CHARLES LAMB

"I was born," says Lamb, "and passed the first seven years of my life, in the Temple." These words tell a great part of Lamb's story. No other man except Dr. Johnson gives one such intimate, easy acquaintance with the innermost places of the "city," from Fenchurch Street to Temple Bar. And from no other life do we get so delightful and familiar a glimpse of the literary people of his day-the day of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, De Quincey, and Keats. But the quality which Lamb possesses above all others is the power to give, in his letters, real life and substance to the lesser writers of his day; with him we meet that whole society of strange and fascinating men and see them again moving about the streets of London- such men as Hazlitt, Landor, and Leigh Hunt; Lloyd, the misanthropic poet; H. C. Robinson, the indefatigable diarist; Godwin, the bankrupt philosopher; Tom Hood, "that half Hogarth," as Lamb called him; Haydon, the florid artist; Taylor and Hessey, proprietors of the London Magazine and friends of genius; Moxon, the publisher; the Cowden Clarkes, of Enfield, friends of Keats; Fanny Kelly and Charles Kemble, from the stage; and Talfourd, lawyer, dramatist, and first biographer of Lamb. And how many others, forgotten but for Charles Lamb, come to life at his name! - Barton, the Quaker poet; Thomas Manning, the first Englishman to enter Llassa, Thibet; Valentine Le Grice, friend of boyhood days and brilliant punster; James Kenney,

the dramatist; George Burnett, Pantisocrat, who died in a work-house; Thomas Barnes, editor of The Times; the Burneys, incomparable at whist; and poor George Dyer, kindly, half-mad poet, hugging "his intolerable flannel vestment closer about his poetic loins low infinitely picturesque. Of most of these and of many more Lamb was the intimate friend; by every one he was beloved.

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It is this lovable quality in Lamb, in fact, which is his most striking characteristic. "Val” Le Grice noticed-and every one repeats it because it is so truethat men rarely spoke of Lamb except as "Charles Lamb," and Le Grice found therein a subtle touch of affection. To no other writer can 66 gentle" be more aptly applied.

The quaint humor of Lamb, best seen in his Elia essays, has become proverbial. But many, remembering only jests, think of him far too often as a mere wag, a professional wit. Such persons of course miss the real cause of his fame; they fail to grasp the far deeper humor which plays along the borderland of pathos, the humor which really distinguishes a man in a century. Few men have made more puns, few men have had a more instinctive relish for "excellent fooling; " but Lamb's most genuine humor has a touch of sadness in it; Elia is “full," as Barry Cornwall put it, " of a witty melancholy;" and those who knew Lamb said he was at his best when serious. "No one," says Hazlitt, "ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half a dozen sentences." A volume of anecdotes, however amusing, cannot hide the pathos of his life.

Charles Lamb was born in Crown Office Row in the Temple, London, on February 10, 1775. His father,

John Lamb, was in the service of one Samuel Salt, a "bencher" of the Inner Temple. Of this parent (under the name of Lovel) Charles Lamb gives an account in one of his Elia essays: "He was a man of an incorrigible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and 'would strike.' . . . L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to resemble , possessed a fine turn for humorous poetry-next to Swift and Prior,-moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of natural genius merely; turned cribbage boards, and such small cabinet toys, to perfection; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility; made punch better than any man of his degree in England; had the merriest quips and conceits, and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and inventions as you could desire." Charles Lamb's mother was an Elizabeth Field, of Blakesware, in Hertfordshire; and it is from this connection that Lamb's interest in that county arose, whence his essays on "Blakesmoor in Hertfordshire," "Mackery End," and all the delightful reminiscence of "Grandmother Field." Of the six children only two besides Charles survived infancy : John and Mary, twelve and ten years his seniors. John went early into the South Sea House and practically separated from his family. Of Mary more presently.

Charles was a nervous, imaginative boy. "The nighttime solitude," he says, "and the dark, were my hell. The sufferings I endured in this nature would justify the expression. I never laid my head on my pillow, I suppose, from the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of my life so far as memory serves in things so long ago without an assurance, which realized its own

prophecy, of seeing some frightful spectre." About his education little is known till he was sent, when still a small boy, to the day-school of a Mr. Bird, off Fetter Lane. When he was only seven a place was procured, probably through the efforts of Mr. Samuel Salt, in Christ Hospital School.

The famous "blue-coat" school, attended by Coleridge and Leigh Hunt, has been well described by the latter. "We rose to the call of a bell, at six in summer, and seven in winter. . From breakfast we proceeded to school, where we remained till eleven, winter and summer, and then had an hour's play. Dinner took place at twelve. Afterward was a little play till one, when we again went to school, and remained till five in summer and four in winter. At six was the supper. We used to play after it in summer till eight. In winter we proceeded from supper to bed." The meals Hunt describes as follows: "Our breakfast was bread (half of a three-halfpenny loaf) and water, for the beer was too bad to drink. ... For dinner, we had the same quantity of bread, with meat only every other day. On the other days, we had a milk-porridge, ludicrously thin; or rice-milk, which was better. For supper, we had a like piece of bread, with butter or cheese." Lamb, it seems, was somewhat envied for the hot rolls which were sent in to him and for frequent visits to his home. Otherwise he was subjected to the heroic regimen set forth by Hunt. But there were numerous holidays when the penniless boys, always in their blue coats and yellow stockings, roamed the streets or near-by country in quest of adventure. How they lived and grew, and how the master, James Boyer, ruled with a rough hand, and what friends Charles Lamb made

there, more especially Coleridge, the Le Grice boys, and "Jem" White, immortalized in the Chimney-sweep essay, are not all these things recorded in Lamb's "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" and "Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago"? Of his learning it is sufficient to say that he was a good Latin scholar, knew little Greek, and did not become a "Grecian" (or boy of highest rank), but was made a "Deputy Grecian." His greatest education was in the reading of old and curious literature, for which all through life he had a quaint fondness.

In November, 1789, when he was only fourteen, Charles left school and soon after "went to work." For a short time he was in a Mr. Paice's office; next he was a very humble clerk in the South Sea House, where his brother John worked; finally, in April, 1792, he obtained a position of clerk in the accountant's office of the East India House, and there he stayed for thirtythree years of uncongenial, daily labor.

Soon after Lamb entered the East India House his family moved to Little Queen Street. Those were the times of the rare evenings in the company of Coleridge at the Salutation." Lamb himself had begun to write poetry. His earliest effort was made in 1789, and by 1794 he had taken to it seriously. The immediate cause " of whom nothing

seems to have been "Alice W.

is known except that she has been identified by Canon Ainger with an Ann Simmons who lived near Blakesware, that some of Lamb's earlier sonnets were addressed to her, and that she was probably the dream-wife in his tenderest essay, "Dream-Children," written twenty-five years later.

For six weeks in the winter of 1795-96 Lamb was