Haydon's last Thoughts," consisted of a fevered 
 comparison between the Duke of Wellington and 
 Napoleon, in which he seemed to wish 8o repair some 
 supposed injustice which in speech or writing he had 
 done to the Conqueror. It was inclosed in a letter 
 addressed to three friends, written in the hour of his 
 death, and containing sad fragmental memorials of 
 those passionate hopes, fierce struggles, and bitter dis- 
 appointments which brought him through distraction 
 to the grave ! 
 
 A visit of Coleridge was always regarded by Lamb, 
 as an opportunity to afford a rare gratification to a 
 few friends, who, he knew, would prize it ; and I well 
 remember the flush of prideful pleasure which came 
 over his face as he would hurry, on his way to the 
 India House, into the office in which I was a pupil, 
 and stammer out the welcome invitation for the even- 
 ing. This was true self-sacrifice ; for Lamb would 
 have infinitely preferred having his inspired friend to 
 himself and his sister, for a brief renewal of the old 
 Salutation delights ; but, I believe, he never permitted 
 himself to enjoy this exclusive treat. The pleasure 
 he conferred was great ; for of all celebrated persons 
 I ever saw, Coleridge alone surpassed the expectation 
 created by his writings; for he not only was, but 
 
2o8 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 appeared to be, greater than the noblest things he had 
 written. 
 
 Lamb used to speak, sometimes with a moistened 
 eye and quivering lip, of Coleridge when young, and 
 wish that we could have seen him in the spring-time 
 of his genius, at a supper in the little sanded parlour 
 of the old Salutation hostel. The promise of those 
 days was never realized, by the execution of any of the 
 mighty works he planned ; but the very failure gave 
 a sort of mournful interest to the " large discourse, 
 looking before and after," to which we were enchanted 
 listeners ; to the wisdom which lives only in our 
 memories, and must perish with them. 
 
 From Coleridge's early works, some notion may be 
 gleaned of what he was ; when the steep ascent of 
 fame rose directly before him, while he might loiter to 
 dally with the expectation of its summit, without 
 ignobly shrinking from its labours. His endowments 
 at that time — the close of the last century — when 
 literature had faded into a fashion of poor language, 
 must have seemed, to a mind and heart like Lamb's, 
 no less than miraculous. 
 
 A rich store of classical knowledge — a sense of the 
 beautiful, almost verging on the effeminate — a facile 
 power of melody, varying from the solemn stops of 
 the organ to a bird-like flutter of airy sound — ^the 
 glorious faculty of poetic hope, exerted on human 
 prospects, and presenting its results with the vivid- 
 ness of prophecy ; a power of imaginative reasoning 
 which peopled the nearer ground of contemplation 
 with thoughts 
 
 " All plumed like ostriches, like eagles bathed. 
 As full of spirit as the month ot May, 
 And gorgeous as the sun at Midsnmmer," 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 209 
 
 endowed the author of " The Ancient Marinei," and 
 " Christabel." Thus gifted, he glided from youth into 
 manhood, as a fairy voyager on a summer sea, to eddy 
 round and round in dazzling circles, and to make little 
 progress, at last, towards any of those thousand moun- 
 tain summits which, glorified by aerial tints, rose 
 before him at the extreme verge ot the vast horizon 
 of his genius. "The Ancient Mariner," printed 
 with the " Lyrical Ballads," one of his earliest works, 
 is still his finest poem — at once the most vigorous in 
 design and the most chaste in execution — developing 
 the intensest human affection, amidst the wildest 
 scenery of a poet's dream. Nothing was too bright 
 to hope from such a dawn. The mind of Coleridge 
 seemed the harbinger of the golden years his enthu- 
 siasm predicted and painted ; — of those days of peace 
 on earth and good will among men, which the best 
 and greatest minds have rejoiced to anticipate — and 
 the earnest belief in which is better than all frivolous 
 enjoyments, all worldly wisdom, all worldly success. 
 And if the noontide of his genius did not fulfil his 
 youth's promise of manly vigour, nor the setting of 
 his earthly life honour it by an answering serenity of 
 greatness — they still have left us abundant reason to 
 be grateful that the glorious fragments of his mighty 
 and imperfect being were ours. Cloud after cloud of 
 German metaphysics rolled before his imagination — 
 which it had power to irradiate with fantastic beauty, 
 and to break into a thousand shifting forms of gran- 
 deur, though not to conquer; mist after mist ascended 
 from those streams where earth and sky should have 
 blended in one imagery, and were turned by its 
 obscured glory to radiant haze ; indulgence in the 
 fearful luxury of that talismanic drug, which opens 
 
210 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 glittering scenes of fantastic beauty on the waking 
 soul to leave it in arid desolation, too often veiled it 
 in partial eclipse, and blended fitful light with melan- 
 choly blackness over its vast domain ; but the great 
 central light remained unquenched, and cast its 
 gleams through every department of human know- 
 ledge. A boundless capacity to receive and retain 
 intellectual treasure made him the possessor of 
 vaster stores of lore, classical, antiquarian, historical, 
 biblical, and miscellaneous, than were ever vouch- 
 safed, at least in our time, to a mortal being ; goodly 
 structures of divine philosophy rose before him like 
 exhalations on the table-land of that his prodigious 
 knowledge ; but, alas ! there was a deficiency of the 
 power of voluntary action which would have left him 
 unable to embody the shapes of a shepherd's dreams, 
 and made him feeble as an infant before the over- 
 powering majesty of his own ! Hence his literary 
 life became one splendid and sad prospectus — 
 resembling only the portal of a mighty temple which 
 it was forbidden us to enter — but whence strains of 
 rich music issuing " took the prisoned soul and lapped 
 it in Elysium," andfragmentsof ocular wisdom startled 
 the thought they could not satisfy. 
 
 Hence the riches of his mind were developed, not 
 in writing, but in his speech — conversation I can 
 scarcely call it — which no one who once heard can 
 ever forget. Unable to work in solitude, he sought 
 the gentle stimulus of social admiration, and under 
 its influence poured forth, without stint, the marvel- 
 lous resources of a mind rich in the spoils of time — 
 richer — richer far in its own glorious imagination and 
 delicate fancy ! There was a noble prodigality in 
 these outpourings ; a generous disdain of self; an 
 
LAMBS FRIENDS AND COMIANIONS. 211 
 
 earnest desire to scatter abroad the seeds of wisdom 
 and beauty, to take root wherever they might fall, and 
 spring up without bearing his name or impress, which 
 might remind the listener of the first days of poetry 
 before it came to be individualised by the press, when 
 the Homeric rhapsodist wandered through new-born 
 cities and scattered hovels, flashing upon the minds 
 of the wondering audience the bright train of heroic 
 shapes, the series of godlike exploits, and sought no 
 record more enduring than the fleshy tablets of his 
 hearers' hearts ; no memory but that of genial tradi- 
 tion ; when copyright did not ascertain the reciter's 
 property, nor marble at once perpetuate and shed 
 chillness on his fame — 
 
 " His bounty was as boundless as the sea. 
 His love as deep." 
 
 Like the ocean, in all its variety of gentle moods, 
 his discourse perpetually ebbed and flowed, — nothing 
 in it angular, nothing of set purpose, but now trem- 
 bling as the voice of divine philosophy, " not harsh 
 nor crabbed, as dull fools suppose, but musical as is 
 Apollo's lute," was wafted over the summer wave ; 
 now glistening in long line of light over some obscure 
 subject, like the path of moonlight on the black water ; 
 and, if ever receding from the shore, driven by some 
 sudden gust of inspiration, disclosing the treasures of 
 the deep, like the rich strond in Spenser, "far sunken 
 in their sunless treasuries," to be covered anon by the 
 foam of the same immortal tide. The benignity of 
 his manner befitted the beauty of his disquisitions ; 
 his voice rose from the gentlest pitch of conversation 
 to the height of impassioned eloquence without effort, 
 as his language expanded from some common topic 
 of the day to the loftiest abstractions ; ascending by a 
 
 P 2 
 
212 lamb's friends AND COMPANIONS. 
 
 winding track of spiral glory to the highest truths 
 which the naked eye could discern, and suggesting 
 starry regions, beyond, which his own telescopic gaze 
 might possibly decipher. If his entranced hearers 
 often were unable to perceive the bearings of his 
 argument — too mighty for any grasp but his own — 
 and sometimes reaching beyond his own — they under- 
 stood " a beauty in the words, if not the words ;" and 
 a wisdom and piety in the illustrations, even when 
 unable to connect them with the idea which he desired 
 to illustrate. If an entire scheme of moral philosophy 
 was never developed by him either in speaking or 
 writing, all the parts were great : vast biblical know- 
 ledge, though sometimes eddying in splendid conjec- 
 ture, was always employed with pious reverence ; the 
 morality suggested was at once elevated and genial ; 
 the charity hoped all things ; and the mighty imagi- 
 native reason er seemed almost to realize the condition 
 suggested by the great Apostle, "that he understood 
 all mysteries and all knowledge, and spake with the 
 tongues both of men and angels !" 
 
 After Coleridge had found his last earthly refuge, 
 under the wise and generous care of Mr. Gilman, at 
 Highgate, he rarely visited Lamb, and my opportuni- 
 ties of observing him ceased. From those who were 
 more favoured, as well as from the fragments I have 
 seen of his last effusions, I know that, amidst suffer- 
 ing and weakness, his mighty mind concentrated its 
 energies on the highest subjects which had ever 
 kindled them ; that the speculations, which sometimes 
 seemed like paradox, because their extent was too vast 
 to be comprehended in a single grasp of intellectual 
 vision, were informed by a serener wisdom ; that his 
 perceptions of the central truth became more un- 
 
LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 213 
 
 divided, and his piety more profound and humble. 
 His love for Charles and Mary Lamb continued, to the 
 last, one of the strongest of his human affections — of 
 which, by the kindness of a friend,' I possess an affect- 
 ing memorial under his hand, written in the margin 
 of a volume of his " Sibylline Leaves," which — after 
 his life-long habit — he has enriched by manuscript 
 annotations. The poem, beside which it is inscribed, 
 is entitled " The Lime Tree Bower my Prison," com- 
 posed by the poet in June, 1796, when Charles and 
 Mary Lamb, who were visiting at his cottage near 
 Bristol, had left him for a walk, which an accidental 
 lameness prevented him from sharing. The visitors 
 are not indicated by the poem, except that Charles is 
 designated by the epithet, against which he jestingly 
 remonstrated, as " gentle-hearted Charles ;" and is 
 represented as*" winning his way, with sad and patient 
 soul, through evil and pain, and strange calamity."" 
 Against the title is written as follows : — 
 
 CH. & MARY LAMB, 
 
 dear to my heart, yea, 
 
 as it were, my heart, 
 
 S. T. C. JEt. 63. 1834. 
 
 1797 
 
 1834. 
 
 37 years! 
 
 ' Mr. Richard Welsh, of Reading, editor of the Berkshire Chro- 
 nicle—one of the ablest productions of the Conservative Periodica.' 
 Press. 
 2 The whole passage is worth quoting here : — 
 " Yes, they vrander on 
 In gladness all ; but thou, methinks, most glad. 
 My gentle-hearted Charles ! for thou hast lived 
 And hungered after Nature many a year 
 In the great city pent, winning thy way 
 
214 LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 
 
 This memorandum, which is penned with remark- 
 able neatness, must have been made in Coleridge's 
 last illness, as he suffered acutely for several months 
 before he died, in July of this same year, 1834. 
 What a space did that thirty-seven years of fond 
 regard for the brother and sister occupy in a mind 
 like Coleridge's, peopled with immortal thoughts 
 which might multiply in the true time, dialled in 
 heaven, its minutes into years ! 
 
 These friends of Lamb's whom I have ventured to 
 sketch in companionship with him, and Southeyalso, 
 whom I only once saw, are all gone ; — and others of 
 less note in the world's eye have followed them. 
 Among those of the old set who are gone, is Manning', 
 
 With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain. 
 And strange calamity . . . Henceforth I shall know 
 That Nature n^er deserts the ivise and pure ; 
 No plot so narrow be, but Nature there ; 
 No waste so vacant, but may well employ 
 Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart 
 Awake to Love and Beauty 1 and sometime 
 "lis <well to be bereft of promised good. 
 That ive may lift the soul, and contemplate 
 With lively joy the joys ive cannot share. 
 My gentle-hearted Charles ! when the last rook 
 Beats its straight path along the dusky air 
 Homewards, I blest it ! deeming its black wing 
 (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light,) 
 Had crossed the mighty orb's dilated glory. 
 While thou stood'st gazing, or, when all was still. 
 Flew croaking o'er thy head, and had a charm 
 For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles I to •whom 
 No sound is dissonant that tells of life." — F. 
 ' Manning died Queen's Seqeant in 1866. Lamb told Mr. C. 
 
 Robinson that he thought him " the most wonderfiil man of his 
 
 ai<quaintance." — F. 
 
lamb's friends and companions. 215 
 
 perhaps, next to Coleridge, the dearest of them, whom 
 Lamb used to speak of as marvellous in a tetea-tStet 
 but who, in company, seemed only a courteous gen- 
 tleman, more disposed to listen than to talk. In good 
 old age departed Admiral Burney, frank-hearted 
 voyager with Captain Cook round the world, who 
 seemed to unite our society with the circle over which 
 Dr. Johnson reigned ; who used to tell of school-days 
 under the tutelage of Eugene Aram ; how he remem- 
 bered the gentle usher pacing the play-ground arm- 
 in-arm with some one of the elder boys, and seeking 
 relief from the unsuspected burthen of his conscience 
 by talking of strange murders, and how he, a child, 
 had shuddered at the handcuffs on his teacher's hands 
 when taken away in the post-chaise to prison ; — the 
 Admiral being himself the centre of a little circle 
 which his sister, the famous authoress of " Evelina," 
 " Cecilia," and " Camilla," sometimes graced. John 
 Lamb, the jovial and burly, who dared to argue with 
 Hazlitt on questions of art ; Barron Field, who with 
 veneration enough to feel all the despised greatness 
 of Wordsworth, had a sparkling vivacity, and, con- 
 'nected with Lamb by the link of Christ's Hospital 
 associations, shared largely in his regard ; Rickman, 
 the sturdiest of jovial companions, severe in the dis- 
 cipline of whist as at the table of the House of Com- 
 mons, of which he was the principal clerk ; and 
 Alsager, so calm, so bland, so considerate — all are 
 gone. These were all Temple guests — friends of 
 Lamb's early days ; but the companions of a later 
 time,' who first met in Great Russell Street, or Dal- 
 ston, or Islington, or Enfield, have been wofully 
 thinned ; Allan Cunningham, stalwart of form and 
 stout of heart and verse, a ruder Burns ; Cary, Lamb's 
 
2i6 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 " pleasantest of clergymen," whose sweetness of dis- 
 position and manner would have prevented a stranger 
 from guessing that he was the poet who had rendered 
 the adamantine poetry of Dante into English with 
 kindred power; Hood, so grave and sad and silent, 
 that you were astonished to recognise in him the out- 
 pourer of a thousand wild fancies, the detector of the 
 inmost springs of pathos, and the powerful vindi- 
 cator of poverty and toil before the hearts of the 
 prosperous ; the Reverend Edward Irving, who, after 
 fulfilling an old prophecy he made in Scotland to 
 Hazlitt, that he would astonish and shake the world 
 by his preaching, sat humbly at the feet of Coleridge 
 to listen to wisdom, — all are gone; the forms of 
 others associated with Lamb's circle by more acci- 
 dental links (also dead) come thronging on the 
 memory from the mist of years — Alas ; it is easier to 
 count those that are left of the old familiar faces ! 
 
 A short time only before Lamb's fatal illness, he 
 yielded to my urgent importunity, and met a small 
 party of his friends at dinner at my house, where we 
 had provided for him some of the few articles of food 
 which now seemed to hit his fancy, and among them 
 the hare, which had supplanted pig in his just esteem, 
 with the hope of exciting his very delicate appetite. 
 We were not disappointed ; he ate with a relish not 
 usual with him of late years, and passed the evening 
 in his happiest mood. Among the four or five who 
 met him on this occasion, the last on which I saw 
 him in health, were his old friends Mr. Barron Field, 
 Mr. Procter, and Mr. Forster, the author of the " Lives 
 of Eminent English Statesmen," a friend of compara- 
 tively recent date, but one with whom Lamb found 
 himself as much at home as if he had known him for 
 
LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 217 
 
 years.' Mr. Field in a short but excellent memoir of 
 Lamb, in the " Annual Biography and Obituary " of 
 1836, has brought this evening vividly to recollection; 
 and I have a melancholy satisfaction in quoting a 
 passage from it as he has recorded it. After justly 
 eulogising Lamb's sense of " The Virtue of Suppres- 
 sion in Writing," Mr. Field proceeds : — 
 
 " We remember, at the very last supper we ate with 
 him, he quoted a passage from Prior's ' Henry and 
 Emma,' illustrative of this discipline ; and yet he said 
 he loved Prior as much as any man, but that his 
 ' Henry and Kmma ' was a vapid paraphrase of the 
 old poem of ' The Nutbrowne Mayde.' For example, 
 at the denouement of the ballad Prior makes Henry rant 
 out to his devoted Emma — 
 
 ' In me behold the potent Edgar's heir. 
 Illustrious Earl ; him terrible in war. 
 Let Loire confess, for she has felt his sword, 
 And trembling fled before the British lord.' 
 
 And so on for a dozen couplets, heroic, as they are 
 called. And then Mr. Lamb made us mark the modest 
 simplicity with which the noble youth discloses him- 
 self to his mistress in the old poem : — 
 
 • Now, understand. 
 To Westmoreland, 
 Which is my heritage! 
 (in a parenthesis, as it were,) 
 • I will you bring. 
 And with a ring, 
 
 ' In confirmation, the reader may be referred to the cordial and 
 affectionate letters addressed to Mr. Forster, then a young Litterateur, 
 which will be found in his correspondence. To this friend he pre- 
 sented a collection of his essays, cut out from the various magazines in 
 wliich they had appeared, with his MS. alterations, and characteristi- 
 cally labeUed, " TAG RAG AND BOB TAIL."— F. 
 
 \ 
 
2i8 lamb's friends and companions. 
 
 By way of marriage, 
 
 I will you take. 
 
 And lady make. 
 As shortly as I can. 
 
 So have you won 
 
 An Earle's son. 
 And not a banish'd man. 
 
 "How he loved these old rhymes, and with what 
 justice !" 
 
 The following little note has a mournful interest, as 
 Lamb's last scrap of writing. It is dated on the very 
 day on which erysipelas followed the accident, appa- 
 rently trifling, which, five days after, terminated in his 
 death. It is addressed to the wife of his oldest sur- 
 viving friend : — " Dear Mrs. Dyer," he wrote on Dec. 
 22nd, 1834, " I am very uneasy about a Booh which I 
 either have lost or left at your house on Thursday. 
 It was the book I went out to fetch from Miss Buffam's, 
 while the tripe was frying. It is called ' Phillips's 
 Theatrum Poetarum,' but it is an English book. I 
 think I left it in the parlour. It is Mr. Gary's book, 
 and I would not lose it for the world. Pray, if you 
 find it, book it at the Swan, Snow Hill, by an Edmon- 
 ton stage immediately, directed to Mr. Lamb, Church 
 Street, Edmonton, or write to say you cannot find it. 
 If it is lost, I shall never like tripe again. With 
 kindest love to Mr. Dyer and all, — C. Lamb.^ 
 
 I Shortly before his death. Lamb had borrowed of Mr. Cary, Phil- 
 lips's "Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum," which, when returned 
 by Mr. Moxon, after the event, was found with the leaf folded down 
 at the account of Sir Philip Sydney. Its receipt was acknowledged by 
 the following lines : — 
 
 ■• So should it be, my gentle friend 
 Thy leaf last closed at Sydney's end. 
 
LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 219 
 
 A few days before this letter was written an acci- 
 dent befell Mr. Lamb, which seemed trifling at first, 
 but which terminated in a fatal issue. In taking his 
 daily morning walk on the London road bs far as the 
 inn where John Gilpin's ride is pictured, he stumbled 
 against a stone, fell, and slightly injured his face.' 
 The wounds seemed healing, when erysipelas in the 
 head came on, and he sunk beneath the disease, hap- 
 pily without pain. On Friday evening Mr. Ryle, of 
 the India House, who had been appointed co-executor 
 with me of his will some years before, called on me, 
 and informed me that he was in danger. I went over 
 to Edmonton on the following morning, and found 
 
 Thou too, like Sydney, wouldst have given. 
 The water, thirsting and near heaven ; 
 Nay, were it wine, fill'd to the brim. 
 Thou hadst looked hard, but given, like him. 
 
 And art thou mingled then among 
 Those famous sons of ancient song ? 
 And do they gather round, and praise 
 Thy relish of their nobler lays ? 
 Waxing in mirth to hear thee tell 
 With what strange mortals thou didst dwell ; 
 At thy quaint sallies more delighted. 
 Than any's long among them lighted ! 
 
