My Recollections.—Russell Street.—Personal Appearance.—Manner.—
Tendency of Mind.—Prejudices.—Alleged Excesses.—Mode of Life.—Love of
Smoking.—His Lodgings.—His Sister.—Costume.—Reading aloud.—Tastes and
Opinions.—London.—Love of Books.—Charity.—Wednesday Parties.—His
Companions.—Epitaph upon them.

In the year 1817 or 1818 I first became personally acquainted with Charles
Lamb.

This was about the time of his removal from the Temple. It was in the course of the year 1818 that his works had been first collected and published. They came upon the world by surprise; scarcely any one at that time being aware that a fine genius and humorist existed, within the dull shades of London, whose quality very few of the critics had assayed, and none of them had commended. He was thus thrown (waif-like) amongst the great body of the people; was at once estimated, and soon rose into renown.

Persons who had been in the habit of traversing Covent Garden at that time (seven and forty years ago) might, by extending their walk a few yards into Russell Street, have noted a small, spare man, clothed in black, who went out every morning and returned every afternoon, as regularly as the hands of the clock moved towards certain hours. You could not mistake him. He was somewhat stiff in his manner, and almost clerical in dress; which indicated much wear. He had a long, melancholy face, with keen, penetrating eyes; and he walked, with a short, resolute step, city-wards. He looked no one in the face for more than a moment, yet contrived to see everything as he went on. No one who ever studied the human features could pass him by without recollecting his countenance: it was full of sensibility, and it came upon you like a new thought, which you could not help dwelling upon afterwards; it gave rise to meditation, and did you good. This small, half-clerical man was—Charles Lamb.

I had known him for a short time previously to 1818, having been introduced to him at Mr. Leigh Hunt's house, where I enjoyed his company once or twice over agreeable suppers; but I knew him slightly only, and did not see much of him until he and his sister went to occupy the lodgings in Russell Street, where he invited me to come and see him. They lived in the corner house adjoining Bow Street. This house belonged, at that time, to an ironmonger (or brazier), and was comfortable and clean,— and a little noisy.

Charles Lamb was about forty years of age when I first saw him; and I knew him intimately for the greater part of twenty years. Small and spare in person, and with small legs ("immaterial legs" Hood called them), he had a dark complexion, dark, curling hair, almost black, and a grave look, lightening up occasionally, and capable of sudden merriment. His laugh was seldom excited by jokes merely ludicrous; it was never spiteful; and his quiet smile was sometimes inexpressibly sweet: perhaps it had a touch of sadness in it. His mouth was well shaped; his lip tremulous with expression; his brown eyes were quick, restless, and glittering; and he had a grand head, full of thought. Leigh Hunt said that "he had a head worthy of Aristotle." Hazlitt calls it "a fine Titian head, full of dumb eloquence." I knew that, before he had attained the age of twenty years, he had to make his way in the world, and that his lines had not been cast in pleasant places. I had heard, indeed, that his family had at one time consisted of a father and mother and an insane sister; all helpless and poor, and all huddled together in a small lodging, scarcely large enough to admit of their moving about without restraint. It is difficult to imagine a more disheartening youth. Nevertheless, out of this desert, in which no hope was visible, he rose up eventually a cheerful man (cheerful when his days were not clouded by his sister's illness); a charming companion, full of pleasant and gentle fancies, and the finest humorist of his age.

Although sometimes strange in manner, he was thoroughly unaffected; in serious matters thoroughly sincere. He was, indeed (as he confesses), terribly shy; diffident, not awkward in manner; with occasionally nervous, twitching motions that betrayed this infirmity. He dreaded the criticisms of servants far more than the observations of their masters. To undergo the scrutiny of the first, as he said to me, when we were going to breakfast with Mr. Rogers one morning, was "terrible." His speech was brief and pithy; not too often humorous; never sententious nor didactic. Although he sometimes talked whilst walking up and down the room (at which time he seldom looked at the person with whom he was talking), he very often spoke as if impelled by the necessity of speaking—suddenly, precipitately. If he could have spoken very easily, he might possibly have uttered long sentences, expositions, or orations; such as some of his friends indulged in, to the utter confusion of their hearers.

But he knew the value of silence; and he knew that even truth may be damaged by too many words. When he did speak, his words had a flavor in them beyond any that I have heard elsewhere. His conversation dwelt upon persons or things within his own recollection, or it opened (with a startling doubt, or a question, or a piece of quaint humor) the great circle of thought.

In temper he was quick, but easily appeased. He never affected that exemption from sensibility which has sometimes been mistaken for philosophy, and has conferred reputation upon little men. In a word, he exhibited his emotions in a fine, simple, natural manner. Contrary to the usual habits of wits, no retort or reply by Lamb, however smart in character, ever gave pain. It is clear that ill nature is not wit, and that there may be sparkling flowers which are not surrounded by thorns. Lamb's dissent was very intelligible, but never superfluously demonstrative; often, indeed, expressed by his countenance only; sometimes merely by silence.