 "Tis done ; and thou hast join'd a crew. 
 To whom thy soul was justly due ; 
 And yet I think, where'er thou be. 
 They'll scarcely love thee more than we.'' 
 
 These lines, characteristic both of the writer and the subject, are 
 copied from the Memoir of the translator of Dante, by his son, the 
 Rev. Henry Cary, which, enriched by many interesting memorials oi 
 contemporaries, presents as valuable a picture of rare ability and excel- 
 lence as ever was traced by the fine observation of filial love. 
 
 ' A writer in Notes and Queries {1866) heard an account of the 
 accident from an Edmonton tradesman, who ran to help Lamb. — F. 
 
220 lamb's I'RIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 
 
 him very weak, and nearly insensible to things pass- 
 ing around him. Now and then a few words were 
 audible, from which it seemed that his mind, in its 
 feebleness, was intent on kind and hospitable thoughts. 
 His last correspondent, Mr. Childs, had sent a present 
 of a turkey, instead of the suggested pig; and the 
 broken sentences which could be heard, were of some 
 meeting of friends to partake of it. I do not think 
 he knew me ; and having vainly tried to engage his 
 attention, I quitted him, not believing his death so 
 near at hand. In less than an hour afterwards his 
 voice gradually grew fainter, as he still murmured 
 the names of Moxon, Procter, and some other old 
 friends, and sank into death as placidly as into sleep.' 
 On the following Saturday his remains were laid in a 
 deep grave in Edmonton churchyard, made in a spot 
 which, about a fortnight before, he had pointed out 
 to his sister, on an afternoon wintry walk, as the 
 place where he wished to be buried.* 
 
 ■ " I first heard of his illness last Friday night, and on Saturday morn- 
 ing I went to see him. The immediate cause of his decease was 
 erysipelas ; but it was in truth a breaking up of the constitution, and 
 he died from mere weakness. When I saw him, the disease had so 
 altered him that it was a very melancholy sight ; his mind was then 
 almost gone, and 1 do not think he was conscious of my presence. He 
 did not, I believe, suffer any pain, nor was he at all conscious of danger. 
 Ryle saw him the day before ; then he was perfectly sensible, talked 
 of common things, and said he was only weak, and should be well in a 
 day or two. He died within two hours after I saw him." — Talfoura 
 to H. Crabb Robinson, Dec 31, 1834. 
 
 "When the presence was suggested of a clergyman," says Mr 
 Procter, " he made no remark, but understood that his life was in 
 danger; he was quite calm, and collected, and quite resigned." — F. 
 
 2 Though unconscious of the calamity that had befallen her, she was 
 able to go to the churchyard and point out the place to one of the 
 executors. — F. 
 
LAMB S FRIENDS AND COMPANIONS. 221 
 
 So died, in the sixtieth year of his age, one of the 
 most remarkable and amiable men who have ever 
 lived. Few of his numerous friends were aware of his 
 illness before they heard of his death ; and, until that 
 illness seized him, he had appeared so little changed 
 by time, so likely to continue for several years, and 
 he was so intimately associated with every-day en- 
 gagements and feelings, that the news was as strange 
 as it was mournful. When the first sad surprise was 
 over, several of his friends strove to do justice to 
 their own recollections of him ; and articles upon his 
 character and writings, all written out of the heart, 
 appeared from Mr. Procter in the AthencBum-, from 
 Mr. Forster in the New Monthly Magazine,^ from 
 Mr. Patmore in the Court Magazine, and from Mr. 
 Moxon in Leigh Hunt's London jfournal, besides 
 others whose authors are unknown to me ; and sub- 
 sequently many affectionate allusions, from pens 
 which his own had inspired, have been gleaned out 
 in various passages of Blackwood, Fraser, Tait, and 
 almost every periodical work of reputation. The 
 " Recollections of Coleridge," by Mr. AUsop, also 
 breathed the spirit of admiration for his elevated 
 genius, which the author — one whom Lamb held in 
 the highest esteem for himself, and for his devotion 
 to Coleridge — had for years expressed both in his 
 words and in deeds. 
 
 ' Mr. Forster's monograph will be found at the end of this me- 
 moir, — F. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Mary Lamb. 
 
 Little could any one, observing Miss Lamb in the 
 habitual serenity of her demeanour, guess the cala- 
 mity in which she had partaken, or the malady which 
 frightfully chequered her life. From Mr. Lloyd, who, 
 although saddened by impending delusion, was always 
 found accurate in his recollection of long past events 
 and conversations, I learned that she had described 
 herself, on her recovery from the fatal attack, as having 
 experienced, while it was subsiding, such a conviction 
 that she was absolved in heaven from all taint of 
 the deed in which she had been the agent — such an as- 
 surance that it was a dispensation of Providence 
 for good, though so terrible — such a sense, that her 
 mother knew her entire innocence, and shed down 
 blessings upon her, as though she had seen the recon- 
 cilement in solemn vision — that she was not sorely 
 afflicted by the recollection. It was as if the old 
 Greek notion, of the necessity for the unconscious 
 shedder of blood, else polluted though guiltless, to 
 pass through a religious purification, had, in her case, 
 been happily accomplished ; so that, not only was she 
 without remorse, but without other sorrow than attends 
 on the death of an infirm parent in a good old age. 
 She never shrank from alluding to her mother, when 
 any topic connected with her own youth made such a 
 reference, in ordinary respects, natural ; but spoke of 
 
MARY LAMB. 223 
 
 her as though no fearful remembrance was associated 
 with the image ; so that some of her most intimate 
 friends, who knew of the disaster, believed that she 
 had never become aware of her own share in its 
 horrors. It is still more singular that, in the wander- 
 ings of her insanity, amidst all the vast throngs of 
 imagery she presented of her early days, this picture 
 never recurred, or, if ever, not associated with shapes 
 of terror.' 
 
 Miss Lamb would have been remarkable for the 
 sweetness of her disposition, the clearness of her 
 understanding, and the gentle wisdom of all her acts 
 and words, -even if these qualities had not been pre- 
 sented in marvellous contrast with the distraction 
 under which she suffered for weeks, latterly for 
 months, in every year. There was no tinge of 
 insanity discernible in her manner to the most 
 observant eye ; not even in those distressful periods 
 when the premonitory symptoms had apprised her of 
 its approach, and she was making preparations for 
 seclusion. In all its essential sweetness, her cha- 
 racter was like her brother's ; while, by a temper more 
 placid, a spirit of enjoyment more serene, she was 
 enabled to guide, to counsel, to cheer him, and to 
 protect him on the verge of the mysterious calamity, 
 from the depths of which she rose so often unruffled 
 to his side. To a friend in any difficulty she was the 
 most comfortable of advisers, the wisest of consolers. 
 Hazlitt used to say, that he never met with a woman 
 who could reason, and had met with only one 
 
 ' From a letter of Lamb's to Mr. Hudson, the asylum where she 
 was usually confined, seems to have been Mr. Warburton's, Whitmore 
 House, Hoxton, — F. 
 
224 MARY LAMB. 
 
 thoroughly reasonable — the sole exception being 
 Mary Lamb. She did not wish, however, to be made 
 an exception, to a general disparagement of her sex; 
 for in all her thoughts and feelings she was most 
 womanly — keeping, under even undue subordination, 
 to her notion of a woman's province, intellect of rare 
 excellence, which flashed out when the restraints of 
 gentle habit and humble manner were withdrawn by 
 the terrible force of disease. Though her conversation 
 in sanity was never marked by smartness or repartee, 
 seldom rising beyond that of a sensible quiet gentle- 
 woman appreciating and enjoying the talents of her 
 friends, it was otherwise in her madness. Lamb, in 
 his letter to a female friend, announcing his determi- 
 nation to be entirely with her, speaks of her pouring 
 out memories of all the events and persons of her 
 younger days ; but he does not mention, what I am 
 able from repeated experiences to add, that her ram- 
 blings often sparkled with brilliant description and 
 shattered beauty. She would fancy herself in the 
 days of Queen Anne or George the First, and describe 
 the brocaded dames and courtly manners, as ^though 
 she had been bred among them, in the best style of 
 th^ old comedy. It was all broken and disjointed, so 
 that the hearer could remember little of her dis- 
 course ; but the fragments were like the jewelled 
 speeches of Congreve, only shaken from their setting. 
 There was sometimes even a vein of crazy logic 
 running through them, associating things essentially 
 most dissimilar, but connecting them by a verbal 
 association in strange order. As a mere physical 
 instance of deranged intellect, her condition was, I 
 believe, extraordinary; it was as if the finest elements 
 of mind had been shaken into fantastic combinations 
 
MARV LAMB. 225 
 
 like those of a kaleidoscope ; — but not for the purpose 
 of exhibiting a curious phenomenon of mental aberra- 
 tion are the aspects of her insanity unveiled, but to 
 illustrate the moral force of gentleness by which the 
 faculties that thus sparkled when restraining wisdom 
 was withdrawn, were subjected to its sway, in her 
 periods of reason.' 
 
 ' Even after this touching picture of a weary, desolate life, the 
 reader will wish for something more distinct and detailed of so in- 
 teresting a character. Her devotion to her brother, as well as the effect 
 of the always impending trial, is sufficiently brought out ; but there 
 was another side to her nature — her share in society, her eager interest 
 in her friends, as well as her literary abilities, which has not received 
 enough prominence. A collection of her letters, recently published 
 by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, offers some touches of character charmingly 
 revealed : her earnest solicitude upon the success of a love-match of 
 her friend, Miss Stoddart ; the personal sincerity and originality of her 
 counsels, the quaintness of her ideas, and the simple and genuine style of 
 her wiiting. Her friend was later to become the wife of Wm. Hazlitt, 
 from whom she was to be divorced so strangely. Mary Lamb entered 
 with almost girlish enthusiasm into the details of the preparations, dress, 
 etc.; but how incomparably wise and practical were her more sober 
 counsels, the following extracts will show : — 
 
 " My Aunt & my Mother were wholly unlike you and your sister, yet 
 in some degree theirs is the secret history I believe of all sisters-in-law — 
 and you will smile when I tell you I think myself the only woman in the 
 world who could live with a brother's wife, and make a real friend of 
 her, partly from early observation of the unhappy example I have just 
 given you, and partly from a knack I know I have of looking into 
 people's real cliatacters, and never expecting them to act out of it — 
 never expecting another to do as I would do in the same case. When 
 you leave your Mother, and say, if you shall never see her again, you 
 shall feel no remorse, and when yon make t Jewish bargain with your 
 Lover, all this gives me no offence, because it is your nature, and your 
 temper, and 1 do not expect or want you to be otherwise than you are. 
 I love you for the good that is in you, and look for no change. 
 
 " But, certainly, yon ought to struggle with the evil that does most 
 easily beset you — a total want of politeness in behaviour, I would say 
 
 Q 
 
226 MARY LAMB. 
 
 The following letter from Miss Lamb to MissWords- 
 worth, on one of the chief external events of Lamb's 
 
 modesty of behaviour, but that I should not convey to you my idea ol 
 the word modesty ; for I certainly do not mean that you want real 
 modesty ; and what is usually called &lse, or mock modesty is what I 
 certainly do not wish you to possess ; yet I trust you know what I 
 mean well enough. 
 
 " Secrecy, though you appear all frankness, is certainly a grand fail- 
 ing of yours, it is likewise your brother's, and, therefore, a family fell- 
 ing — by secrecy, T mean that you both want the habit of telling each 
 other at the moment every thing that happens — ^where you go, — and 
 what you do, — that free communication of letters and opinions just 
 as they arrive, as Charles and I do, — and which is, after all, the only 
 groundwork of friendship. Your brother, I will answer for, will never 
 tell his wife or his sister all that [is in] his mind — he will receive 
 letters and not [mention it] — this is a fault Mrs. Stoddart can never 
 [tell him of;] but she can and will, feel it: though, [on] the whole, 
 and in evety other respect, she is [very] happy with him. Begin, for 
 God's sake, at the first, and tell her every thing that passes^-at first she 
 may hear you with indifference ; but in time this will gain her affection 
 and confidence — show her all your letters (no matter if she does not 
 show hers) ; it is a pleasant thing for a friend to put into one's hand 
 a letter just fresh from the post. T would even say, begin with show- 
 ing her this, but that it is written freely and loosely, and some apology 
 ought to be made for it — ^which I know not how to make, tor I must 
 nrrite freely or not at all. 
 
 " If you do this she will tell your brother, you will say ; and what 
 then, quotha? It will beget a freer communication amongst you, 
 which is a thing devoutly to be wished. 
 
 This blending of tender sympathy with a wholerome plain speaking, 
 is even better shown in the following: — 
 
 " I.et me know upon what plan you mean to come to Town. Your 
 brother proposed your being six months in Town, & six with your 
 Mother ; but he did not then know of your poor Mother's illness. By 
 his desire, I enquired for a respectable family for you to board with ; & 
 from Captn. Burney I heard of one I thought would suit you at thai 
 time, he particularly desires I would not think of your being with us. 
 not thinking, I conjecture, the home of a single man respectable 
 enough. Your brother gave me most unlimited orders to domineei 
 
MARY LAMB. 
 
 227 
 
 history, the removal from the Temple to Covent 
 Garden, will illustrate the cordial and womanly strain 
 
 over you, to be the inspector of all your actions, & to direct & govern 
 you with a stern voice & a high hand, to be, in short, a very elder 
 brother over you — does not the hearing of this, my meeli pupil, malce 
 you long to come to London ? I am making all the proper enquiries 
 against the time of the newest & most approved modes (being myself 
 mainly ignorant in these points) of etiquette & nicely correct maidenly 
 manners. 
 
 " But to speak seriously. I mean when we mean [meet], that we will 
 lay our heads together, & consult & contrive the best way of making the 
 best girl in the world the fine Lady her brother wishes to see her ; & 
 believe me, Sarah, it is not so difficult a matter as one is apt to imagine. 
 I have observed many a demure Lady, who passes muster admirably 
 well, who, I think, we could easily learn to imitate in a week or two. 
 We will talk of these things when we meet. 
 
 " I seem, upon looking over my letter again, to have written too 
 lightly of your distresses at Malta; but, however I may have written, 
 believe me, I enter very feelingly into all your troubles. I love you, & 
 I love your brother ; & between you, both of whom I think have been 
 to blame, I know not what to say — only this I say, try to think as 
 little as possible of past miscarriages ; it was, perhaps, so ordered by 
 Providence, that you might return home to be a comfort to your poor 
 Mother. And do not, I conjure you, let her unhappy malady afflict 
 you too deeply. 1 speak from experience, & from the opportunity I 
 have had of much observation in such cases, that insane people, in the 
 fancy's they take into their heads, do not feel as one in a sane state of 
 mind does under the real evil of poverty, the perception of having done 
 wrong, or any such thing that runs in their heads. 
 
 " Think as little as you can, & let your whole care be to be certain 
 that she is treated with tenderness. I lay a stress upon this, because it 
 is a thing of which people in her state are uncommonly susceptible, & 
 which hardly any one is at all aware of, a hired nurse never, even 
 though in all other respects they are good kind of people. I do not 
 think your own presence necessary, unless she takes to you very muchj 
 except for the purpose of seeing with your own eyes that she is very 
 kindly treated. 
 
 "I do long to see you! God bless and comfort you! 
 
 *' Vours affectionately, " M. Lamb.'' — F. 
 y 2 
 
228 MARY LAMB. 
 
 of her observation on the occurrences of daily life, and 
 afford a good idea of her habitual conversation among 
 her friends : — ' 
 
 " My dear Miss Wordsworth, — Your kind letter has 
 given us very great pleasure, the sight of your hand- 
 writing was a most welcome surprise to us. We have 
 heard good tidings of you by all our friends who were 
 so fortunate as to visit you this summer, and rejoice 
 to see it confirmed by yourself. You have quite the 
 advantage, in volunteering a letter; there is no merit 
 in replying to so welcome a stranger. 
 
 " We have left the Temple. I think you will be 
 sorry to hear this. I know I have never been so well 
 satisfied with thinking of you at Rydal Mount, as when 
 I could connect the idea of you with your own Gras- 
 mere Cottage. Our rooms were dirty and out of 
 repair, and the inconveniences of living in chambers 
 became every year more irksome, and so, at last, we 
 mustered up resolution enough to leave the good old 
 place, that so long had sheltered us, and here we are, 
 living at a brazier's shop. No. 20, in Russell Street, 
 
 1 " I have a clear recollection," says Mr. Allsop, recalling some 
 domestic trouble, " of Miss Lamb's addressing me in a tone acting at 
 once as a solace and support, and afterwards as a stimulus, to which I 
 owe more, perhaps, than to the extended arguments of all others." 
 
 As was the style of her letters, so was the style of her books ; 
 natural, una/Tected, and quaint. Mr. Landor, in a letter to Lady Bles- 
 sington, dwells with rapture on one touch in " Mrs. Leicester's School," 
 where a little child, on the morning of her father's second marriage, is 
 so delighted with the dress prepared for her, that she joyously wishes 
 her mamma was there to see it. The enduring popularity of the 
 " Tales from Shakespeare," is further evidence of her gifts ; and it appears 
 that her brotl-er was eager that she should attempt a regular work tor the 
 stage. She unce applied to a friend to furnish her with a regular story 
 to dramatise. — F. 
 
MARY LAMB. 
 
 229 
 
 Covent Garden, a place all alive with noise and bustle ; 
 Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front, and 
 Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub 
 of the carriages returning from the play does not 
 annoy me in the least ; strange that it does not, for it 
 is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of the 
 window, and listening to the calling up of the car- 
 riages, and the squabbles of the coachmen and link- 
 boys. It is the oddest scene to look down upon ; I am 
 sure you would be amused with it. It is well I am in 
 a cheerful place, or I should have many misgivings 
 about leaving the Temple. I look forward with great 
 pleasure to the prospect of seeing my good friend, 
 Miss Hutchinson. I wish Rydal Mount, with all its 
 inhabitants enclosed, were to be transplanted with 
 her, and to remain stationary in the midst of Covent 
 Garden. 
 
 ****** 
 " Charles has had all his Hogarths bound in a 
 book ; they were sent home yesterday, and now that 
 I have them all together, and perceive the advan- 
 tage of peeping close at them through my spectacles, 
 I am reconciled to the loss of them hanging round the 
 room, which has been a great mortification to me — in 
 vain I tried to console myself with looking at our new 
 chairs and carpets, for we have got new chairs, and 
 carpets covering all over our two sitting-rooms ; I 
 missed my old friends, and could not be comforted — 
 then I would resolve to learn to look out of the 
 window, a habit I never could attain in my life, and I 
 have given it up as a thing quite impracticable — ^yet 
 when I was at Brighton, last summer, the first week 
 I never took my eyes off from the sea, not even to look 
 in a book: I had not seen the sea for sixteen years 
 
230 MARY LAMB. 
 
 Mrs. M , who was with us, kept her liking, and con- 
 tinued her seat in the window till the very last, while 
 Charles and I played truants, and wandered among the 
 hills, which we magnified into little mountains, and 
 almost as good as Westmoreland scenery : certainly 
 we made discoveries of many pleasant walks, which 
 few of the Brighton visitors have ever dreamed of — for 
 like as is the case in the neighbourhood of London, 
 after the first two or three miles we were sure to find 
 ourselves in a perfect solitude. I hope we shall meet 
 before the walking faculties of either of us fail ; you 
 say you can walk fifteen miles with ease ; that is 
 exactly my stint, and more fatigues me ; four or five 
 miles every third or fourth day, keeping very quiet 
 between, was all Mrs. M could accomplish. 
 
 " God bless you and yours. Love to all and each 
 one. 
 
 " I am ever yours most affectionately, 
 
 " M. Lamb." 
 
 Of that deeper vein of sentiment in Mary Lamb, 
 seldom revealed, the following passages from a letter 
 to the same lady, referring to the death of a brother of 
 her beloved correspondent, may be offered as a compa- 
 nion specimen : — 
 
 " My dear MissWordsworth, — I thank you, my kind 
 friend, for your most comfortable letter ; till I saw 
 your own handwriting I could not persuade myself 
 that I should do well to write to you, though I have 
 often attempted it ; but I always left off dissatisfied 
 with what I had written, and feeling that I was doing 
 an improper thing to intrude upon your sorrow. I 
 wished to tell you that you would one day feel the 
 kind of peaceful state of mind and sweet memory of 
 the dead, which you so happily describe as now almost 
 
MARY LAMB. 23 1 
 
 begun; but I felt that it was improper, and most 
 grating to the feelings of the afflicted, to say to them 
 that the memory of their affection would in time become 
 a constant part, not only of their dream, but of their 
 most wakeful sense of happiness. That you would 
 see every object with and through your lost brother, 
 and that that would at last become a real and everlasting 
 source of comfort to you, I felt, and well knew, from 
 my own experience in sorrow ; but till you yourself 
 began to feel this I did not dare to tell you so ; but I 
 send you some poor lines which I wrote under this 
 conviction of mind, and before I heard Coleridge was 
 returning home. I will transcribe them now, before I 
 finish my letter, lest a false shame prevent me then, 
 for I know they are much worse than they ought to 
 be, written as they were, with strong feeling, and on 
 such a subject ; every line seems to be to be borrowed, 
 but I had no better way of expressing my thoughts, 
 and I never have the power of altering or amendirig 
 anything I have once laide aside with dissatisfaction. 
 
 " Why is he wandering on the sea ? — 
 Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be. 
 By slow degrees he'd steal away 
 Their woe, and gently bring a ray 
 (So happily he'd time relief,) 
 Of comfort from their very grief. 
 He'd tell them that their brother dead, 
 When years have passed o'er their head. 
 Will be remembered with such holy. 
 True, and perfect melancholy, 
 That ever this lost brother John 
 Will be their heart's companion. 
 His voice they'll always hear. 
 
 His face they'll always see ; 
 There's nought in life so sweet 
 
 As such a memory." 
 
232 MARY LAMB. 
 
 The excellence of Mary Lamb's nature was happily 
 developed in her portion of those books for children — 
 "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best," — which she 
 wrote in conjunction with her brother, the " Poetry 
 for Children," the " Tales from Shakespeare," and 
 " Mrs. Leicester's School." How different from the 
 stony nutriment provided for those delicate, apprehen- 
 sive, affectionate creatures, in the utilitarian books, 
 which starve their little hearts, and stuff their little 
 heads with shallow science, and impertinent facts, and 
 selfish morals I One verse, which she did not print — 
 the conclusion of a little poem supposed to be ex- 
 pressed in a letter by the son of a family who, when 
 expecting the return of its father from sea, received 
 news of his death, — recited by her to Mr. Martin Bur- 
 ney, and retained in his fond recollection, may afford 
 a concluding example of the healthful wisdom of her 
 lessons : — 
 
 " I can no longer feign to be 
 A thoughtless child in infancy ; 
 I tried to write like young Marie, 
 
 But I am James her brother ; 
 And I can feel — but she's too young — 
 Yet blessings on her prattling tongue. 
 
 She sweetly soothes my mother." 
 
 Contrary to Lamb's expectations, who feared (as 
 also his friends feared with him) the desolation of his 
 own survivorship, which the difference of age rendered 
 probable. Miss Lamb survived him for nearly thirteen 
 years. When he died she was mercifully in a state 
 of partial estrangement, which, while k did not wholly 
 obscure her mind, deadened her feelings, so that as 
 she gradually regained her perfect senses she felt as 
 gradually the full force of the blow, and was the better 
 
MARY LAMB. 233 
 
 able calmly to bear it.' For awhile she declined the 
 importunities of her friends, that she would leave Ed 
 monton for a residence nearer London, where they 
 might more frequently visit her. He was there, asleep 
 in the old churchyard, beneath the turf near which 
 they had stood together, and had selected for a rest- 
 ing-place ;' to this spot she used, when well, to stroll 
 1 
 
 ' A month later, Mr. Crabb Robinson found his way down to 
 Edmonton to see her, and gives the following pathetic description of 
 the bereaved sister's state : — 
 
 " A melancholy sight," he writes. " She was neither violent nor un- 
 happy ; nor was she entirely without sense. A stranger would have 
 seen little remarkable about her. She was, however, out of her mind, 
 as the expression is ; but she would combine ideas imperfectly. On 
 my going into the room where she was sitting with Mr. Walden, she 
 exclaimed with great vivacity, ' Ob, here's Crabby !' She gave me her 
 hand with great cordiality, and said, 'Now, this is very kind — not 
 merely goodnatured, but very, very kind to come and see me in my 
 affliction.' And she ran on about the unhappy insane family of my old 
 
 friend, . Her mind seemed to turn to subjects connected with 
 
 insanity, as well as with her brother's death. She spoke of his birth, 
 and said he was a weakly but very pretty child. I have no doubt but 
 that if she ever be sensible of her brother's loss it will overset her 
 again. She will live for ever in the memory of her friends as one of 
 the most amiable and admirable of women." — F. 
 
 " About a year later she was restored, and her friends were delighted 
 to meet her of an evening at Mr. Moxon's. " She was very comfort- 
 able," says Mr. C. Robinson, " not in high spirits, but calm, and she 
 seemed to enjoy the sight of so many old friends. There were Gary, 
 Alsop, and Miss James. There was no direct talk about her brother. 
 Wordsworth's epitaph she disapproves of. She does not like any allusion 
 to his being a clerk, or to family misfortunes." A little scene that 
 recalls Boswell's account of Mrs. Garrick after her bereavement, when 
 she, too, spoke cheerfully, and looking at her husband's portrait, 
 talked of the time when she would meet him again. In August, 1837, 
 he again paid her visit, when she took him to her brother's grave. 
 Soon the forebodings of her friend were to be realized, and over the last 
 years of the faithful sister settled the darkest clouds. In August, 1839 
 
234 MARY LAMB. 
 
 out mournfully in the evening, and to this spot she 
 would contrive to lead any friend who came in the 
 summer evenings to drink tea and went out with her 
 afterwards for a walk.' At length, as her illness 
 
 we have this sad glimpse of her : " Mary Lamb," writes Mr. Robinson, 
 " has been ill for nine months. Her mind is gone, or at least inert. 
 She says she bears solitude better than she did." And then the liind- 
 hearted visitor sat down and tried to divert what her mother sixty years 
 before called her " poor moythered wits," with a game of piquet. In 
 March, 1843, he was with her again, and found that even these faint 
 sparks of intelligence had fled. She was now " a mere wreck of her- 
 self." Then rame release, and the last scene of all, the unostentatious 
 progress from St, John's Wood to Edmonton. Mr. Crabb Robinson 
 adds a few details to Talfourd's simple description. " Two mourning 
 coaches," he writes, " accompanied the body to Enfield across a pretty 
 country. The heat was oppressive. We took refreshment at the 
 nouse where dear Charles Lamb died. The attendant mourners — a 
 most unsuitable word, for we all felt her departure was a relief — ^were 
 Talfourd, Ryle, and Arnold (of the India House) Lamb's two execu- 
 tors, Moxon, myself, Martin Burney, Alsop, Moxhay, and Forster, 
 the clever writer in the Examiner. No sadness was assumed," etc. 
 — F. 
 
 ^ Landorfs afTectionate interest in brother and sister is shown by his 
 touching sonnet : 
 
 To THE Sister of Charles Lamb. 
 
 " Comfort thee, O thou mourner, yet awhile 1 
 
 Again shall Ella's smile 
 Refresh thy heart, when heart can ache no more. 
 
 What is it we deplore ? 
 He leaves behind him, freed from griefs and yean 
 
 Far worthier things than tears : 
 The love of friends without a single foe, 
 
 Unequall'd lot below ! 
 His gentle soul, his genius, these are thine ; 
 
 Shalt thou for those repine ? 
 He may have left the lowly walks of men. 
 
 Left them he has. What thten ? 
 
MARY LAMB. 
 
 235 
 
 became more frequent, and her frame much weaker, 
 she was induced to take up her abode under genial 
 care, at a pleasant house in St. John's Wood, where 
 she was surrounded by the old books and prints, and 
 was frequently visited by her reduced number of 
 surviving friends. Repeated attacks of her malady 
 weakened her mind, but she retained to the last her 
 sweetness of disposition unimpaired, and gently sunk 
 into death on the 20th of May, 1847. 
 
 A few survivors of the old circle, now sadly thinned. 
 
 Are not his footsteps followed by the eyes 
 
 Of all the good and wise { 
 Tho' the warm day is over, yet they seek 
 
 Upon the lofty peali 
 Of his pure mind the roseate light that glows 
 
 O'er Death's perennial snows. 
 Behold him ! From the spirits of the Blest 
 
 He speaks, he bids thee rest." — F. 
 
 The following Sonnet, by Mr. Moxon, written at this period ot 
 tranquil sadness in Miss Lamb's life, so beautifully embodies the rever- 
 ential love with which the sleeping and the mourning were regarded 
 by one of their nearest friends, that 1 gratify myself by extracting it 
 from the charming little volume of his Sonnets, which it adorns : — 
 
 " Here sleeps, beneath tliis bank, where daisies grow. 
 
 The kindliest sprite earth holds within her breast ; 
 
 In such a spot I would this frame should rest. 
 When I to join my friend far hence shall go. 
 His only mate is now the minstrel lark. 
 
 Who chants her morning music o'er his bed. 
 Save she who comes each evening, ere the bark 
 
 Of watch-dog gathers drowsy folds, to shed 
 A sister's tears. Kind Heaven, upon her head. 
 
 Do thou in dove-like guise thy spirit pour. 
 And in her aged path some flowerets spread 
 
 Of earthly joy, should Time for her in store 
 Have weary days and nights, ere she shall greet 
 Him whom she longs in Paradise to meet." 
 
23(5 MARY LAMB. 
 
 attended her remains to the spot in Edmonton church 
 yard, where they were laid above those of her brother. 
 With them was one friend of later days — but who 
 had become to Lamb as one of his oldest companions, 
 and for whom Miss Lamb cherished a strong regard 
 —Mr. John Forster, the author of " The Life of Gold- 
 smith," in which Lamb would have rejoiced, as 
 written in a spirit congenial with his own. In 
 accordance with Lamb's own feeling, so far as it 
 could be gathered from his expressions on a subject 
 to which he did not often, or willingly, refer, he had 
 been interred in a deep grave, simply dug, and wattled 
 round, but without any affectation of stone or brick- 
 work to keep the human dust from its kindred earth. 
 So dry, however, is the soil of the quiet churchyard 
 that the excavated earth left perfect walls of stiff clay, 
 and permitted us just to catch a glimpse of the still 
 untarnished edges of the coffin in which all the mortal 
 part of one of the most delightful persons who ever 
 lived was contained, and on which the remains of her 
 he had loved with love " passing the love of woman" 
 were henceforth to rest ; — the last glances we shall 
 ever have even of that covering ; — concealed from us 
 as we darted, by the coffin of the sister. We felt, I 
 believe, after a moment's strange shuddering, that the 
 reunion was well accomplished ; and although the 
 true-hearted son of Admiral Burney, who had known 
 and loved the pair we quitted, from a child, and who 
 had been the dearest objects of existence to him, 
 refused to be comforted, — even he will join the scanty 
 remnant of their friends in the softened remembrance 
 that " they were lovely in their lives," and own with 
 them the consolation of adding at last, " that in death 
 they are not divided 1" 
 
( 237 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Lamb fully known. — His Character. 
 
 The story of the lives of Charles and Mary Lamb is 
 now told; nothing more remains to be learned respect- 
 ing it. The known collateral branches of this stock 
 are extinct, and their upward pedigree lost in those 
 humble tracks on which the steps of Time leave so 
 light an impress, that the dust of a few years oblite- 
 rates all trace, and affords no clue to search collaterally 
 for surviving relatives. The world has therefore all the 
 materials for judging of them which can be possessed 
 by those, who, not remembering the delightful pecu- 
 liarities of their daily manners, can only form imper- 
 fect ideas of what they were. Before bidding them 
 a last adieu, we may be allowed to linger a little 
 longer and survey their characters by the new and 
 solemn lights which are now, for the first time, fully 
 cast upon them. 
 
 Except to the few who were acquainted with the 
 tragical occurrences of Lamb's early life, some of his 
 peculiarities seemed strange — to be forgiven, indeed, 
 to the excellences of his nature, and the delicacy of 
 his genius, — but still, in themselves, as much to be 
 wondered at as deplored. The sweetness of his cha- 
 racter, breathed through his writings, was felt even 
 by strangers ; but its heroic aspect was unguessed, 
 even by many of his friends. Let them now consider 
 it, and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice can show 
 
i^S LAMB FULLY KNOWN, 
 
 anything in human action and endurance more lovely 
 than its self-devotion exhibits 1 „ It was not merely 
 that he saw (which his elder brother cannot be blamed 
 for not immediately perceiving) through the ensan- 
 guined cloud of misfortune which had fallen upon his 
 family, the unstained excellence of his sister, whose 
 madness had caused it ; that he was ready to take 
 her to his own home with reverential affection, and 
 cherish her through life ; that he gave up, for her 
 sake, all meaner and more selfish love, and all the 
 hopes which youth blends with the passion which 
 disturbs and ennobles it : not even that he did all 
 this cheerfully, and without pluming himself upon 
 his brotherly nobleness as a virtue, or seeking to 
 repay himself,(as some uneasy martyrs do) by sn-.all 
 instalments of long repining, — but that he carried the 
 spirit of the hour in which he first knew and took his 
 course, to the last. So far from thinking that his 
 sacrifice of youth and love to his sister gave him a 
 license to follow his own caprice at the expense of 
 her feelings, even in the lightest matters, he always 
 wrote and spoke of her as his wiser self; his gene- 
 rous benefactress, of whose protecting care he was 
 scarcely worthy. How his pen almost grew wanton 
 in her praise, even when she was a prisoner in the 
 Asylum after the fatal attack of lunacy, his letters of 
 the time to Coleridge show; but that might have 
 been a mere temporary exaltation — the attendant 
 fervour of a great exigency and a great resolution. 
 It was not so ; nine years afterwards (1805), in a 
 letter to Miss Wordsworth, he thus dilates on his 
 sister's excellences, and exaggerates his own frail- 
 ties : — 
 
 " To say all that I know of her would be more than 
 
LAMD FULLY KNOWN. 239 
 
 I think anybody could believe or even understand ; 
 and when I hope to have her well again with me, it 
 would be sinning against her feelings to go about to 
 praise her; for I can conceal nothing that I do from 
 her. She is older, and wiser, and better than I, and 
 all my wretched imperfections I cover to myself by 
 resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would 
 share life and death, heaven and hell, with me. She 
 lives but for me ; and I know I have been wasting 
 and teasing her life for five years past incessantly 
 with my cursed ways of going on. But even in this 
 upbraiding of myself I am offending against her, for 
 I know that she has cleaved to me for better, for 
 worse ; and if the balance has been against her 
 hitherto, it ' was a noble trade.' "' 
 
 ■ If the brother was always oppressed by the sense of her impending 
 insanity, it seems that the sister had her trouble in the anxiety lest 
 he should be tempted into some excess. This double *' anangke" 
 perpetually overshadowed their house. One of the curious touches 
 in her home life is her acting as bridesmaid to Hazlitt's wife — 
 Miss Stoddart. Mrs, Cowden Clarke recalls " a certain old-world 
 fashion in Mary Lamb's diction which gave it a most natural and 
 quaintly pleasant effect, and which heightened rather than detracted 
 from the more heartfelt or important things she uttered. She had a 
 way of repeating her brother's words assertingly when he spoke to 
 her. He once said (with his peculiar mood of tenderness, beneath 
 blunt, abrupt speech), ' You must die first, Mary.' She nodded, with 
 her little quiet nod and sweet smile : ' Yes, I must die first, Charles.' 
 At another time, he said, in his whimsical way, plucking out the words 
 in gasps, as it were, between the smiles with which he looked at her: 
 ' I call my sister " Moll," before the servants; " Mary," in presence of 
 friends; and " Maria," when I am alone with her.' " 
 
 " All their personal thoughts, feelings, and associations," says Mr, 
 Patmore, " were so entirely centred in those of each other, that it was 
 only by an almost painful effort they were allowed to wander else- 
 where, even at the brief intervals claimed by that social intercourse 
 
240 LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 
 
 Let it also be remembered that this devotion of the 
 entire nature was not exercised merely in the con- 
 sciousness of a past tragedy ; but during the frequent 
 recurrences of the calamity which caused it, and the 
 constant apprehension of its terrors ; and this for a 
 large portion of life, in poor lodgings, where the bro- 
 ther and sister were, or fancied themselves, " marked 
 people;" where from an income incapable of meeting 
 the expense of the sorrow without sedulous privations, 
 he contrived to hoard, not for holiday enjoyment, or 
 future solace, but to provide for expected distress. 
 Of the misery attendant on this anticipation, aggra- 
 vated by jealous fears lest some imprudence or error 
 of his own should have hastened the inevitable evil, 
 we have a glimpse in the letter to Miss Wordsworth 
 above quoted, and which seems to have been written 
 in reply to one which that excellent lady had addressed 
 to Miss Lamb, and which had fallen into the brother's 
 care during one of her sad absences. 
 
 " Your long kind letter has not been thrown away, 
 but poor Mary, to whom it is addressed, cannot yet 
 relish it. She has been attacked by one of her severe 
 illnesses, and is at present /row home. Last Monday 
 week was the day she left me ; and I hope I may 
 calculate upon having her again in a month or a little 
 more. I am rather afraid late hours have, in this case, 
 contributed to her indisposition. But when she begins 
 to discover symptoms of approaching illness, it is not 
 easy to say what is best to do. Being by ourselves is 
 
 which they nevertheless could not persuade themselves wholly to shun. 
 They had been tor so many years accustomed to look to each other 
 alone foi sympathy and support, that they could scarcely believe these 
 to exist apart from themselves. This gave to both an absent and em- 
 barrassed air." — F. 
 
LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 24I 
 
 bad, and going out is bad. I get so irritable and 
 wretched with fear, that I constantly hasten on the 
 disorder. You cannot conceive the misery of such a 
 foresight. I am sure that, for the week before she 
 left me, I was little better than light-headed. I now 
 am calm, but sadly taken down and flat. I have 
 every reason to suppose that this illness, like all her 
 former ones, will be but temporary. But I cannot 
 always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me !" 
 
 The constant impendency of this giant sorrow sad- 
 dened to " the Lambs " even their holidays ; as the 
 journey which they both regarded as the relief and 
 charm of the year was frequently followed by a seizure ; 
 and, when they ventured to take it, a strait-waistcoat, 
 carefully packed by Miss Lamb herself, was their con- 
 stant companion. Sad experience, at last, induced 
 the abandonment of the annual excursion, and Lamb 
 was contented with walks in and near London, during 
 the interval of labour. Miss Lamb experienced, and 
 full well understood premonitory symptoms of the 
 attack, in restlessness, low fever, and the inability to 
 sleep ; and, as gently as possible, prepared her brother 
 for the duty he must soon perform ; and thus, unless 
 he could stave off the terrible separation till Sunday, 
 obliged him to ask leave of absence from the office as 
 if for a day's pleasure — a bitter mockery I On one 
 occasion Mr. Charles Lloyd met them, slowly pacing 
 together a little footpath in Hoxton fields, both weep- 
 ing bitterly, and found on joining them, that they 
 were taking their solemn way to the accustomed 
 Asylum ! 
 
 Will any one, acquainted with these secret passages 
 of Lamb's history, wonder that, with a strong physical 
 inclination for the stimulus and support of strong 
 
242 LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 
 
 drinks — which man is framed moderately to rejoice in 
 — he should snatch some wild pleasure " between the 
 acts" (as he called them) " of his distressful drama," 
 and that, still more, during the loneliness of the soli- 
 tude created by his sister's absences, he should obtain 
 the solace of an hour's feverish dream ? That, not- 
 withstanding that frailty, he performed the duties ot 
 his hard lot with exemplary steadiness and discretion 
 is indeed wonderful — especially when it is recollected 
 that he had himself been visited, when in the dawn 
 of manhood, with his sister's malady, the seeds of 
 which were lurking in his frame. While that natural 
 predisposition may explain an occasional flightiness of 
 expression on serious matters, fruit of some wayward 
 fancy, which flitted through his brain, without disturb- 
 ing his constant reason or reaching his heart, and 
 some little extravagances of fitful mirth, how does it 
 heighten the moral courage by which the disease was 
 controlled and the seyerest duties performed ! Never 
 surely was there a more striking example of the power 
 of a virtuous, rather say, of a pious, wish to conquer 
 the fiery suggestions of latent insanity than that pre- 
 sented by Lamb's history. Nervous, tremulous, as he 
 seemed — so slight of frame that he looked only fit for 
 the most placid fortune — when the dismal emergencies 
 which chequered his life arose, he acted with as much 
 promptitude and vigour as if he had neyer penned a 
 stanza nor taken a glass too much, or was strung with 
 herculean sinews. None of those temptations, in 
 which misery is the most potent, to hazard a lavish 
 expenditure for an enjoyment to be secured against 
 fate and fortune, ever tempted him to exceed his in- 
 come, when scantiest, by a shilling. He had always 
 a reserve for poor Mary's periods of seclusion, and 
 
LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 243 
 
 something in hand besides for a friend in need ; — and 
 on his retirement from the India House, he had 
 amassed, by annual savings, a sufficient sum (invested 
 after the prudent and classical taste of Lord Stowell, 
 in " the elegant simplicity of Three per Cents.") to 
 secure comfort to Miss Lamb, when his pension should 
 cease with him, even if the India Company, his great 
 employers, had not acted nobly by the memory of their 
 inspired clerk — as they did — and gave her the an- 
 nuity to which a wife would have been entitled,^ but of 
 which he could not feel assured. Living among lite- 
 rary men, some less distinguished and less discreet 
 than those we have mentioned, he was constantly 
 importuned to relieve distresses which an improvident 
 speculation in literature produces, and which the reck- 
 lessness attendant on the empty vanity of self-ex- 
 aggerated talent renders desperate and merciless ; — 
 and to the importunities of such hopeless petitioners 
 he gave too largely — though he used sometimes to 
 express a painful sense that he was diminishinghis own 
 store without conferring any real benefit. " Heaven," 
 he used to say, " does not owe me sixpence for all I 
 have given, or lent (as they call it) to such importu- 
 nity ; I only gave it because I could not bear to re- 
 fuse it ; and I have done no good by my weakness." 
 On the other hand, he used to seek out occasions of 
 devoting a part of his surplus to those of his friends 
 whom he believed it would really serve, and almost 
 forced loans, or gifts in the disguise of loans, upon 
 them. If he thought one, in such a position, would 
 be the happier for £50 or £100, he would carefully 
 procure a note for the sum, and, perhaps, for days 
 
 ' Her pension was fixed at £120. — F. 
 