He was more pleasant to some persons (more pleasant, I confess, to me) for the few faults or weaknesses that he had. He did not daunt us, nor throw us to a distance, by his formidable virtues. We sympathized with him; and this sympathy, which is a union between two similitudes, does not exist between perfect and imperfect natures. Like all of us, he had a few prejudices: he did not like Frenchmen; he shrunk from Scotchmen (excepting, however, Burns); he disliked bankrupts; he hated close bargainers. For the Jewish nation he entertained a mysterious awe: the Jewesses he admired, with trembling: "Jael had those full, dark, inscrutable eyes," he says. Of Braham's triumphant singing he repeatedly spoke; there had been nothing like it in his recollection: he considered him equal to Mrs. Siddons. In his letters he characterizes him as "a mixture of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel." He liked chimney- sweepers—the young ones—the "innocent blacknesses;" and with beggars he had a strong sympathy. He always spoke tenderly of them, and has written upon them an essay full of beauty. Do not be frightened (he says) at the hard words, imposture, &c. "Cast thy bread upon the waters: some have unawares entertained angels."

Much injustice has been done to Lamb by accusing him of excess in drinking. The truth is, that a small quantity of any strong liquid (wine, &c.) disturbed his speech, which at best was but an eloquent stammer. The distresses of his early life made him ready to resort to any remedy which brought forgetfulness; and he himself, frail in body and excitable, was very speedily affected. During all my intimacy with him, I never knew him drink immoderately; except once, when, having been prevailed upon to abstain altogether from wine and spirits, he resented the vow thus forced upon him by imbibing an extraordinary quantity of the "spurious" liquid. When he says, "The waters have gone over me," he speaks in metaphor, not historically. He was never vanquished by water, and seldom by wine. His energy, or mental power, was indeed subject to fluctuation; no excessive merriment, perhaps, but much depression. "My waking life," he writes, "has much of the confusion, the trouble, and obscure perplexity of an ill dream. In the daytime I stumble upon dark mountains."

Lamb's mode of life was temperate, his dinner consisting of meat, with vegetables and bread only. "We have a sure hot joint on Sundays," he writes, "and when had we better?" He appears to have had a relish for game, roast pig, and brawn, &c., roast pig especially, when given to him; but his poverty first, and afterwards his economical habits, prevented his indulging in such costly luxuries. He was himself a small and delicate eater at all times; and he entertained something like aversion towards great feeders. During a long portion of his life, his means were much straitened. The reader may note his want of money in several of his letters. Speaking of a play, he says, "I am quite aground for a plan; and I must do something for money."

He was restless and fond of walking. I do not think that he could ride on horseback; but he could walk during all the day. He had, in that manner, traversed the whole of London and its suburbs (especially the northern and north-eastern parts) frequently. "I cannot sit and think," he said. Tired with exercise, he went to bed early, except when friends supped with him; and he always rose early, from necessity, being obliged to attend at his office, in Leadenhall Street, every day, from ten until four o'clock— sometimes later. It was there that his familiar letters were written. On his return, after a humble meal, he strolled (if it was summer) into the suburbs, or traversed the streets where the old bookshops were to be found. He seldom or never gave dinners. You were admitted at all times to his plain supper, which was sufficiently good when any visitor came; at other times, it was spare. "We have tried to eat suppers," Miss Lamb writes to Mrs. Hazlitt, "but we left our appetites behind us; and the dry loaf, which offended you, now comes in at night unaccompanied." You were sure of a welcome at his house; sure of easy, unfettered talk. After supper you might smoke a pipe with your host, or gossip (upon any subject) with him or his sensible sister.

Perhaps the pipe was the only thing in which Lamb really exceeded. He was fond of it from the very early years when he was accustomed to smoke "Orinooko" at the "Salutation and Cat," with Coleridge, in 1796. He attempted on several occasions to give it up, but his struggles were overcome by counter influences. "Tobacco," he says, "stood in its own light." At last, in 1805, he was able to conquer and abandon it—for a time. His success, like desertion from a friend, caused some remorse and a great deal of regret. In writing to Coleridge about his house, which was "smoky," he inquires, "Have you cured it? It is hard to cure anything of smoking." Apart from the mere pleasure of smoking, the narcotic soothed his nerves and controlled those perpetual apprehensions which his sister's frequent illnesses excited. Of Mary Lamb, Hazlitt has said (somewhere) that she was the most rational and wisest woman whom he had ever known. Lamb and his sister had an open party once a week, every Wednesday evening, when his friends generally went to visit him, without any special invitation. He invited you suddenly, not pressingly; but with such heartiness that you at once agreed to come. There was usually a game at whist on these evenings, in which the stakes were very moderate, indeed almost nominal.