 R 2 
 
244 LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 
 
 before he might meet the object of his friendly pur- 
 pose, keep the note in his waistcoat pocket, burning 
 in it to be produced, and, when the occasion arrived — 
 " in the sweet of the night " — he would crumple it up 
 in his hand and stammer out his difBculty of disposing 
 of a little money ; " I don't know what to do with it 
 — pray take it — pray use it — you will do me a kind- 
 ness if you will " — he would say ; and it was hard to 
 disoblige him !' 
 
 Let any one who has been induced to regard Lamb 
 as a poor, slight, excitable, and excited being, con- 
 sider that such acts as these were not infrequent — 
 that he exercised hospitality of a substantial kind, 
 without stint, all his life — ^that he spared no expense 
 for the comfort of his sister, there only lavish — and 
 that he died leaving sufBcient to accomplish all his 
 wishes for survivors " — and think what the sturdy 
 
 ' This refers to Mr. Procter, who relates the story in his Recollec- 
 tions. 
 
 " He had," says Mr. Moxon, " for some years upon his bounty 
 three pensioners. He allowed his old schoolmistress thirty pounds a 
 year ;" and to Morgan, a friend of Southey's, who was paralysed and 
 suddenly reduced to poverty, he agreed to give a pension of ten pounds 
 a year. But there is one instance of this noble being's generosity, 
 beside which the lavish cheques of ostentatious charity seem paltry. 
 Mr. Forster has found among his papers a circular that was sent out 
 soliciting aid for Godwin — then much straitened in his means. Here 
 Lord Byron contributes twenty-five guineas ; Lord Dudley, fifty ; 
 Mackintosh, ten; Mr. Murray, of Albemarle Street, the same; but 
 the generous Charles Lamb, out of his pittance, on which there were 
 such pressing claims, gave fifty pounds ! — F. 
 
 3 " By strict economy, without meanness," says Mr. Procter, when 
 closing his genial reminiscences ; " with much unpretending hospitality ; 
 with frequent gifts and lendings, and without any borrowing, he 
 accumulated, during his thirty-three years of constant labour, the 
 moderate sum of £zooo. No more. That, was the sum, I believe. 
 
LAMB FULLY KNOWN. 245 
 
 quality of his goodness must have been amidst all 
 the heart-aches and head-aches of his life — and ask 
 the virtue which has been supported by strong 
 nerves, whether it has often produced, any good to 
 match it ? 
 
 The influence of the events now disclosed may be 
 traced in the development and direction of Lamb's 
 faculties and tastes, and in the wild contrasts of 
 expression which sometimes startled strangers. The 
 literary preferences disclosed in his early letters, are 
 often inclined to the superficial in poetry and thought 
 — the theology of Priestley, though embraced with 
 pious earnestness— ^the " divine chit-chat" of Cowper 
 — the melodious sadness of Bowles ; and his own 
 style, breathing a graceful and modest sweetness, is 
 without any decided character. But by the terrible 
 realities of his experience, he was turned to seek a 
 kindred interest in the " sterner stuff" of old tragedy 
 — to catastrophes more fearful even than his own — to 
 the aspects of " pale passion" — to shapes of heroic 
 daring and more heroic suffering — to the agonising 
 contests of opposing affections, and the victories of 
 the soul over calamity and death, which the old 
 English drama discloses, and in the contemplation of 
 which he saw his own suffering nature at one mirrored 
 and exalted. Thus, instead of admiring, as he once 
 
 which was eventually shared amongst his legatees. The property of 
 Charles Lamb, or so much as might be wanted for the purpose, was by 
 his will directed to be applied towards the maintenance and comfort of 
 his sister : and subject to that primary object, it was vested in trustees 
 for the benefit of Miss Isola — Mrs. Moxon." 
 
 I have searched at Doctors' Commons for his will, but without success. 
 — F. 
 
246 LAMB FULt-Y KNOWN, 
 
 admired, Rowe and Otway,' even Massinger seemed 
 too declamatory to satisfy him ; in Ford, Decker, 
 Marlowe and Webster, he found the most awful strug- 
 gles of affection, and the "sad embroidery'' of fancy- 
 streaked grief, and expressed his kindred feelings in 
 those little quintessences of criticism which are 
 appended to the noblest scenes in his " Specimens ;" 
 and, seeking amidst the sunnier and more varied 
 world of Shakespeare for the profoundest and most 
 earnest passion developed there, obtained that mar- 
 vellous insight into the soul of Lear which gives to 
 his presentment of its riches almost the character of 
 creation. On the other hand, it was congenial pas- 
 time with him to revel in the opposite excellences of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, who changed the domain of 
 tragedy into fairy-land ; turned all its terror and its 
 sorrow " to favour and to prettiness ;" shed the rainbow 
 hues of sportive fancy with equal hand among tyrants 
 and victims, the devoted and the faithless, suffering 
 and joy ; represented the beauty of goodness as a 
 happy accident, vice as a wayward aberration, and 
 invoked the remorse of a moment to change them as 
 with a harlequin's wand ; unrealized the terrible, and 
 left " nothing serious in mortality," but reduced the 
 struggle of life to a glittering and heroic game to be 
 
 * He used to mention two pretty lines in the " Orphan :" — 
 " Sweet as the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains. 
 With all his fleecy flocl( at feed beside him," 
 
 as a redeeming passage amid mere stage triclieries. The great merit 
 which lies in the construction of " Venice Preserved," was not in his line 
 of appreciation ; and he thought Thomson's reference to Otway's ladies : 
 
 " Poor Monimia moans, 
 
 And Belvedera pours her soul in love," 
 
 worth both heroines. 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 247 
 
 played splendidly out, and quitted without a sigh. But 
 neither Lamb's own secret griefs, nor the tastes which 
 they nurtured, ever shook his faith in the requisitions 
 of duty, or induced him to dally with that moral para- 
 dox to which near acquaintance with the great errors 
 of mighty natures is sometimes a temptation. Never, 
 either in writing or in speech, did he purposely con- 
 found good with evil. For the new theories of morals 
 which gleamed out in the conversation of some of his 
 friends, he had no sympathy ; and, though in his 
 boundless indulgence to the perversities and faults of 
 those whom long familiarity had endeared to him, he 
 did not suffer their frailties to impair his attachment 
 to the individuals, he never palliated the frailties them- 
 selves; still less did he emblazon them as virtues. 
 
 No one, acquainted with Lamb's story, will wonder 
 at the eccentric wildness of his mirth — his violent 
 changes from the serious to the farcical — the sudden 
 reliefs of the " heat-oppressed brain," and heart weighed 
 down by the sense of ever-impending sorrow. ' His 
 
 ' A good specimen of this " eccentric wildness of his mirth," is the 
 little scene described with such vivacity by Haydon, the painter. 
 The dinner was given in 1817 ; Wordsworth, Keats^ and a few more 
 being the guests. " Lamb got exceedingly merry and exquisitely witty, 
 and his fiin in the midst of Wordsworth's solemn intonations of oratory 
 was like the sarcasm and wit of the fool in the intervals of Lear's 
 passion. He made a speech and voted me absent, and made them 
 drink my health. ' Now,' said Lamb, • you old lake poet, you rascally 
 poet, why do you call Voltaire dull ? ' We all defended Wordsworth, 
 and affirmed there was a state of mind when Voltaire wonld be dull. 
 Well,' said Lamb, 'here's Voltaire — the Messiah of the French 
 nation, and a very proper one too.' 
 
 " He then, in a strain of humour beyond description, abused me for 
 putting Newton's head into my picture, — • a fellow,' said he, • who 
 believed nothing unless it was as clew is the tJu-ee sides of a triingle.' 
 
248 CHARACTER OF LAME. 
 
 whim, however, almost always bordered on wisdom. It 
 was justly said of him by Hazlitt, " His serious con- 
 
 And then he and Keats agreed he had destroyed all the poetry of the 
 rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours. It was iimpossible to 
 resist him, and we all draim ' Newton's health, and confusion to m<i- 
 thematics.* It was delightful to see the good-humour of Wordsworth 
 in giving' in to all our frolics without affectation, and laughing as 
 heartily as the best of us. 
 
 " By this time other friends joined, amongst them poor Ritchie, 
 who was going to penetrate by Fezzan to Timbuctoo. I introduced 
 him to all as < a gentleman going to Africa.' Lamb seemed to take no 
 notice ; but all of a sudden he roared out, • Which is the gentleman we 
 are going to lose.'' We then drank the victim's health, in which 
 Ritchie joined. 
 
 " In the morning of this delightful day, a gentleman, a perfect 
 stranger, had called on me. He said he knew my friends, had an 
 enthusiasm lor Wordsworth and begged I would procure him the hap- 
 piness of an introduction. He told me he was a comptroller of stamps, 
 and often had correspondence with the poet. I thought it a liberty ; 
 but still, as he seemed a gentleman, I told him he might come. 
 
 " When we retired to tea we found the comptroller. In introducing 
 him to Wordsworth I forgot to say who he was. After a little time 
 the comptroller looked down, looked up and said to Wordsworth, 
 ' Uon't you think, sir. Milton was a great genius .'' Keats looked at 
 me, Wordsworth looked at the comptroller. Lamb who was dozing 
 by the fire turned round and said, ' Pray, sir, did you say Milton was 
 a great genius .'' ' No, sir ; I asked Mr. Wordsworth if he were not.' 
 ' Oh,' said Lamb, • then you are a silly fellow ! ' ' Charles 1 my dear 
 Charles '.' said Wordsworth ; but Lamb, perfectly innocent of the con- 
 fusion he had created, was off again by the fire. 
 
 " After an awful pause the comptroller said, ' Don't you think New- 
 ton a great genius i' I could not stand it any longer. Keats put his 
 nead into my books. Ritchie squeezed in a laugh, Wordsworth 
 seemed asking himself, ' Who is this .'' Lamb got up, and taking a 
 candle, said, * Sir, will you allow me to look at your phrenological 
 development?' He then turned his back on the poor man, and at 
 every question of the comptroller he chaunted — 
 
 « Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John 
 Went to bed with his breeches on.' 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 745 
 
 versation, like his serious writing, is his best. No 
 one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, elo- 
 quent things in half-a-dozen half sentences ; his jests 
 scald like tears, and he probes a question with a play 
 on words." 
 
 Although Lamb's conversation vibrated between 
 the intense and the grotesque, his writings are replete 
 with quiet pictures of the humbler scenery of middle 
 life, touched with a graceful and loving hand. We 
 may trace in them the experience of a nature bred up 
 in slender circumstances, but imbued with a certain 
 
 The man in office, finding Wordsworth did not know who he was, 
 said in a spasmodic and half-chuckling anticipation of assured victory, 
 ' I have had the honour of some correspondence with you, Mr. Words- 
 worth.' ' With me, sir ?' said Wordsworth, ' not that I remember.' 
 ' Don't you, sir ? I am a comptroller of stamps.' There was a dead 
 silence ;. — the comptroller evidently thinking that was enough. While 
 we were waiting for Wordsworth's reply. Lamb sung out : 
 * Hey diddle diddle. 
 The cat and the fiddle.' 
 
 " ' My dear Charles I' said Wordsworth, — 
 
 ' Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John,' 
 chaunted Lamb, and then rising, exclaimed, ' Do let me have anothet 
 look at that gentleman's organs.' Keats and 1 hurried Lamb into the 
 painting-room, shut the door and gave way to inextinguishable 
 laughter. Monkhou'^e followed and tried to get Lamb away. We 
 went back but the comptroller was irreconcilable. We soothed and 
 smiled and asked him to supper. He stayed though his dignity was 
 sorely affected. However, being a good-natured man, we parted all in 
 gocd-humour, and no ill effects followed. 
 
 " All the while, until Monkhouse succeeded, we could hear Lamb 
 struggling in the painting-room and calling at intervals, *Who is that 
 fellow .' Allow me to see his organs once more !' 
 
 " It was indeed an immortal evening. Wordsworth's fine intonation 
 as he quoted Milton and Virgil, Keats' eager inspired look. Lamb's 
 qnaint sparkle of lambent humour, so speeded the stream of convei^a- 
 tion, that »n my life I never passed a more delighLful time." — F. 
 
250 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 innate spirit of gentility suggesting a respect for all 
 its moderate appliances and unambitious pleasures. 
 The same spirit pervaded all his own domestic 
 arrangements, so that the intensity of his affliction was 
 ameliorated by as much comfort as satisfaction in the 
 outward furniture of life can give to slender fortune. 
 The most important light, however, shed on Lamb's 
 intellectual life by a knowledge of his true history, is 
 that which elucidates the change from vivid religions 
 impressions, manifested in his earlier letters, to an 
 apparent indifference towards immortal interests and 
 celestial relations, which he confesses in a letter to 
 Mr. Walter Wilson. The truth is, not that he became 
 an unbeliever, or even a sceptic, but that the peculiar 
 disasters in which he was plunged, and the tendency 
 of his nature to seek immediate solaces, induced an 
 habitual reluctance to look boldly into futurity. That 
 conjugal love, which anticipates with far-looking eye 
 prolonged existence in posterity, was denied to his 
 self-sacrifice; irksome labour wearied out the. heart 
 of his days ; and over his small household, Madness, 
 like Death in the vision of Milton, continually " shook 
 its dart," and only, at the best, " delayed to strike." 
 Not daring to look onward, even for a little month, 
 he acquired the habitual sense of living entirely in 
 the present ; enjoying with tremulous zest the secu- 
 rity of the moment, and making some genial, but sad, 
 amends for the want of all the perspective of life, by 
 cleaving, with fondness, to its nearest objects, and be- 
 coming attached to them, even when least interesting 
 in themselves.' 
 
 1 We should hardly be Inclined to accept these refiningsas an apology 
 for such religious views as Lamb held. It will also be seen what an 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 25! 
 
 This perpetual grasping at transient relief from the 
 minute and vivid present, associated Lamb's affec- 
 tions intimately and closely with the small details of 
 daily existence; these became to him the "jutting 
 frieze" and " coigne of vantage" in which his home- 
 bred fancy " made its bed and procreant cradle ;" 
 these became imbued with his thoughts, and echoed 
 back to him old feelings and old loves, till his inmost 
 soul shivered at the prospect of being finally wrenched 
 from them. Enthralled thus in the prison of an 
 earthly home, he became perplexed and bewildered 
 at the idea of an existence which, though holier and 
 happier, would doubtless be entirely different from 
 that to which he was bound by so many delicate films 
 of custom. " Ah I" he would say, " we shall have 
 none of these little passages of this life hereafter — 
 none of our little quarrels and makings-up — no ques- 
 tionings about sixpence at whist ;" and, thus repelled, 
 he clung more closely to " the bright minutes" which 
 he strung " on the thread of keen domestic anguish !" 
 It is this intense feeling of the "nice regards of flesh 
 and blood ;" this dwelling in petty felicities ; which 
 
 inconsistency there is in this theory; for Lamb is shown to be so capti- 
 vated with the material delights of nature, as to be disinclined to accept 
 anything beyond ; and at the same time to be so beset by the tragic 
 horror of his life, as to be indisposed to think of a future. Lamb him- 
 self, though he might throw out such speculations in an essay, would 
 have resented being thus taken au pled de la lettre. What his 
 religious opinions were, we shall not presume to decide ; but his would 
 be a poor wretched soul who would be indebted for them to the pett}' 
 enjoyments or dhagrhnens of life. 
 
 " No ; Lamb's scepticism has not come lightly, nor is he a sceptic, 
 . . . I look upon Lamb as one hovering between earth and heaven • 
 neither hoping much not fearing anything." — Coleridge in Allsop' i 
 Letters, etc., p. 461, — F. 
 
252 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 makes us, apart from religious fears, unwilling to die. 
 Small associations make death terrible, because we 
 know, that parting with this life, we part from their 
 company; whereas great thoughts make death less 
 fearful, because we feel that they will be our compa- 
 nions in all worlds, and link our future to our present 
 being in all ages. Such thoughts assuredly were not 
 dead in a heart like Lamb's ; they were only veiled 
 by the nearer presences of familiar objects, and some- 
 times, perhaps, bursting in upon him in all their 
 majesty, produced those startling references to sacred 
 things, in which, though not to be quoted with ap- 
 proval, there was no conscious profaneness, but rather 
 a wayward, fitful, disturbed piety. If, indeed, when 
 borne beyond the present, he sought to linger in the 
 past ; to detect among the dust and cobwebs of anti- 
 quity, beauty, which had lurked there from old time, 
 rather than to " rest and expatiate in a life to come," 
 no anti-christian sentiment spread its chillness over 
 his spirit. The shrinking into mortal life was but the 
 weakness of a nature which shed the sweetness of 
 the religion of its youth through the sorrows and 
 the snatches of enjoyment which crowded his after 
 years, and only feebly perceived its final glories, 
 which, we may humbly hope, its immortal part is now 
 enjoying. 
 
 It is not possible for the subtlest characteristic 
 power, even when animated by the warmest personal 
 regard, to give to those who never had the privilege 
 of his companionship an idea of what Lamb was. 
 There was an apparent contradiction in him, which 
 seemed an inconsistency between thoughts closely 
 associated, and <vhich was in reality nothing but the 
 contradiction of his genius and his fortune, fantas- 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 253 
 
 tically exhibiting itself in different aspects, which 
 close intimacy could alone appreciate. He would 
 startle you with the finest perception of truth, sepa- 
 rating, by a phrase, the real from a tissue of conven- 
 tional falsehoods, and the next moment, by some 
 whimsical invention, make you "doubt truth to be a 
 liar.'' He would touch the inmost pulse of profound 
 aifection, and then break off in some jest, which 
 would seem profane " to ears polite," but carry as 
 profound a meaning to -those who had the right key, 
 as his most pathetic suggestions ; and where he 
 loved and doted most, he would vent the overflowing 
 of his feelings in words that looked like rudeness. 
 He touches on this strange resource of love in his 
 " Farewell to Tobacco," in a passage which may 
 explain some startling freedoms with those he himself 
 loved most dearly. 
 
 " Irony aU, and feign'd abuse, 
 
 Such as perplext lovers use, 
 At a need, when in despair. 
 To punt forth the &irest fair ; 
 Or in part but to express 
 Tliat exceeding comeliness 
 Which their fancies doth so strike. 
 They borrow language of dislike; 
 And, instead of ' Dearest Miss,' 
 Jewel, honey, sweetheart, bliss. 
 And those forms of old admiring. 
 Call her cockatrice and siren. 
 Basilisk, and all that's evil. 
 Witch, hyena, mermaid, devil, 
 Etbiop, wench, and blackamoor. 
 Monkey, ape, and twenty more ; 
 Friendly traitress, loving foe,— 
 Not that she is truly so, 
 But no other way they know 
 
254 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 A contentment to express. 
 Borders so upon excess. 
 That they do not rightly wot 
 Whether it be pain or not." 
 
 Thus, in the very excess of affection to his sister, 
 whom he loved above all else on earth, he would 
 sometimes address to her some words of seeming 
 reproach, yet so tinged with a humorous irony that 
 none but an entire stranger could mistake his drift. 
 His anxiety for her health, even in his most convivial 
 moments, was unceasing. If, in company, he per- 
 ceived she looked languid, he would repeatedly ask 
 her, " Mary, does your head ache ?" " Don't you 
 feel unwell?" and would be satisfied by none of her 
 gentle assurances, that his fears were groundless. 
 He was always afraid of her sensibilities being too 
 deeply engaged, and if in her presence any painful 
 accident or history was discussed, he would turn the 
 conversation with some desperate joke. Miss Bee- 
 tham, the author of the " Lay of Marie," which 
 Lamb esteemed one of the most graceful and truly 
 feminine works in a literature rich in female genius, 
 who has reminded me of the trait in some recollec- 
 tions of Lamb, with which she has furnished me, 
 relates, that once when she was speaking to Miss 
 Lamb of Charles, and in her earnestness Miss Lamb 
 had laid her hand kindly on the eulogist's shoulder, 
 he came up hastily and interrupted them, saying, 
 " Come, come, we must not talk sentimentally," and 
 took up the conversation in his gayest strain. 
 
 Many of Lamb's witty and curious sayings have 
 been repeated since his death, which are worthy to 
 be held in undying remembrance ; but they give no 
 idea of the general tenor of his conversation, which 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 255 
 
 was far more singular and delightful in the traits, 
 which could never be recalled, than in the epigram- 
 matic turns which it is possible to quote. It was 
 fretted into perpetual eddies of verbal felicity and 
 happy thought, with little tranquil intervals reflecting 
 images of exceeding elegance and grace. He some- 
 times poured out puns in startling succession ; 
 sometimes curiously contrived a train of sentences to 
 introduce the catastrophe of a pun, which, in that 
 case, was often startling from its own demerit. At 
 Mr. Gary's one day, he introduced and kept up an 
 elaborate dissertation on the various uses and abuses 
 of the word nice ; and when its variations were ex- 
 hausted, showed what he had been driving at by 
 exclaiming, " Well I now we have held a Council of 
 Nice," " A pun," said he in a letter to Coleridge, in 
 which he eulogised the Odes and Addresses of his 
 friends Hood and Reynolds, " is a thing of too much 
 consequence to be thrown in as a make-weight. You 
 shall read one of the Addresses twice over and miss 
 the puns, and it shall be quite as good, or better, 
 than when you discover them. A pun is a noble 
 thing per se. O never bring it in as an accessory I' 
 A pun is a sole digest of reflection (vide my 'Aids' 
 to that awaking from a savage state) ; it is entire ; 
 it fills the mind ; it is as perfect as a sonnet; better. 
 It limps ashamed in the train and retinue of humour. 
 It knows it should have an establishment of its own. 
 The one, for instance, I made the other day; I forget 
 which it was." Indeed, Lamb's choicest puns and 
 humorous expressions could not be recollected. 
 
 ' He explained to his friend Crabb Robinson that " a pun was no- 
 thing without a ridiculous element." — F. 
 
256 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 They were born of the evanescent feeling, and died 
 with it ; " one moment bright, then gone for ever." 
 The shocks of pleasurable surprise were so rapid in 
 succession, and the thoughts suggested so new, that 
 one destroyed the other, and left only the sense of 
 delight behind. Frequently as I had the happiness 
 of seeing him during twenty years, I can add nothing 
 from my own store of recollection to those which 
 have been collected.' 
 
 1 Miss Beetham has kindly supplied the following examples of his 
 conversation ; — A Miss Pate (when he heard of her, he asked if she 
 was any relation to Mr. John Head, of Ipswich) was at a party, and he 
 said on hearing her name, "Miss Pate I hate." " You are the first 
 person who ever told me so, however," said she. " Oh ! I mean nothing 
 by it. If it had been Miss Dove, I should hare said Miss Dove I love, 
 or Miss Pike I like." About this time I saw Mr. Hazlitt for the first 
 time at their house, and was talking on metaphysical subjects with 
 him. Mr. Lamb came up, but my companion was very eloquent, and 
 I begged him not to interrupt us. He stood silent, and Mr. Dyer came 
 to me. " I know," said he, " that Mr, Cristall is a very fine artist, but 
 I should like to know in what his merit principally consists. Ts it 
 colouring, character, design, etc. ? My eyes are so bad !" On which 
 Mr. Lamb began rhyming, — 
 
 " Says Mr. Dyer to Mr. Dawe, 
 Pray how does Mr. Cristall draw .' 
 Says Mr. Dawe to Mr. Dyer, 
 He draws as well as you'd desire." 
 
 A lady he was intimate with had dark eyes, and one evening people 
 rather persecuted him to praise them. "You should now write a 
 couplet in praise of her eyes." " Aye do, Mr. Lamb," said she, "make 
 an epigram about my eyes." He looked at her, — 
 
 " Your eyes ! your eyes ! 
 Are both of a size !" 
 
 Which was praise, but the least that could be accorded, Mrs. S 
 recommended boney to him as a good thing for the eyes, and said her 
 daughter had received much benefit from it. "I knew," said he, "she 
 had sweet eyes, but had no idea before how they became so." At 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB, '2^J 
 
 It cannot be denied or concealed that Lamb's excel- 
 lences, moral and intellectual, were blended with a 
 
 my house once a person said something about his grandmother. *' Was 
 she a tali woman ?" said Mr. Lamb. " I don't know ; no, why do you 
 ask ?" " Oh ! mine was, she was a granny-dear." He asked an ab- 
 sent lady's name, who had rather sharp features. On hearing it was 
 Elizabeth or something of the kind, he said, " I should have thought if 
 it had been Mary, she might have been St. Mary Axe." Another 
 who was very much marked with the small-pox, he said, looked as if 
 the devil had ridden rough-shod over her face. I saw him talking to 
 her afterwards with great apparent interest, and noticed it, saying, " I 
 thought he had not liked her." His reply was, '*I like her internals 
 very well." When I knew him first, I happened to sit next him at 
 dinner, and he was running on about some lady who had died of love 
 for him, saying '' he was very sorry," but we could not command such 
 inclinations, making aU the common-place stuff said on such occasions 
 appear very ridiculous; his sister laughingly interrupting him now and 
 then, by saying, " Why she's alive now!" "Why she's married, and 
 has a large family," etc. He would not, however, allow it, and went 
 on. With a very serious face, therefore, when he Looked my way, I said, 
 * And did she really die?" With a look of indignant astonishment at 
 my simplicity, he said, " And do you think I should f^' Not being able 
 to suppress a smile, he saw what I had been about, and without finishing 
 his speech turned away his head. The way in which he would imitate 
 a person who had been detected in some petty theft was inimitable. He 
 began once saying he never had been in suspicious circumstances but once, 
 and then he had his hand over a guinea that lay on a counter, but that 
 he really did not know it was there, etc. My youngest sister, then a 
 little girl, in her talk afterwards, seemed to think he must have known 
 it, Mrs. H was sitting on a sofa one day, between Mr. Monta- 
 gue and Mr. Lamb. The latter spoke to her, but all her attention was 
 given to the other party. At last they ceased talking, and turning round to 
 Mr. Lamb, asked what it was he had been saying ? He replied, '* Ask 
 Mr. Montague, for it wentin at one ear and out at another," One day at 
 the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, I was sitting on a form, looking 
 at the catalogue and answering some young people about me who had 
 none, or spared themselves the trouble of consulting it. There was a 
 large picture of Prospero and Miranda, and I had just said, "It is by 
 Sbee " when a voice near me said, " Woulcl it not be more grammatical 
 
 S 
 
258 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 single frailty ; so intimately associating itself with all 
 that was most charming in the one, and sweetest in 
 
 to sayfer/"' I looked, it was Mr. Lamb. He went with a party 
 down to my brother Charles's ship, in which the officers gave a ball to 
 their friends. My brother hired a vessel to take us down to it, and 
 some one of the company asked its name. On hearing it was the Ante- 
 lope, Mr. Lamb cried out, " Don't name it, I have such a respect for my 
 aunt 1 cannot bear to think of her doing such a foolish action 1" I 
 once sat with Mr. Lamb in the pit of the theatre when Mrs. Siddons 
 gave one of her last performances. We had two vulgar and con- 
 ceited women behind us, who went on explaining and commenting 
 to show their knowledge, in a most absurd manner. Mr, Lamb occa- 
 sionally gave them a lift. When Malcolm came on in particular, he 
 said, " He a king! Why, he is in petticoats!" One of them said to 
 the other, " It's the dress of the country. Ignorant wretches 1" I had, I 
 believe, once led the discourse in company by telling a story of a bad 
 Arabian poet who fell sick because he could get nobody to hear him 
 recite ; the physician grasped the cane and caned him. On this, Mr. 
 Lamb declaimed a great deal on the absurdity of reading one's own 
 works aloud ; that people were always tired instead of being pleased 
 with it ; and that he made a poem the other day befitting the time (one 
 of those of overwhelming darkness such as ours in London sometimes ate) 
 and though he had not yet had time to transcribe it and recollect it 
 perfectly, he should never think of repeating it to other people. Every- 
 body, of course, were entreating him to favour them by repeating it, 
 assuring him they should like it very much ; and at length he complied. 
 "O my Gog I What a fog!" "A fine thing to make a fuss about," 
 
 said Miss M . " Why, I can make a second part extempore. — I 
 
 cannot see to kill a flea." A lady who had been visiting in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Ipswich, on her return could talk of nothing but the 
 beauty of the country and the merits of the people. Mr. Lamb 
 remarked that " she was SufTolk-ated." The following specimens of 
 his conversation have been supplied by another friend. A widow friend 
 of Lamb having opened a preparatory school for children at Camden 
 Town, said to him, " I live so far from town I must have a sign, I 
 tliink yon call it, -to show that I teach children. "Well," he replied, 
 " you can have nothing better than ' The Murder of the Innocents.' " 
 A gentleman who had lived some years in China mentioned that a 
 formidable enemy to the Chinese would arise one day in a warlike 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 259 
 
 the Other, that, even if it were right to withdraw it 
 wholly from notice, it would be impossible without it 
 
 piratical nation on the borders of China — theLadrones, In the course 
 of the evening, the progress of musical science in China was spoken of, 
 and the traveller, by way of illustrating his remarlo, sang a Chinese 
 love-song. Lamb listened very gravely to this dissonant performance, 
 and at the end exclaimed, " God prosper the Ladronei." Coleridge 
 one day said to him " Did you ever hear me preach !" "I never 
 heard you do anything else,' ' said Lamb. Seeing a little boy heavily laden 
 with groceries toiling up Highgate Hill one hot summer's day. Lamb 
 offered to assist him, tooii his load and carried it for him to the house 
 where the child was to deliver it. On laying down his burden, Lamb 
 requested the lady of the house to remonstrate with her grocer on the 
 inhumanity of compelling a little boy to carry such a load. The lady 
 bristled up, and sharply replied, " I have nothing to do with sucl? 
 matters." On which Lamb, altering his tone, irresistibly said, " I hope 
 ma'am you'll give me a drop of beer." — lalfourd. This note was 
 witlidrawn from the later editions for the reason, " that so vapid would 
 be the effect of these specimens of Lamb's humour when printed, com- 
 pared to that which they produced when stammered out they gave the 
 moment its victory.'' As the imagination may in part supply this 
 accompaniment, it has been thought a pity to deprive the reader of 
 these jests, which, though a little trivial, are characteristic in their 
 way. 
 
 From those collected by Mr. Procter, I have selected a few of the 
 best : — 
 
 I once said something in his presence, which I thought possessed 
 smartness. He commended me with a stammer : " Very well, my 
 dear boy, very well; Ben (taking a pinch of snuff), Ben Jonson has 
 said worse things than that — and — and b — b — better." [This, with a 
 small variation, is given in Mr. Thomas Moore's autobiography. I 
 suppose I must have repeated it to him, and that he forgot the precise 
 words.] The second son of George the Second, it was said, had a very 
 cold and ungenial manner. Lamb stammered out in his defence that 
 " this was very natural in the Duke of Cu-Cum-ber-land." " Charles," 
 said Coleridge to Lamb, " I think you have heard me preach ?" *' I 
 11 — n — never heard you do anything else," replied Lamb. Mrs. K., 
 after expressing her love for her young children, added, tenderly, 
 "And how io ynu like babies, Mr. Lamb.'" His answer, immediate, 
 
 S 2 
 
26o CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 lo do justice to his virtues. The eagerness with which 
 he would quaff exciting liquors, from an early period 
 
 almost precipitate, was " Boi-boi-boiled, ma'am." Hood tempting 
 Lamb to dine with him, said, " We have a hare." " And many 
 friend's f" inquired Lamb. Of a man too prodigal of lampoons and 
 verbal jokes. Lamb said, threateningly, " I'll Lamp-pun him." On 
 two Prussians of the same name being accused of the same crime, it 
 was remarked as curious that they were not in any way related to each 
 other. "A mistake," 'aid he, "they are cozens german." An old 
 lady, fond of her dis" nting minister, wearied Lamb by the length of 
 her praises. I speaK, because I linaiw him well, said she. "Well, 
 
 I don't," replied Lamb; "I don't, but d n him, at a 'venture.'" 
 
 The Scotch, whom he did not like, "ought," he said, "to have 
 double punishment; and to have fire without brimstone." (Coleridge 
 nad a share in this well-known jest, having "somewhat licked it 
 into shape," Lamb told Mr. AUsop.) When Godwin was expatiating 
 on the benefit of unlimited freedom of thought, especially in matters 
 of religion, Lamb, who did not like this, interrupted him by humming 
 the little child's song of "Old father Longlegs won't say his prayers," 
 adding, violently, "Throiu him doiunstairs .'" This, however, was a 
 favourite jest of the late Archbishop Whately's, His replying to some 
 one, who insisted very strenuously on some interesting circumstances 
 being "a matter of fact," by saying that iie was "a matter of lie" 
 man. Charles hated noise and fuss and fine words, but never hated 
 any person. Once when he had said, " I hate Z.," some one present 
 remonstrated with him, "Why, you have never seen him," "No," 
 replied Lamb, " certainly not ; I never could hate any man that I have 
 once seen." Being asked how he felt when amongst the lakes and 
 mountains of Cumberland, he replied that he was obliged to think of 
 the ham and beef shop near Saint Martin's Lane; this was in order to 
 bring down his thoughts from their almost too painful elevation, to the 
 sober regions of everyday life. He once silenced a solemn disputant, 
 by aiking him gravely— taking his pipe out of his mouth to put the 
 question — " Did he really mean to contend that a thief was not a 
 good man ?" So, too, his remark on Rogers' odd speculation as to 
 what a man would think of his own &ce were it on another body ; a 
 sort of horror seized him when he saw it reflected in the glass as he 
 shaved. He wondered how any one could feel a friendship tor a per- 
 son with such a face. " Then I hope you have mercy on the barbers," 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 26] 
 
 of life, proved that to a physical peculiarity of consti- 
 tution was to be ascribed, in the first instance, the 
 
 said Lamb, ** and always shave yourself." He was once asked how he 
 knew his books one from the otlier, for hardly any w»;re lettered : his 
 answer was as characteristic as it was true : " How does a shephera 
 know his sheep ?" 
 
 His puns on the Mantchou Tartars and Chinese Celtes (Man-chew 
 and Sell-teas] are characteristic. His biographer, who had a certain 
 solemnity, was once rather shocked at Lamb's declaring tliat he should 
 like to know the witnesses in the Queen's trial, and to have supper with 
 them. "You would not ji? with them!" said Sir T. Talfburd, with 
 horror. Lamb answered promptly, that "he would sit with anything 
 but a hen or a tailor." 
 
 Not less pleasant were his jests of a practical kind. As when the 
 poems of a. gentleman whom he was to meet at dinner were submitted 
 to him, he learned a few verses by heart, and confounded the author by 
 quoting them as "some little verses he wrote when he was young." 
 Presently be gave "Of man's first disobedience,'* which brought the 
 gentleman to his feet in a fury, saying that he had sat by and allowed 
 " his own little verses to be claimed ; but when it came to Milton," 
 etc. So, too, when he took a house, his placing the board with "To 
 Let" round his dog's neck, and sending him to the agent. So when the 
 same dog setoff to chase a flock, his reply to the indignant shepherd's 
 expostulation was, " Hunt lambs, sir ! Why, he never hunted ffzf." 
 Mr. Crabb Robinson also supplies a few of his jests : — 
 When Dignnm and Mrs. Bland, two stout performers, came on the 
 stage, he exclaimed, "And lo ! two puddings smoked upon the boards !" 
 The divisions where the clerks of the India House sat used to be known as 
 " Compounds." Lamb, on being asked who these clerks were, replied, "A 
 collection of simples." More amusing was his reply to his friend Hume» 
 who said in presence of his numerous children, that "one fool made 
 many,'' " Mr. H., you have a fine family I see." Some one said, apropos 
 of Johnson's remark on punsters, that "they had no pockets to pick ;'' 
 on which Lamb said, "No; that they carried a ridicule." Shake- 
 speare's anachronism was mentioned, in making Hector speak of Aris^ 
 totle ; "That," said Lamb, " is what Johnson means: 'And panting 
 Time toils after him in vain.' " 
 
 From Mr. AUsop's pleasant volume I take the following ; — 
 
 At Billingsgate, Lamb witnessed a quairel between two fish womea. 
 
262 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 Strength of the temptation with which he was assailed. 
 This kind of corporeal need ; the struggles of deep 
 thought to overcome the bashfulness and the impedi- 
 ment of speech which obstructed its utterance ; the 
 dull, heavy, irksome labours which hung heavy on his 
 mornings, and dried up his spirits; and still more, the 
 sorrows which had environed him, and which prompted 
 him to snatch a fearful joy; and the unbounded crav- 
 ing after sympathy with human feelings, conspired to 
 disarm his power of resisting when the means of 
 indulgence were actually before him. Great exaggera- 
 tions have been prevalent on this subject, counte- 
 nanced, no doubt, by the " Confessions" which, in 
 the prodigality of his kindness, he contributed to his 
 friend's collection of essays and authorities against 
 the use of spirituous liquors ; for, although he had 
 rarely the power to overcome the temptation when 
 presented, he made heroic sacrifices in flight. His 
 final abandonment of tobacco, after many ineffectual 
 attempts, was one of these — a princely sacrifice. He 
 had loved smoking, " not wisely, but too well," for 
 he had been content to use the coarsest varieties of 
 the " great plant." When Dr. Parr, — who took only 
 the finest tobacco, used to half fill his pipe with salt, 
 and smoked with a philosophic calmness, — saw Lamb 
 smoking the strongest preparation of the weed, puffing 
 out smoke like some furious Enchanter, he gently laid 
 down his pipe, and asked him, how he had acquired 
 
 one of whom, snatching up a knife, cut off" the other's thumb. "Ha!" 
 said he, looking abouthim as if he only just recognised the place, "this 
 is Fairlop Fair." Martin Burney, earnestly explaining the three kinds 
 of acid, was stopped by Lamb. "The best of all kinds of acids, how- 
 ever, as, you ki'ow, Martin, is uity — assiduity.'" — F. 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 263 
 
 his power of smoking at such a rate ? Lamb replied, 
 " I toiled after it, sir, as some men toil after virtue." 
 Partly to shun the temptations of society, and partly 
 to preserve his sister's health, he fled from London, 
 where his pleasures and his heart were, and buried 
 himself in the solitude of the country, to him always 
 dismal. He would even deny himself the gratification 
 of meeting Wordsworth or Southey, or use it very 
 sparingly during their visits to London, in order that 
 the accompaniments of the table might not entice him 
 to excess. And if sometimes, after miles of solitary 
 communing with his own sad thoughts, the village inn 
 did invite him to quaff a glass of sparkling ale; and if 
 when his retreat was lighted up with the presence of 
 some old friend, he was unable to refrain from the 
 small portion which was too much for his feeble frame, 
 let not the stout-limbed and the happy exult over the 
 consequence ! Drinking with him, except so far as it 
 cooled a feverish thirst, was not a sensual, but an intel- 
 lectual pleasure ; it lighted up his fading fancy, enriched 
 his humour, and impelled the struggling thought or 
 beautiful image into day; and perhaps by requiring 
 for him some portion of that allowance which he 
 extended to all human frailties, endeared him the more 
 to those who so often received, and were delighted to 
 bestow it.' 
 
 ^ This rather fine-drawn distinction has been well disposed of by a 
 writer in the Edinburgh Revieiu. "Drinking," he says, " is not to be 
 called an intellectual pleasure ; because, when a man has once contracted 
 the habit of excessive indulgence in the use of ardent spirits, one of its 
 most miserable consequences is a slavish dependence on them. . . . 
 The issue we all know : crowded jails ; Sheridan a by-word, instead of 
 perhaps prime minister.'* Indeed. Sir T. Talfourd, in his natural 
 warmth for his friend's reputation, has softened Lamb's subjection to 
 
264 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 Lamb's indulgence to the failings of others could 
 could hardly indeed be termed allowance ; the name 
 
 this " frailty/' Mr. Procter has tried to vindicate him even more 
 thoroughly. It is a delicate matter, and tliere may seem something un- 
 gracious in attempting to deepen such shadows ; but unhappily there 
 is a remarkable concurrence of testimony as to this weakness, which 
 appears to have been deplored by himself and by all his friends, 
 though they were ever ready to offer indulgent excuses. Talfourd, 
 Daniel, Patmore, Miss Isola, and even Mary Lamb, furnish evidence 
 hard to contend against. 
 
 Lamb himself, in 1805, bewails his "cursed drinking," which tie says 
 for five years has been embittering his sister's life. In 1830, Miss 
 Isola was appealing to him : ** Now pray don't drink; do check your- 
 self alter dinner, for my sake, when we get home to Enfield, you shall 
 drink as much as ever you please." Later he is found " turning over a 
 new leaf," having succeeded in getting home " half as sober as a 
 judge." "I have left off spirits," he writes in 1813 . . . "with 
 ft moral certainty of its lasting." "Alas!" adds Talfourd in a note* 
 " for moral certainty in this moral but mortal world ! Lamb's resolu- 
 tion to leave off spirituous liquours was a brave one; but be strengthened 
 and rewarded it by such copious libations of porter, that his sister, for 
 whose sake mainly he attempted the sacrifice, entreated him to " live 
 like himself," and in a few weeks after this assurance he obeyed her. 
 
 An indulgence thus sustained, and spread over a period of more than 
 twenty years, can hardly be softened away into complaisance with the 
 humours of society and good-fellowship. Thus, behind the inviting 
 pictures of the *' Lamb Suppers," which have been compared to the 
 meetings of Holland House, was always hovering this spectre. 
 
 But the following passage from a letter of Mary Lamb's, dated 
 Nov 30th, 1 810, is more significant, 
 
 " Charles was drunk last night, and drunk the night before ; which 
 night before was at Godwin's, where we went at a short summons from 
 Mr. G., to play a solitary rubber. We finished there at twelve o'clock 
 (Charles and Liston brim-full of gin & water & snuff) : after which, 
 Henry Robinson spent a long evening by our fireside at home ; and 
 there was much gin & water drunk, albeit only one of the party par- 
 00k of it. And H. R. professed himself highly indebted to Charles 
 lor the useful information he gave him on sundry matters of taste and 
 imagination, sven after Charles could not speak plain for tipsiness. 
 
:&MK 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 265 
 
 of charity is too cold to suit it. He did not merely 
 love his friends in spite of their errors, but he loved 
 them errors and all ; so near to him was everything 
 human. He numbered among his associates, men of 
 all varieties of opinion — philosophical, religious, and 
 political — and found something to like, not only in 
 the men themselves, but in themselves as associated 
 with their theories and their schemes. In the high 
 and calm, but devious speculations of Godwin ; in 
 the fierce hatreds of Hazlitt ; in the gentle and glo- 
 rious mysticism of Coleridge; in the sturdy opposition 
 of Thelwall to the Government; in Leigh Hunt's 
 softened and fancy-streaked patriotism ; in the gallant 
 Toryism of Stoddart; he found traits which made the 
 individuals more dear to him. When Leigh Hunt 
 was imprisoned in Cold Bath Fields for a libel, Lamb 
 was one of his most constant visitors — and when 
 Thelwall was striving to bring the " Champion" into 
 notice. Lamb was ready to assist him with his pen, 
 and to fancy himself, for the time, a Jacobin. In this 
 large intellectual tolerance, he resembled Professor 
 Wilson, who, notwithstanding his own decided opi- 
 
 But still he swallowed the flattery and the spirits as savouriiy as Robin- 
 eon did his cold water. . . . 
 
 " Last night was to be a night, but it was not. There was a certain 
 son of one of Martin's employers, one young Mr. Blake ; to do whom 
 honour, Mrs. Burney brought forth, first rum, then a single bottle of 
 champaine, long Icept in her secret hoard ; then two bottles of her best 
 currant wine, which she keeps for Mrs. Rickman, came out ; & Charles 
 parlook liberally of all these beverages. . . . The alternating 
 Wednesdays will drop off* one day in the week from your jolly days, 
 and T do not know how we shall make it up to you ; but 1 will con- 
 trive the best 1 can. Phillips comes again pretty regularly, to the 
 great joy of Mrs. Reynolds." — Letters of Charles and Mary Lami, 
 p. 83.-F. 
 
266 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 nions, has a compass of mind large enough to embrace 
 all others which have noble alliances within its range.' 
 But not only to opposite opinions, and devious habits 
 of thought, was Lamb indulgent ; he discovered " the 
 soul of goodness in things evil" so vividly, that the 
 surrounding evil disappeared from his mental vision. 
 Nothing — no discovery of error or of crime — could 
 divorce his sympathy from a man who had once en- 
 gaged it. He saw in the spendthrift, the outcast, 
 only the innocent companion of his school-days or 
 the joyous associate of his convivial hours, and he 
 did not even make penitence or reform a condition of 
 his regard. Perhaps he had less sympathy with 
 philanthropic schemers for the improvement of the 
 world than with any other class of men ; but of 
 these he numbered two of the greatest, Clarkson the 
 destroyer of the slave-trade, and Basil Montague the 
 constant opponent of the judicial infliction of death ; 
 and the labours of neither have been in vain ! 
 
 To those who were not intimately acquainted with 
 Lamb, the strong disinclination to contemplate another 
 state of being, which he sometimes expressed in his 
 serious conversation, and which he has solemnly 
 confessed in his " New Year's Eve," might cast a 
 doubt on feelings which were essentially pious. The 
 same peculiarity of nature which attached him to the 
 
 ' Lamb only once met that remarkable person, — ^who has probably 
 more points of resemblance to him than any other living poet, — and 
 was quite charmed with him. They walked out from Enfield togetlier, 
 and strolled happily a long summer's day, not omitting, however, a call 
 for a refreshing draught. Lamb called for a pot of ale or porter — half 
 of which would have been his own usual allowance ; and was delighted 
 to hear the Professor, on the appearance of the foaming tankard, say 
 reproachfully to tlie waiter, " And one for me!" 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 267 
 
 narrow and crowded streets, in preference to the 
 mountain and the glen — which made him loth to quit 
 even painful circumstances and unpleasant or ill-timed 
 company ; the desire to seize and grasp all that was 
 nearest, bound him to earth, and prompted his sym- 
 pathies to revolve within a narrow circle. Yet in that 
 very power of adhesion to outward things, might be 
 discerned the strength of a spirit destined to live 
 beyond them. Within the contracted sphere of 
 his habits and desires, he detected the subtlest 
 essences of Christian kindliness, shed over it a light 
 from heaven, and peopled it with divine fancies and 
 
 " Thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof 
 That they were horn for immortality," 
 
 Although he numbered among his associates free- 
 thinkers and sceptics, he had a great dislike to any 
 profane handling of sacred subjects, and always dis- 
 couraged polemical discussion. One evening, when 
 Irving and Coleridge were in company, and a young 
 gentleman had spoken slightingly of religion. Lamb 
 remained silent ; but when the party broke up, he said 
 to the youth who had thus annoyed his guests, " Pray, 
 did you come here in a hat, sir, or in a turban ?" 
 
 The range of Lamb's reading was varied, but yet 
 peculiar. He rejoiced in all old English authors, but 
 cared little for the moderns, except one or two ; and 
 those whom he loved as authors because they were his 
 friends. Attached always to things of flesh and 
 blood rather than to "the bare earth and mountains 
 bare, and grass in the green field," he chiefly loved 
 the great dramatists, whose beauties he supported, 
 and sometimes heightened, in his suggestive criti- 
 cisms. While he enjoyed Wordsworth's poetry, 
 especially " The Excursion," with a love which grew 
 
258 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 upon him from his youth, he would repeat some of 
 Pope's divine compliments, or Dryden's lines, weighty 
 with sterling sense or tremendous force of satire, with 
 eyes trembling into tears. The comedies of Wych- 
 erley, and Congreve, and Farquhar, were not to hini 
 gross and sensual, but airy, delicate creations, framed 
 out of coarse materials it might be, but evaporating 
 in wit and grace, harmless effusions of the intellect 
 and the fancy. The ponderous dulness of old contro- 
 versialists, the dead weight of volumes of once fierce 
 dispute, of which time had exhausted the venom, did 
 not appal him. He liked the massive reading of the 
 old Quaker records, the huge density of old school- 
 men, better than the flippancy of modern criticism. 
 If you spoke of Lord Byron, he would turn the subject 
 by quoting the lines descriptive of his namesake in 
 Love's Labour Lost — " Oft have I heard of you, my 
 Lord Byron," etc. — for he could find nothing to revere 
 or love in the poetry of that extraordinary but most un- 
 comfortable poet; except the apostrophe to Parnassus, 
 in which he exults in the sight of the real mountain 
 instead of the mere poetic image. All the Laras, and 
 Giaours, and Childe Harolds, were to him but "unreal 
 mockeries," — the phantasms of a feverish dream, — 
 forms which did not appeal to the sympathies of man- 
 kind, and never can find root among them. Shelley's 
 poetry, too, was icy cold to him ; except one or two 
 of the minor poems, in which he could not help 
 admiring the exquisite beauty of the expression ; and 
 the "Cenci," in which, notwithstanding the painful 
 nature of the subject, there is a warmth and passion, 
 and a correspondent simplicity of diction, which prove 
 how mighty a poet the author would have become had 
 he lived long enough for his feelings to have free dis- 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 269 
 
 course with his creative power. Responding only to 
 the touch of human affection, he could not beai poetry 
 which, instead of making the whole world kin, renders 
 our own passions and frailties and virtues strange to 
 us ; presents them at a distance in splendid masque- 
 rade ; exalts them into new and unauthorised mytho- 
 logy, and crystallises all our freshest loves and mantling 
 joys into clusters of radiant fancies. He made some 
 amends for his indifference to Shelley, by his admira- 
 tion of Mrs. Shelley's " Frankenstein," which he 
 thought the most extraordinary realization of the idea 
 of a being out of nature which had ever been effected. 
 For the Scotch novels he cared very little, not caring 
 to be puzzled with new plots, and preferring to read 
 Fielding, and Smollett, and Richardson, whose stories 
 were familiar, over and over again, to being worried 
 with the task of threading the maze of fresh adventure. 
 But the good-naturedness of Sir Walter to all his con- 
 temporaries won his admiration, and he heartily re- 
 joiced in the greatness of his fame, and the rich rewards 
 showered upon him, and desired they might accumu- 
 late for the glory of literature and the triumph of 
 kindness. He was never introduced to Sir Walter; 
 but he used to speak with gratitude and pleasure of 
 the circumstances under which he saw him once in 
 Fleet Street. A man, in the dress of a mechanic, 
 stopped him just at Inner Temple Gate, and said, 
 touching his hat, " I beg your pardon, sir, but per- 
 haps you would like to see Sir Walter Scott ; that is 
 he just crossing the road ; " and Lamb stammered 
 out his hearty thanks to his truly humane informer.' 
 
 ' "His tastes, in many respects, were most singular. He preferred 
 Wardour Street and Seven Dials to fields that were Elysian. The dis- 
 appearance of the old clock fiom St. Dunstan's Church drew tears 
 
270 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 Of his own writings it is now superfluous to speak; 
 for, after having encountered long derision and neglect, 
 they have taken their place among the classics of his 
 language. They stand alone, at once singular and 
 delightful. They are all carefully elaborated ; yet 
 never were works written in a higher defiance to the 
 
 from him ; nor conid he ever pass without emo^on the place where 
 Exeter Change once stood. The removal had spoiled a reality in Gay. 
 The passer-by, he said, no longer saw • the combs dangle in his 
 face.' This almost broke his heart. He had no taste for flowers or 
 green fields ; he preferred the high road. The Garden of Eden, he 
 used to say, must have been a dull place. He had a strong aversion to 
 roast beef and to fowls, and to any wines but port or sherry. Tripe 
 and cow-heel were to him delicacies — rare dainties ! ... 
 
 "All his books were without portraits ; nor did he ever preserve, with 
 two exceptions, a single letter. He had a humorous method of test- 
 ing the friendship of his visitors ; it was, whether in their walks they 
 would taste the tap of mine host at the Horse Shoe, or at the Rose and 
 Crown, or at the Rising Sun! But a member of the Temperance 
 Society, on these occasions, could not have been more abstemious, A 
 single glass would suffice. We have seen ladies enter with him — the 
 fastidious Barbara S. ; and great poets — the author of the " Excursion " 
 himself ! He was no politician, though in his youth he once assisted 
 to draw through the streets Charles James Fox ! Nor was he a man of 
 business. He could not pack up a trunk, nor tie up a parcel. Yet he 
 was methodical, punctual in his appointments, and an excellent pay- 
 master. A debt haunted him ! He could not live in another person's 
 books. He wished to leave a friend a small sum of money ; but ' to 
 have done with the thing,' as he said, gave it him beforehand. If an 
 acquaintance dropped in of an evening before supper, he would instantly, 
 without saying a word, put on his hat and go and order an extra 
 supply of porter. He has done this for us a hundred times ! Relics 
 and keepsakes had no charm for him. A traveller once brought him 
 some acorns from an ilex that grew over the tomb of Virgil. He 
 threw them at the hackney-coachmen as they passed by his window ! 
 And there is a story, that he once sat to an artist of his acquaintance 
 for a whole series of the British Admirals ; but for what publication we 
 never heard." — E. Moxon, in the Athenaum. — F, 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 27 I 
 
 conventional pomp of style. A sly hit, a happy pun, 
 a humorous combination, lets the light into the 
 intricacies of the subject, and supplies the place of 
 ponderous sentences. As his serious conversation 
 was his best, so his serious writing is far preferable 
 to his fantastical humours, — cheering as they are, 
 and suggestive ever as they are of high and invigo- 
 rating thoughts. Seeking his materials, for the most 
 part, in the common paths of life, — often in the hum- 
 blest, — he gives an importance to everything, and 
 sheds a grace over all. The spirit of gentility seems 
 to breathe around all his persons ; he detects the 
 venerable and the excellent in the narrowest circum- 
 stances and humblest conditions with the same 
 subtilty which reveals the hidden soul of the greatest 
 works of genius. In all things he is most human. 
 Of all modern writers, his works are most immediately 
 directed to give us heart-ease and to make us 
 happy.' 
 
 Among the felicities of Lamb's chequered life, that 
 which he esteemed most, was his intimate friendship 
 with some of the greatest of our poets, — Coleridge, 
 Southey, and Wordsworth ; the last and greatest of 
 whom has paid a tribute to his memory, which may 
 fitly close this memoir. 
 
 " To a good Man of most dear memory 
 This Stone is sacred. Here he lies apart 
 From the great city where he first drew breath. 
 Was reared and taught; and humbly earned his bread, 
 
 '■ Goethe, when Lamb's writings were spoken of before him, asked 
 if he was the author of a pretty sonnet on his own name ; a compli- 
 ment with which Lamb — though he affected to depreciate Goethe — was 
 flattered. Tieck declared that the notes to the " Specimens" were 
 written out of his very heart. — F. 
 
272 CHARACTER OF LAMB. 
 
 To the strict labours of the merchant's desk 
 
 By duty chained. Not seldom did those tasks 
 
 Tease, and the thought of time so spent depress 
 
 His spirit, but the recompense was high ; 
 
 Firm Independence, Bounty's rightful sire ; 
 
 Affections, warm as sunshine, free as air ; 
 
 And when the precious hours of leisure came. 
 
 Knowledge and wisdom, gained from converse sweet 
 
 With books, or while he ranged the crowded streets 
 
 With a keen eye, and overflowing heart: 
 
 So genius triumphed over seeming wrong. 
 
 And poured out truth in works by thoughtful love 
 
 Inspired — works potent over smiles and tears. 
 
 And as round mountain-tops the lightning plays. 
 
 Thus innocently sported, breaking forth 
 
 As from a cloud of some grave sympathy. 
 
 Humour and wild instinctive wit, and all 
 
 The vivid flashes of his spoken words. 
 
 From the most gentle creature nursed in fields 
 
 Had been derived the name he bore — a name. 
 
 Wherever Christian altars have been raised. 
 
 Hallowed to meekness and to innocence ; 
 
 And if in him meekness at times gave way. 
 
 Provoked out of herself by troubles strange. 
 
 Many and strange, that hung about his life ; 
 
 Still, at the centre of his being, lodged 
 
 A soul by resignation sanctified : 
 
 And if too often, self-reproached, he felt 
 
 That innocence belongs not to our kind, 
 
 A power that never ceased to abide iu him. 
 
 Charity, 'mid the multitude of sins 
 
 That she can cover, left not his exposed 
 
 To an unforgiving judgment from just Heaven. 
 
 O, he was good, if e'er a good man lived ! 
 
 * * • « • 
 
 From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart 
 
 Those simple lines flowed with an earnest wish, 
 
 Though but a doubting hope, that he might serve 
 
 Fitly to guard the precious dust of him 
 
 Whose virtues called them forth. That aim is missed ; 
 
 For much that truth most urgently required 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 273 
 
 Had from a faltering pen been asked in vain ; 
 Yet, haply, on the printed page received. 
 The imperfect record, there, may stand unblamed 
 As long as verse of mine shall breathe the air 
 Of memory, or see the light of love. 
 
 Thou wert a scomer of the fields, my Friend, 
 But more in shovr than truth ; and from the fields. 
 And from the mountains, to thy rural grave 
 Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er 
 Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers ; 
 And taking up a voice shall speak (though still 
 Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity. 
 Which words less free presumed not even to touch) 
 Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp 
 From infancy, through manhood, to the last 
 Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour. 
 Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined 
 Within thy bosom. 
 
 •Wonderful' hath been 
 The love established between man and man, 
 • Passing the love of women ;* and between 
 Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined 
 Through God, is raised a spirit and soul of love 
 Without whose blissful influence Paradise 
 Had been no Paradise ; and earth were now 
 A waste where creatures bearing human form. 
 Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear, 
 Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on ; 
 And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve 
 That he hath been an Elm without his Vine, 
 And her bright Hower of clustering charities. 
 That, round his trunk and branches, might have cljng 
 Enchanting and adorning. Unto thee. 
 Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee 
 Was given (say rather thou of later birth 
 Wert given to her) a Sister — 'tis a word 
 Timidly uttered, for she lives, the meek. 
 The self-restraining, and the ever-kind; 
 In whom thy reason and intelligent heart 
 
 T 
 
274 CHARACTER OV LAMB. 
 
 Found — for all interests, hupes, and tender cart?, 
 All softening, humanising, hallowing powers, 
 Wliether withheld, or for her sake unsought — 
 More than sufficient recompense I 
 
 Her love 
 (What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here ?) 
 Was as the love of mothers ; and when years. 
 Lifted the boy to man's estate, had called 
 The long-protected to assume the part 
 Of a protector, the filial tie 
 Was undissolved ; and in or out of sight. 
 Remained imperishably interwoven 
 With life itself. Thus 'mid a shifting world. 
 Did they together testify of time 
 And seasons' difTerence — a double tree 
 With two collateral stems sprung from one root; 
 Such were they — and such through life they might have httn 
 In union, in partition only such ; 
 Otherwise wrought the will of the Most High ; 
 Yet, through all visitations and all trials, 
 Still they were faithful ; like two vessels launched 
 From the same beach one ocean to explore 
 With mutual help, and sailing — to their league 
 True, as inexorable winds, or bars 
 Floating or fixed of polar ice, allow. 
 
 But turn we rather, let my spirit turn 
 With thine, O silent and invisible Friend ! 
 To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief, 
 Wh jn reunited, and by choice withdrawn 
 From miscellaneous converse ye were taught 
 That the remembrance of forgone distress. 
 And the worse fear of fiiture ill (which oil 
 Doth hang around it, as a sickly child 
 Upon its mother) may be both alike 
 Disarmed of power to unsettle present good 
 So prized, and things inward and outward held 
 In such an even balance, that the heart 
 Acknowledges God's grace, his mercy feels. 
 And in its deptH of gratitude is still. 
 
CHARACTER OF LAMB. 275 
 
 O gift divine ot quiet sequestration I 
 The hermit, exercised in prayer and piaisC;, 
 And feeding daily on the hope of heaven. 
 Is happy in hip vow, and fondly cleaves 
 To life long singleness ; but happier far 
 Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others, 
 A thousand times more beautiful appeared. 
 Your dual loneliness. The sacred tie 
 Is broken ; yet why grieve? for Time but holds 
 His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead 
 To the blest world where parting is unlcnown." • 
 
 ' Compare, also, Leigh Hunt's " Familiar Epistle " to Charles 
 Lamb: — 
 
 O thou, whom old Homer would call, were he living, 
 
 Home-lover, thought-feeder, abundant joke-giving, 
 
 Whose charity springs from deep knowledge, nor swerves 
 
 Into mere self-reflections, or scornful reserves, — 
 
 In short, who wert made for two centuries ago. 
 
 When Shakespeare drew men, and to write was to know, — 
 
 You'll guess why I can't see the snow.covered streets 
 
 Without thinking of you and your visiting feats, 
 
 When you call to remembrance how you and one more, 
 
 When I wanted it most, used to knock at my door ; 
 
 For, when the sad winds told us rain would come down, 
 
 Or snow upon snow fairly clogged up the town, 
 
 And dun, yellow fogs brooded over its white, 
 
 So that scarcely a being was seen towards night, 
 
 Then — then said the lady yclept near and dear: 
 
 " Now, mind what I tell you — the Lambs will be here." 
 
 So I poked up the flame, and she got out the tea, 
 
 And down we both sat, as prepared as could be; 
 
 And there, sure as fate, came the knock of you two, 
 
 Then the lanthom, the laugh, and the "Well, how d'ye do?" 
 
 Then your palm tow'rds the fire, and your face turned to me, 
 And shawls and great-coats being where they should be. 
 And due "never saws" being paid to the weather, 
 We cherished our knees, and sat sipping together; 
 
 T 2 
 
276 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 
 
 And, leaving the world to thf fogs and the fighters. 
 
 Discussed the pretensions of all sorts of writers: 
 
 Of Shakespeare's coevals, all spirits divine ; 
 
 Of Chapman, whose Homer's a fine rough old wine ; 
 
 Of Marvel, wit, patriot, poet, who knew 
 
 How to give, both at once, Charles and Cromwell their due; 
 
 Of Spenser, who wraps you, wherever you are. 
 
 In a bow'r of seclusion beneath a sweet star; 
 
 Of Richardson, too, who afflicts us so long. 
 
 We begin to suspect him of nerves over-strong; 
 
 [n short, of all those who give full-measured page-^ 
 
 Not forgetting Sir Thanas, my ancestor sage, 
 
 Who delighted (so happy were all his digestions] 
 
 In puzzling his head with impossible questions. 
 
 But no^ai, Charles, you never (so blissful you deem me) 
 
 Come lounging, with twirl of umbrella, to see me. 
 
 In vain have we hoped to be set at our ease 
 
 By the rains — which, you know, used to bring Lamb and pease- 
 
 In vain we look out, like the children in Thomson, 
 
 And say, in our innocence, " Siurely he'll come soon !" 
 
 The reader may now turn to Mr. Forster's Memoir, written a few 
 days after Lamb's death, when grief and recollection were alike 
 fresh. A few passages, which Sir T. Talfourd seems to have adopted, 
 have been omitted. '' 
 
 " Biographical Memoir of Charles Lamb. 
 
 "Charles Lamb was born in the Temple, in February, 1775, "Tis 
 my poor birthday,* says a letter of his we have lying before us, dated 
 the nth of February. The day will bfe rich hereafter to the lovers of 
 wit and true genius. The place of his birth had greatly to do with his 
 personal tastes in after life. Every one who has read " John Woodvil" 
 cannot fail to have been struck (as in that loveliest of passages on the 
 ' sports of the forest ') with its exquisite sense of rural beauty and ima- 
 gery. But Mr. Lamb's affection nevertheless turned downwards. Born 
 under the shadow of St. Dunstan's steeple, he retained his love for it, 
 and for the neighbouring town streets, to the last ; and to the last he 
 loved the very smoke of London, because, as he said, it had been the 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 277 
 
 medium most familiar to his vision. Anything, in truth, once felt, he 
 never wished to change. When he made any alteration in his lodgings, 
 the thing sadly discomposed him. His household gods, as he would 
 say, planted a terrible fixed foot, 
 
 "This early habit, however, and this hatred of change, were not the 
 only sources of his attachment to London, and to London streets. A 
 sort of melancholy was often the source of Lamb's humour — a melan- 
 choly which, indeed, almost insensibly dashed his merriest writings — 
 which used to throw out into still more delicate relief the subtleties of 
 his wit and fancy, and which made his very jests to "scald like tears.'* 
 In London there was some remedy for this, when it threatened to over- 
 master him. • Often,' he said, • when I have felt a weariness or dis- 
 taste at home, have I rushed out into her crowded Strand, and fed my 
 humour, till tears have wetted my cheek for unutterable sympathies 
 with the multitudinous moving picture, which she never fails to present 
 at all hours, like the scenes of a shifting pantomime.' This is a great 
 and wise example for such as may be similarly afflicted. 
 
 " Mr. Lamb*s earliest associates in London were Wordsworth^ Cole- 
 ridge, Southey, Charles Lloyd, and others, who ' called Admiral Burney 
 friend.' They used to assemble weekly at Burney^s house, at the 
 Queen's Gate, to chat and play whist ; or they would meet to discuss 
 supper, and the hopes of the world, at the Old Salutation Tavern. 
 This vras the ******* Jnn,* to which Mr. Lamb makes so 
 affectionate a reference in the dedication of his poems to Coleridge ; this 
 was the immortal tavern, and these were the ' old suppers in delightfui 
 years,' where he used to say Coleridge first kindled in him, if not the 
 power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness ; — quoting, with 
 true enthusiasm — 
 
 * What words have I heard 
 Spoke at the Mermaid I' 
 
 Life was then, indeed, fresh to them all, and topics exhaustless ; but yet 
 there was one preferred before all others, because it included all. Mr. 
 Lamb was at this period, indeed from the time he quitted Christ's Hos- 
 pital to within nine years of his death, a clerk in the India House. It 
 is scarcely pleasant to think of his constant labours there, when we think 
 of the legacy of nobler writing of which they may have robbed the 
 world. What have we to do now with all his — 
 
 * drops of labour spilt 
 On those huge and figured pages, 
 Which will sleep unclasped for ages, 
 
278 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR, 
 
 Little knowing who did wield. 
 
 The quill that traversed their white field?' 
 
 Lines from a * Poetical Epistle,* by Mr. Procter, who repaid Lamb's 
 affection, felt towards him to the last, hi a manner worthy of the hearts 
 and the genius of both. 
 
 " But we have the better reason, perhaps, to be grateful for what has 
 nevertheless been bequeathed to us. The genius of Mr. Lamb, as, de- 
 veloped in his various writings, takes rank with the most original ol 
 the age. As a critic, he stands facile pr'mceps, in all the subjects he 
 handled. Search English literature through, from its first beginnings 
 till now, and you will find none like him. There is not a criticism he 
 ever wrote that does not directly tell you a number of things you had no 
 previous notion of. In criticism he was indeed, in all senses of the 
 word, 'a discoverer — like Vasco Nunez or Magellan.' In that very 
 domain of literature with which you fancied yourself most variously and 
 closely acquainted, he would show you * fresh fields and pastures new,' 
 and these the most fruitful and delightful. For the riches he discovered 
 were richer that they had lain so deep — the more valuable were they, 
 when found, that they had eluded the search of ordinary men. 
 
 **As an Essayist, Charles Lamb will be remembered, in years to come, 
 with Rabelais and Montaigne, with Sir Thomas Browne, with Steele, 
 and with Addison. He unites many of the finest characteristics of 
 these several writers. He has wisdom and wit of the highest order, 
 exquisite humour, a genuine and cordial vein of pleasantry, and the 
 most heart- touching pathos. In the largest acceptation of the word he 
 is a humanist. No one of the great family of authors past and present 
 has shown in matters the most important or the most trivial so delicate 
 and extreme a sense of all that is human. It is the prevalence of this 
 characteristic in his writings which has subjected him to occasional 
 charges of want of imagination. This, however, is but half-criticism; 
 for the matter of reproach may in fact be said to be his triumph. It 
 was with a deep relish of Mr, Lamb's faculty that a friend of his once 
 said, * he makes the majesties of imagination seem familiar.' It is 
 precisely thus with his own imagination. It eludes the observation of 
 the ordinary reader in the very modesty of its truth, in its social and 
 familiar air. His fancy as an Essayist is distinguished by singular 
 delicacy and tenderness ; and even his conceits, wher they occur, will 
 generally be found to be, as those of Iiis favourite Fuller often are, 
 steeped in human feeling and passion. The fondness he entertained for 
 Fuller, for the author of the 'Anatomy of Melancholy,* and for other 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 279 
 
 writers of that class, was pure matter of temperament. His thoughts 
 were always his own. Even when his words seem cast in the very 
 mould of theirs, the perfect originality of his thinking is felt and 
 acknowledged — ^we may add, in its superior wisdom, manliness, and 
 unaffected sweetness. Every sentence in those Essays may be proved to 
 be crammed full of thinking. The two volumes which contain them 
 will be multiplied, we have no doubt, in the course of a few years, into 
 as many hundred ; for they contain a stock of matter which must be 
 ever suggestive to more active minds, and will surely revisit tlie world 
 in new shapes — an everlasting succession and variety of ideas. The 
 past to him was not mere dry antiquity: it involved a most extensive 
 and touching association of feelings and thoughts, reminding him of 
 what we have been and may be, and seeming to afford a surer ground 
 for resting on tlian the things which are here to-day and may be gone 
 to-morrow. We know of no inquisition more curious, and no specu- 
 lation more lofty, than may be found in the Essays of Charles Lamb. 
 We know no place where conventional absurdities receive so little 
 quarter ; where stale evasions are so plainly exposed ; where the 
 barriers between names and things are at times so thoroughly flung 
 down. And how could it indeed be otherwise? For it is truth 
 which plays upon his writings like a genial and divine atmosphere. No 
 need for them to prove what they would be at by any formal or logical 
 analysis ; no need for him to tell the world that this institution is 
 wrong and that doctrine right; the world may gather from those 
 writings their surest guide to judgment in these and all other cases — a 
 general and honest appreciation of the humane and crue. 
 
 " As a Poet, Mr. Lamb has left several things * the world will not 
 willingly let die.' Shall we not name first his prose tale of ' Rosa- 
 mund Gray,' which we have read a dozen times, as well as we could 
 for our tears ? We will match this tale against the world for un- 
 equalled delicacy and pathos. Shall we not treasure up too in our 
 hearf of hearts the memory of 'John Woodvil,' of him who offended 
 and was forgiven — and of the angelic, ever-honoured Margaret, whom 
 miseries could never alienate, nor change of fortune shake, wnom her 
 lover's injuries 'and slights (the worst of injuries) ' could not, in his 
 days of shame, when all the world forsook him, make ber forsake, or 
 cease to cling with love stronger than death to her dear heart's lord, 
 life's pride, soul-honoured John ! These are destined to be ever- 
 lasting creatures — once known, taken to the memory for ever. How 
 exquisite is the tenderness with which, when questioned on John's 
 neglect, she only turns aside for ;v moment with a. tear, and afterwards 
 
28o BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 
 
 resumes her conversation cheerfully. How sublime is the reach ot 
 pathos with which Sir Walter Woodvil, betrayed to his enemies by his 
 son, breaks his heart without uttering a single word. When the charge 
 of an imitation of the elder poets is brought against Charles Lamb, it 
 is generally brought in ignorance. His style, it is true, smaclcs to us of 
 'he antique ; tasting with a genuine Beaumont and Fletcher flavour ; 
 but this was because his way of thinking was like theirs ; there is no 
 imitation in it, setting aside the occasional indulgence of his love for 
 them, which we all feel to be delightful. ' We could fancy their loving 
 him just in the same way, because he lived in precisely that world of 
 thought which was chiefly theirs, and which changes not with the 
 alterations of age or style, but is everlasting, and changes never. Mr. 
 Hazlitt tells a story of a rural description out of 'John Woodvil,' 
 quoted anonymously in a modern book, meeting the eye of Mr. God- 
 win, who was so struck with the beauty of the passage, and with a 
 consciousness of having seen it before, that he was uneasy till he could 
 recollect where, and after hunting in vain for it in Ben Jonson, Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher, and other not unlikely places, sent to Mr. Lamb to 
 know if he could help him to the author! We should have recom- 
 mended him in his search to look out for a higher sort of Heywood, 
 some one between Heywood and Fletcher. When the day of popularity 
 for these great writers shall come round again, Mr. Lamb's poetry 
 will be popular too. His minor pieces are full of delicacy and wit, and 
 read occasionally like one of his Essays. 
 
 '* But it was not as a Critic, it was not as an Essayist, it was not as a 
 poet, fervently as we entertained for him in these characters the admi- 
 ration we have poorly endeavoured to express — it is not in any of these 
 that we felt towards him the strongest feeling of devotion — we loved 
 THE MAN. He was the most entirely delightful person we have ever 
 known. He had no affectation, no assumption, no fiiss, no cant, 
 nothing to make him otherwise than delightful. His very foibles, as 
 is remarked in a recent publication, were for the most part so small, 
 and were engrafted so curiously upon a strong original mind, that we 
 would scarcely have desired them away. They were a sort of fret- 
 work, which let in light, and showed the form and order of his cha- 
 racter. They had their origin in weakness of system chiefly ; and that 
 which we have heard by the unthinking condemned as wilful, in terms 
 of severe reproach, was in the first instance nothing but a forced resort 
 to aid tl'at might serve to raise his spirits in society to what was no 
 more than the ordinary pitch of all around him without it. Never 
 should the natural temperament against which Mr. Lamb had to 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 28 1 
 
 struggle be forgotten bjr those who are left to speak of his habits and 
 character. Of all the great and peculiar sorrows he was fated to expe- 
 rience through life (and there were many to which even an allusion may 
 not here be made, and for which nearly his whole existence was offered 
 as a willing and devoted sacrifice), the sorrows with which he was born 
 were the greatest of all. His friends, whom he delighted by his wit, 
 and enriched by his more serious talk, never knew the whole price he 
 paid for tho«e hours of social conversation. ' Reader,' he once said 
 in a paper which, with some dash of fiction, conveyed his saddest 
 personal experience, ' Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, 
 aspire to any character but that of a wit. When you find a tickling 
 relish upon your tongue disposing you to tliat sor-t of conversation, 
 especially if you find a preternatural flow of ideas setting in upon you 
 at the sight of a bottle and fresh glasses, avoid giving way to it as you 
 would fly your greatest destruction. If you cannot crush the power of 
 fancy, or that within you which you mistake for such, divert it — give 
 it some other play. Write an essay, — pen a character or description ; 
 —but not as 1 do noiv — witb tears trickling donun your cheeks." 
 We retire with reverence before the trials of such a spirit as this. 
 
 " No one in a conversation said such startling things as Lamb. No 
 one was so witty or so sensible. No man ever had him at a disadvan- 
 tage, except the man who did not understand him. He had a severe 
 impediment in his speech, but this gave even an additional piquancy to 
 the deep and eloquent things he said. After the stammering and 
 hesitation, a half sentence would burst forth at the close, and set every- 
 body laughing or thinking. And they would laugh at it, and think 
 about it the next day, and the day after that. 'Lamb proves a 
 truth,' said Hazlitt, • in a play upon words." * He was of the genu- 
 ine line of Yorick," says the delightful writer of the London Journal, 
 He was indeed ; — or still more of the family of that ever-faithful and 
 devoted 'fool' in 'Lear,' with his sayings of wisdom and snatches of 
 old songs — * Young Lubin was a shepherd boy.' Who that was ad- 
 mitted to the intimacy of his acquaintance does not remember that and 
 many others, and feel his heart sink with griei at our recent loss, 
 though to rise again with pride in the consciousness of having been 
 once admitted to such a friendship i We needed not to have made the 
 restriction. Evei-y one who knew him knew him intimately. He had 
 no concealment, for he had nothing to conceal. He had the faculty, — 
 as was remarked of him in the Times newspaper, by an old friend of 
 his, — 01 turning ' even casual acquaintances into friends.' When you 
 entered his little book-clad room, he welcomed you with an affectionate 
 
282 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 
 
 greeting, set you down to something, and made you at home at once. 
 His richest feasts, however, were those he served up from his ragged- 
 looking books, hi« ungainly and dirty folios, his cobbled-up quartos, his 
 squadrons of mean and squalid-looking duodecimos. ' So much the 
 rather their celestial light shone inward.' How he would stutter forth 
 their praises 1 What fine things he had to say about the beautiful 
 obliquities of the 'Religio Medici,' about Burton, and Fuller, and 
 SmoUet, and Fielding, and Richardson, and Marvel, and Drayton, and 
 fifty others, ending with the 'thrice-noble, chaste, and virtuous, but 
 again somewhat fantastical and original brained Margaret Duchess of 
 Newcastle!' What delightful reminiscences he had of the actors, how 
 he used to talk of them, and how he has written them down!' How 
 he would startle his friends by intruding on them lists of persons one 
 would wish to have seen, — such odd alliances as Pontius Pilate and 
 Doctor Faustus, Guy Faux and Judas Iscariot I But the evenings 
 passed with him are not for the hasty mention of such articles as this. 
 
 "Mr. Lamb's personal appearance was remarkable. It quite rea- 
 lized tlie expectations of those who think that an author and a wit 
 should have a distinct air, a separate costume, a particular cloth, some- 
 thing positive and singular about him. Sucli unquestionably had Mr. 
 Lamb. Once he rejoiced in snufT-colour, but latterly his costume was 
 inveterately black — with gaiters which seemed longing for something 
 more substantial to close in. His legs were remarkably slight, — so 
 indeed was his whole body, which was of short stature, but sur- 
 mounted by a head of amazing fineness. We never saw any other that 
 approached it in its intellectual cast and formation. Such only may be 
 seen occasionally in the finer portraits of Titian. His face was deeply 
 marked and full of noble lines — traces of sensibility, imagination, 
 suffering, and much thought. His wit was in his eye, luminous, 
 quick, and restless. The smile that played about his mouth was ever 
 vurdial and good-humoured; and the most cordial and delightful of its 
 smiles were those with which he accompanied his affectionate talk with 
 his sister, or his jokes against her. We have purposely refrained from 
 speaking of that noble-minded and noble-hearted woman, because in 
 describing her brother we describe her. Her heart and her intellect 
 have been through life the counterpart of his own. The two ,iave 
 lived as one, in double singleness together. She ha^ been, indeed, the 
 supplement and completion of his existence. His obligations to her 
 had extended beyond the period of his memory, and tbey accompanied 
 him to his grave. Yet he returned them not unfittingly. The 
 ' mighty debt of love he owed ' was paid to iier in full. When he 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 283 
 
 says otherwise in his charming sonnets to her, he merely expresses the 
 ever-unsatis6ed longings of true affection. Coleridge and she had the 
 first and strongest holds upon his heart. In the pride of that first 
 entrance into the world under the protection of his greater friend, he 
 had not forgotten his sister. He dedicated all he had written to her. 
 When, in after life, he had the power of acquitting his debt to her 
 more nobly, by dedicating his whole existence to hers, he presented the 
 offering of his poetry to Coleridge. Well might he express that 
 strange and most touching wish, after the life they had led — 'I wish 
 that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, 
 that we might share them in equal division. But that is impossible !' 
 It was indeed, and the survivor is not the most fortunate. Never more 
 shall we see the picture they used to present — ^worth a hundred common- 
 places of common existence — when they paid the occasional visits they 
 both loved to London — never more see the affectionate and earnest 
 watchings on her side — the pleasant evasions, the charming deference, 
 and the little touches of gratitude on his! We recollect being once 
 sent by her to seels 'Charles,' who had rambled away from her. We 
 found him in the Temple, looking up, near Crown Office Row, at the 
 house where he was born. Such was his ever-touching habit of seeking 
 alliance with the scenes of old times. They were the dearer to him 
 that distance had withdrawn them. He wished to pass his life among 
 things gone by, yet not forgotten. We shall never forget the affec- 
 tionate * Yes, boy,* with which he returned our repeating his own 
 striking lines — 
 
 ' Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood. 
 Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse!' 
 
 " This paper, long as it has already proved, must not be finished 
 without the mention of one most honourable characteristic in which Mr. 
 Lamb has stood alone, amidst all the political strife and personal 
 bickerings of modem literature. He put himself in personal opposi - 
 tion to no one. He would recognise no difference of opinion as a plea 
 against social meeting and friendly fellowship. ' It is an error,' he 
 said, in a spirit of deep philosophy, * more particularly incident to per- 
 sons of the correctest principles and habits, to seclude themselves from 
 the rest of mankind, as from another species, and form into knots and 
 clubs. The best people, herding thus exclusively, are in danger of con - 
 tracting a narrowness. Heat and cold, dryness and moisture, in tlie 
 natural world, do not fly asunder, to split the globe into sectarian parts 
 and separations ; but mingling, as they best may, correct (he malignity 
 
284 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 
 
 of any single predominance. The analogy holds, I suppose, in the 
 mora! world. If all the good people were to ship themselves olT 
 to terra-incognitas, what, in humanity's name, is to become of the 
 refuse .'' Charles Lamb wrote in periodicals of all opinions, and held 
 all differing friends firmly and cordially by the hand, as if indeed of 
 one family of brothers. His friendship with Southey did not shake 
 his intimacy with the editor of the Examiuer, or move him one 
 jot from the side of Hazlitt. This friendship however, was 
 once interrupted for some time by some wilful fancy on the 
 part of the irritable and world-soured philosopher. At this time 
 Southey happened to pay a compliment to Lamb at the expense of 
 some of his companions, Hazlitt among them. The faithful and un- 
 swerving heart of the other, forsaking not, although forsaken, refused 
 a compliment at such a price, and sent it back to the giver. The 
 character of William Hazlitt, which he wrote at the same time, may 
 stand for ever as one of the proudest and truest evidences of the writer's 
 heart and intellect. It brought back, at once, the repentant offender to 
 the arms of his friend, and nothing again separated them till Death 
 came. Charles Lamb was, we believe, the only one of his old asso- 
 ciates seen at the grave of Hazlitt. 
 
 " His first appearance in literature was by the side of Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge. He came into his first battle, as he tells us (literature is a 
 sort of warfare), under cover of that great Ajax. Their friendship in 
 life survived all the accidents of place and time ; and in death it has 
 been but a few short months divided. We should like to see this 
 remarkable friendship (remarkable in all respects and in all its cir- 
 cumstances) between two of the finest and most original geniuses in 
 an age of no common genius, worthily and lastingly recorded. It 
 would outvalue, in the mind of posterity, ^hole centuries of literary 
 quarrels. 
 
 " Lamb never fairly recovered the death of Coleridge. He thought of 
 little else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own 
 great spirit joined his friend's. He had a habit of venting his melan- 
 choly in a sort of mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, 
 ' cleanse his bosom of the perilous that weighed ' upon it. In a jest, 
 or a few light phrases, he would lay open the recesses of his heart. So 
 in respect of the death of Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him 
 two or three weeks ago, and remarked the constant turning and 
 reference of his mind. He interrupted himself and them almost every 
 instant with some play of affected wonder or humorous melancholy on 
 the words ' Coleridge ti dead.' Nothing could divert him from tliat. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 285 
 
 for the thought of it never left him. About the same time, we had 
 written to him to request a few lines for the literary album of a gentle- 
 man who entertained a fitting admiration of his genius. It was the 
 last request we were destined to make, the last kindness we were 
 allowed to receive ! He wrote in Mr. Keymer's volume, and wrote of 
 Coleridge. This, we believe, was the last production of his pen. A 
 strange and not unenviable chance, which saw him, at the end of his 
 literary pilgrimage, as he had been at the beginning, — in that immortal 
 company. "We are indebted, with the reader, to the kindness of our 
 friend for permission to print the whole of what was written. It would 
 be impertinence to offer one remark on it. Once read, its noble and 
 affectionate tenderness will be remembered for ever. Let it be placed 
 over the mortal grave of Coleridge. 
 
 " 'When I heard of the death of Coleridge, it was without grief. It 
 seemed to me that he long had been on the confines of the next world, 
 —that he had a hunger for eternity. I grieved then that I could not 
 grieve. But since, I feel how great a part he was of me. His great 
 and dear spirit haunts me. I cannot think a thought, I cannot make 
 a criticism on men or books, without an ineffectual turning and refer- 
 ence to him. He was the proof and touchstone of all my cogitations. 
 He was a Grecian (or in the first form) at Christ's Hospital, where I 
 was deputy Grecian ; and the same subordination and deference to him 
 I have preserved through a life-long acquaintance. Great in his 
 writings, he was greatest in his conversation. In him was disproved 
 that old maxim, that we should allow every one his share of talk. He 
 would talk from morn to dewy eve, nor cease till far midnight, yet who 
 ever would interrupt him, — who would obstruct that continuous flow 
 of converse, fetched from Helicon or Zion .' He had the tact of making 
 the unintelligible seem plain. Many who read the abstruser parts of 
 his ** Friend " would complain that his works did not answer to his 
 spoken wisdom. They were identical. But he had a tone in oral de- 
 livery, which seemed to convey sense to those who were otherwise im- 
 perfect recipients. He was my fifty years' old friend without a dis- 
 sension. Never saw I his likeness, nor probably the world can see 
 again. 1 seem to ove the house he died at more passionately than when 
 he lived. I love the faithful Gilroans more than while they exercised 
 their virtues towards him living. What was his mansion is consecrated 
 to me a chapel. 
 
 ' Chs. Lamb. 
 
 ' Edmonton, November 24, 1854.' 
 
286 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 
 
 " AVithin five weeks of this dace Charles Lamb died. It is some con- 
 solation to add, that, during his illness, which lasted four days, he 
 suffered no pain, and that his faculties remained with him to the last. 
 A few words spoken by him the day before he died showed with what 
 quiet coUectedness he was prepared to meet death. 
 
 "These are strange words to be writing of our old friend I We can 
 scarcely think yet that he has left us ; so intimately does he seem to 
 belong to household thoughts, and to the dear things of heart and 
 hearth, which his writings have made yet dearer. We cannot fancy 
 him gone from his folios, his ' midnight darlings,' his pictures, chit- 
 chat, jokes, and ambiguities ; — and yet it is so. Everything that was 
 mortal of him is gone, except the tears and the love of his friends. 
 His writings remain, to be the delight of thousands to come." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abercrombie, Misses, victims of 
 
 Wainwright, gg. 
 Abinger, Lord, tries Wainwright's 
 
 action, 104. 
 Adventures of Ulysses, published, 
 
 6g. 
 Ainsworth, W. H., 128. 
 Allsop's, Mr., description of Mary 
 
 Lamb's manner and voice, 228 n. 
 Alsager, 215. 
 Anti-Jacobin, The, attacks Lamb 
 
 and his friends, 44. 
 Ayrton, Mr., 84. 
 Ayton, Mr., contributor to The 
 
 London Magazine, 94 n. 
 
 Barnes, T., account of, 197 ; ap- 
 preciation of Kean, 197 ; speci- 
 mens of his theatrical criticism, 
 igS n. ; discussion with Lamb on 
 Dante and Shakespeare, igg. 
 
 Barton, B. , the Quaker poet ; 
 first acquaintance with Lamb, 
 
 "S- 
 
 Betham, Miss, her collection of 
 
 Lamb's jests, 256 n. 
 Bird, Lamb's master, 6 «. 
 Bowring, Sir J., his contributions to 
 
 The London Magazine, 94 ». 
 Burney, Admiral, 215. 
 ■ Martin, on a visit at Hazlitt's, 
 
 68 and n. 
 Byron, Loid, letter to Barton, 116; 
 
 Lamb's want of sympathy with, 
 
 268. 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 90. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, his contributions 
 to The London Magazine, 94 ». 
 
 Gary, Rev. H. F., his contributions 
 to The London Magazine, g4 ; 
 Lamb's dinners with, 147 ; lines 
 on the volume lent to Lamb, 218. 
 
 Christie, Mr., his duel with Mr. 
 J. Scott, 92. 
 
 Clarke, Mrs. Cowden, her descrip- 
 tion of the manner of Charles and 
 Mary Lamb to each other, 239. 
 
 Coleridge at the ' Salutation 
 Tavern,' 13 ». ; publishes his 
 poem with Lloyd and Lamb, 34 ; 
 at Lamb's suppers, 78 ; recites 
 ' Christabel,' 80 ; his death, 145 ; 
 Talfourd's account of, 207 ; his 
 lines on Lamb, 'the lime tree 
 bower, ' 213 ; his affection for 
 C. and M. Lamb, inscription in 
 the Sibylline Leaves, 213 ; his 
 last days, 213 ; Lamb's tribute 
 to, 285. 
 
 Comptroller of Stamps, Lamb's 
 droll behaviour to, 248 n. 
 
 Cornwall, Barry (Mr. Procter), 85. 
 
 Cunningham, Allan, his contribu- 
 tions to The London Magazine, 
 94 «. 
 
 Parley, G., his contributions to 
 The London Magazine, 94 «. 
 
 ' Dash,' a dog, Lamb's subservience 
 to, 132 n. 
 
 Dyer, G., offended by some freedom 
 of Lamb, 141 n. ; Talfourd's 
 sketch of, 165 ; Crabb Robin- 
 son's sketch of, 168. 
 
 Elia, origin and pronunciation of, 
 89 n. 
 
 287 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Elliston, in ' Mr. H,' 63, 84. 
 Elton, Mr., his contributions to 
 
 7X« London Magazine, 94 n. 
 Epigrams, Lamb's taste for, 73. 
 Evans, Mr. W., proprietor of The 
 
 Pamphleteer, 75. 
 
 Fair-haired Maid, The, 23. 1 
 
 Familiar Faces, The Old, suppressed I 
 
 lines in, 28 n. 
 Fenwick, the ' Bigod ' of Elia, 51 «. 
 Field Barron, 215 ; his account of 
 
 the dinner at Talfourd's, 217. 
 Forster, Mr. J., makes the round 
 
 of London prisons with Dickens, 
 
 113; Lamb's affection for, 216; 
 
 at Mary Lamb's funeral, 236 ; 
 
 his biographical memoir of Lamb, 
 
 276. ' 
 
 GiFFORD, W., his attack on Lamb's 
 'specimens,' 70; his letter in vin- 
 dication, 71 ». 
 
 Godwin, Lamb's first meeting with, 
 47 ; mistakes passage in John 
 Woodvil for work of one of the old 
 dramatists, 49 ; his Antonio, 53 ; 
 sketch of, 168 ; a man of two 
 beings, 174 ; his carelessness as 
 to money, 175. 
 
 Gooch, Dr., supposed writer of the 
 Quarterly articles which offended 
 Lamb, 119 «. 
 
 Grimaldi and his ' namesake,' 123 n. 
 
 H., Mr., produced at Drury Lane, 
 63. 
 
 Haydon, B. R., account of, 201 ; 
 his dinner to Wordsworth, and 
 Lamb, 247 «. 
 
 Hazlitt, W., introduced to Lamb, 
 and paints his portrait, 59 ; his 
 account of Lamb's suppers, 81 «. ; 
 his contributions to The London 
 Magazine, 94 ». ; his death, 140 ; 
 sketch of, 1 79 ; his admiration 
 for Napoleon, 185; scene at his 
 
 lectures, 193 ; his illness and de- 
 mand for assistance from Jeffirey, 
 195 ; Lamb at his funeral, 284. 
 
 Holland House, evenings at, 149; 
 compared with Lamb's supper 
 parties, 156 ; Macaulay's de- 
 scription of, 1^6 n. ' 
 
 Hone, assisted by Lamb, 133. 
 
 Hood, T. , his contributions to 7'he 
 London Magazine, 94 k. ; de- 
 scription of a party at, 127 n. 
 
 Hook, Theodore, proposed race 
 with Lamb, 123 n. 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, his lines on Lamb, 
 275. 
 
 IsoLA, Charles, father of Emma, 
 
 126. 
 Emma, 126 ; marriage to 
 
 Moxon, 143. 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis, his generosity 
 to Hazlitt, 195. 
 
 Kean, 84. 
 
 Kelly, Miss, 84, 127 n. 
 
 Kemble, John Wood-uil submitted 
 
 to, 49 ; in Antonio, 54 ; courtesy 
 
 to authors, 55. 
 Knowles, J. S., 87. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, birth, I ; enters 
 Christ's Hospital, 3 ; details of 
 admission, 4 «. ; his character in 
 Maria Howe, 4 n. ; his physique, 
 5 ; at school in Fetter Lane, 6 n. ; 
 recollections of, by Le Grice, 6 
 and lo ; leaves school and enters 
 the South Sea House, 9 ; his 
 sobriquet of Guy, 10 ; supposed 
 to have written Dedication to 
 Falstaff Letters, II; influence of 
 Coleridge, meetings at the Saluta- 
 tion, 13, 14, 15 ; visits the seat 
 of the Plumers', 17; why a Uni- 
 tarian, 18 ; acquaintance wiih 
 Lloyd, 20 ; livmg in Queen 
 
INDEX. 
 
 289 
 
 Street, 22 ; Southey's account of 
 the minage, 22 «. j first passion — 
 the ' fair-haired' maid, 23 ; poems 
 sent to Coleridge, 25 ; mistalce of 
 Talfourd as to their first appear- 
 ance, 25 ; his mother killed, 26 ; 
 takes his sister to live with him, 
 31 ; quarrel with Coleridge, 35 «. ; 
 publishes Blank Verse and Rosa- 
 mund Gray, 40 ; first acquaintance 
 with Southey, 43 ; attacked in 
 The Anti-Jacobin, 45 ; first meet- 
 ing with Godwin, 47 ; begins 
 John Woodvil, 48 ; becomes ac- 
 quainted with Manning, 49 ; re- 
 moves to Chapel Street, visits 
 Coleridge, andmeets Wordsworth, 
 50 ; connection with the Morning 
 Post, 50 and k., 51; moves to 
 Mitre Court, 53 ; assists Godvrin in 
 hisPlay, 54; publishesyoA« Wood- 
 vil, 56 ; becomes acquainted with 
 Hazlitt, S9 ; his gloomy minage 
 described by Mary Lamb, 59 «. ; 
 his Farce, Mr. H., 62; removes 
 to Temple Lane, 67 ; visits Haz- 
 litt, 68 ; publishes Adventures of 
 Ulysses and Specimens, 69; at- 
 tacked in the Quarterly, 70; 
 reviews Wordsworth's^^famow, 
 72 ; fond of writing epigrams, 73 ; 
 description of,byTalfourd(i8i5), 
 75 ; meets T. Moore, 77 «. ; 
 his supper parties, 78 ; moves to 
 Russell Street, 83 ; his new ac- 
 quaintances, 84; removes to Dal- 
 ston, 87 ; prejudicial effect of the 
 suppers, etc., 88 n. ; contributes 
 to The London Magazine, 89 ; 
 honorarium for contributions, 95 
 n. ; sketched by Procter, 96 n. ; 
 visits Paris, 114 and «. ; publishes 
 Essays of Elia, 117; offended by 
 Southey's article, 117; moves to 
 Islington, 121 ; letter to Southey 
 and reconciliation, 125 ; retires 
 from the India House, 131 ; his 
 
 pension, 131 «.; his friends doubt- 
 ful as to the result, 131 «. ; retires 
 to Enfield, 133 ; proposal for a 
 second series of Selections, 134; 
 tries living in London but returns 
 to Enfield, 138 ; publishes 'Album 
 Verses,' 139; affectionate letter 
 to Coleridge, 142 ; removes to 
 Edmonton, 143 ; letters on Miss 
 Isola's marriage, 143; grief at the 
 death of Coleridge, 147 ; his 
 Wednesday nights, 149 ; his 
 friends and companions, 165 ; 
 dines at Talfourd's, 216 ; the 
 accident which led to his death, 
 
 219 ; account of his last moments, 
 
 220 n. ; character analysed, 237 ; 
 devotion to his sister, 238 ; his 
 liberality, Z43 ; eccentric wildness 
 of his mirth, 247 ; religious opin- 
 ions, 250 ; collection of his jests, 
 256 ». ; his single frailty, 258 ; 
 his literary tastes, 268 ; indiffer- 
 ence to Byron's poetry, 268 ; and 
 to Shelley, 268 ; indifference to 
 Scott's novels, 269 ; admires 
 Frankenstein, 269; Mr. Forster's 
 character of, 276 ; described by 
 Forster, 282 ; his grief for Cole- 
 ridge, 284. 
 
 Lamb, John, Charles Lamb's father, 
 attendant to Mr. Salt, i ; de- 
 scribed as Lovel, 2 ; specimens of 
 his poetry, 2 ; his death, 30. 
 
 J. , brother of Charles, Procter's 
 
 impression of him, 30 n. ; death, 
 88 ». 
 
 Mary, kills her mother, 26 ; 
 
 allowed to remain with her 
 brother, 31 ; defends Charles from 
 the charge of stinginess, 51 k. ; 
 her opinion of husbands, 52 n. ; 
 her sad description of their home, 
 59 n. ; description of the rooms 
 in Temple Lane, 67 ; her repin- 
 ine;s at Dalston, 88 n. ; seized 
 with insanity on her way to Paris, 
 U 
 
290 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 114; her pun, 130 n. ; increase 
 of her malady, 143 ; points cut a 
 spot for her brother's grave, 220; 
 her confession to Lloyd of her 
 feelings, 222 ; asylum in which 
 she was confined, 223 ; Hazlitt's 
 opinion of, 223 ; her delusions, 
 224; specimens of her letters, 
 225 ; her letters to Miss Stoddart 
 and Miss Wordsworth, 228 ; 
 Landor's admiration for a touch 
 in 'Mrs. Leicester's School,' 228 ; 
 her last days, 233 ; death and 
 funeral, 236. 
 
 Mrs., C. Lamb's mother de- 
 scribed, 3 ; her children, 3. 
 
 Landor, W. S., his contributions to 
 TAe London Magazine, 94 n. ; 
 his lines to Mary Lamb, 234. 
 
 Le Grice, his description of Laihb, 
 6. 
 
 Leishman, Mrs., Lamb's landlady 
 at Enfield, 138 «. 
 
 Liston, Lamb writes his memoir, 
 130. 
 
 Lloyd, C, introduced to Lamb, 20 ; 
 influence of Macready's acting on, 
 86 and n. ; his meeting Charles 
 and Mary on their way to the 
 madhouse, 241. 
 
 Lockhart, his quarrel with John 
 Scott, 92. 
 
 Loffl, Capel, his initials often con- 
 founded with those of Lamb, 
 
 13s »• 
 London Magazine, The, account of, 
 and its contributors, 90. 
 
 Maceeady, influence of his acting 
 on C. Lloyd, 86 ; recognising 
 Wain Wright in prison, 113 «. 
 
 Manning, his first acquaintance with 
 Lamb, 49 ; his death, 214, 
 
 Moore, T. , impression made on, by 
 Lamb, 'JJ n. 
 
 Moxon, Lamb's friendship with, 133; 
 his verses to Mary Lamb, 235. 
 
 Munden, 84 ; Lamb at his benefit, 
 
 129. 
 Museum, British, Lamb's ticket for, 
 
 147 «. 
 
 Napoleon, Hazlitt's Life of, 186. 
 Ollier, C, Author oiMesillia, 85. 
 
 ' Pantisocracy,' the, 16 n. 
 
 Poetry for Children, published, 66. 
 
 Poole, John, hil contributions to 
 The London Magazine, 94 «. 
 
 Procter, B. W., recollections of The 
 London Magazine, 93 «. ; descrip- 
 tion of Lamb's Wednesday even- 
 ings, 155 ; Lamb's offer to, 244 
 and «. ; collection of Lamb's 
 jests, 259. 
 
 Quakeress, Young, of Pentonville, 
 
 58. 
 Quincey, De, contributions to The 
 
 London Magazine, 94 n. 
 
 Reflector, The, Lamb a contributor 
 to, 70. 
 
 Reynolds, H. J., contributing to 
 Tlie London Magazine, 94. 
 
 Rickman, Mr., 215. 
 
 Robinson, H. Crabb, his description 
 of Mary Lamb's state when in 
 Temple Lane, 68 «. ; kindness 
 to Mary Lamb, 233 ; account of 
 Mary Lamb's funeral, 234 ; col- 
 lection of Lamb's jests, 261. 
 
 Rosamund Gray, published, 41 ; 
 reviews of, 42. 
 
 Rousseau, J. J., defended by Ilaz- 
 litt, 189. 
 
 'Salutation and Cat' Tavern, 
 13 «• 
 
 Savory, Hester, Poem on, 58. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, Lamb's admira- 
 tion of, 269, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 291 
 
 Scott, Mr. J., Editor of The London 
 Magazine, account of, 90 ; his 
 death in a duel, 92 ». ; his con- 
 tributions to The London Maga- 
 zine, 93 n. 
 
 Shakespeare, Tales from, pub- 
 lished, 66 ; Lamb's share in, 66. 
 
 Siddons, Mrs., as 'Lady Randolph,' 
 21; in 'Antonio,' 54; her ex- 
 clamation on seeing Haydon's 
 picture, 204. 
 
 Southern, H., his contributions to 
 The London Magazine, 95. 
 
 Southey, R., acquaintance with 
 Lamb, 43 ; Lamb's quarrel with, 
 117 ; lines in defence of Lamb, 
 140. 
 
 Specimens of Dramatic Poetry, 
 published, 69. 
 
 Stuart, Dan, Editor of Morning 
 Post, 50. 
 
 Talfourd, SirT. N., his first ac- 
 quaintance with Lamb, 74 ; in- 
 troduced by Lamb to Words- 
 worth, 77 ; names his child after 
 Lamb, 136 ; verses on its death, 
 
 136 «• 
 Thelwall, John, account of, 176. 
 
 'ViRGlNius,' afavourite of Lamb's, 
 87- 
 
 Wainwright, T. G., account of, 
 96 ; specimen of his composition, 
 Io8 «. ; account of, from All the 
 Year Round, won.; described by 
 Lord Lytton in Lucretia, 113 «. ; 
 strange recognition by Macready, 
 
 ii3«- 
 
 Waverley Novels, Lamb's indiffer- 
 ence for, 269. 
 
 Wednesday nights. Lamb's, de- 
 scription of, and the company, 
 
 157- 
 Westword, T., his sketch of Lamb 
 
 at Enfield, 138 ». 
 White, Jem, his Falstaff letters, 
 
 II. 
 Willis, N. P., description of his 
 
 meeting C. and M. Lamb, 127 «. 
 Wilson, Professor, Lamb's meeting 
 
 with, 266 K. 
 Woodvil, John, published, 56 ; re- 
 viewed, 57. 
 Wordsworth, 38 ; review in 
 
 Quarterly by Lamb, 72 ; lines 
 
 on Lamb, 271. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty, 
 at the Edinburgh University Press. 
 
PR 4863.7147892""™"" '""'"'>' 
 liUiiSiiiS,"' Charles Lamb. 
 
 [_^ 3 1924 013 495 217