When my thoughts turn backward, as they sometimes do, to these past days, I see my dear old friend again,—"in my mind's eye, Horatio,"—with his outstretched hand, and his grave, sweet smile of welcome. It was always in a room of moderate size, comfortably but plainly furnished, that he lived. An old mahogany table was opened out in the middle of the room, round which, and near the walls, were old, high-backed chairs (such as our grandfathers used), and a long, plain bookcase completely filled with old books. These were his "ragged veterans." In one of his letters he says, "My rooms are luxurious, one for prints, and one for books; a summer and winter parlor." They, however, were not otherwise decorated. I do not remember ever to have seen a flower or an image in them. He had not been educated into expensive tastes. His extravagances were confined to books. These were all chosen by himself, all old, and all in "admired disorder;" yet he could lay his hand on any volume in a moment, "You never saw," he writes, "a bookcase in more true harmony with the contents than what I have nailed up in my room. Though new, it has more aptitude for growing old than you shall often see; as one sometimes gets a friend in the middle of life who becomes an old friend in a short time."

Here Charles Lamb sate, when at home, always near the table. At the opposite side was his sister, engaged in some domestic work, knitting or sewing, or poring over a modern novel. "Bridget in some things is behind her years." In fact, although she was ten years older than her brother, she had more sympathy with modern books and with youthful fancies than he had. She wore a neat cap, of the fashion of her youth; an old-fashioned dress. Her face was pale and somewhat square, but very placid, with gray, intelligent eyes. She was very mild in her manner to strangers, and to her brother gentle and tender always. She had often an upward look, of peculiar meaning, when directed towards him, as though to give him assurance that all was then well with her. His affection for her was somewhat less on the surface, but always present. There was great gratitude intermingled with it. "In the days of weakling infancy," he writes, "I was her tender charge, as I have been her care in foolish manhood since." Then he adds, pathetically, "I wish I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might share them in equal division."

Lamb himself was always dressed in black. "I take it," he says, "to be the proper costume of an author." When this was once objected to, at a wedding, he pleaded the raven's apology in the fable, that "he had no other." His clothes were entirely black; and he wore long black gaiters, up to the knees. His head was bent a little forward, like one who had been reading; and, if not standing or walking, he generally had in his hand an old book, a pinch of snuff, or, later in the evening, a pipe. He stammered a little, pleasantly, just enough to prevent his making speeches; just enough to make you listen eagerly for his words, always full of meaning, or charged with a jest; or referring (but this was rare) to some line or passage from one of the old Elizabethan writers, which was always ushered in with a smile of tender reverence. When he read aloud it was with a slight tone, which I used to think he had caught from Coleridge; Coleridge's recitation, however, rising to a chant. Lamb's reading was not generally in books of verse, but in the old lay writers, whose tendency was towards religious thoughts. He liked, however, religious verse. "I can read," he writes to Bernard Barton, "the homely old version of the Psalms in our prayer-books, for an hour or two, without sense of weariness." He avoided manuscripts as much as practicable: "all things read raw to me in manuscript." Lamb wrote much, including many letters; but his hands were wanting in pliancy ("inveterate clumsiness" are his words), and his handwriting was therefore never good. It was neither text nor running hand, and the letters did not indicate any fluency; it was not the handwriting of an old man nor of a young man; yet it had a very peculiar character—stiff, resolute, distinct; quite unlike all others that I have seen, and easily distinguishable amongst a thousand.

No one has described Lamb's manner or merits so well as Hazlitt: "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 sentences, as he does. His jests scald like tears; and he probes a question with a play upon words. There was no fuss or cant about him. He has furnished many a text for Coleridge to preach upon." (I. Plain Speaker.) Charles was frequently merry; but ever, at the back of his merriment, there reposed a grave depth, in which rich colors and tender lights were inlaid. For his jests sprang from his sensibility; which was as open to pleasure as to pain. This sensibility, if it somewhat impaired his vigor, led him into curious and delicate fancies, and taught him a liking for things of the highest relish, which a mere robust jester never tastes.

Large, sounding words, unless embodying great thoughts (as in the case of Lear), he did not treasure up or repeat. He was an admirer of what was high and good, of what was delicate (especially); but he delighted most to saunter along the humbler regions, where kindness of heart and geniality of humor made the way pleasant. His intellect was very quick, piercing into the recondite meaning of things in a moment. His own sentences were compressed and full of meaning; his opinions independent and decisive; no qualifying or doubting. His descriptions were not highly colored; but, as it were, sharply cut, like a piece of marble, rather than like a picture. He liked and encouraged friendly discussion; but he hated contentious argument, which leads to quarrel rather than to truth.

There was an utter want of parade in everything he said and did, in everything about him and his home. The only ornaments on his walls were a few engravings in black frames: one after Leonardo da Vinci; one after Titian; and four, I think, by Hogarth, about whom he has written so well. Images of quaint beauty, and all gentle, simple things (things without pretension) pleased him to the fullest extent; perhaps a little beyond their strict merit. I have heard him express admiration for Leonardo da Vinci that he did not accord to Raffaelle. Raffaelle was too ostentatious of meaning; his merits were too obvious,—too much thrust upon the understanding; not retired nor involved, so as to need discovery or solution. He preferred even Titian (whose meaning is generally obvious enough) to Raffaelle; but Leonardo was above both. Without doubt, Lamb's taste on several matters was peculiar; for instance, there were a few obsolete words, such as arride, agnize, burgeon, &c., which he fancied, and chose to rescue from oblivion. Then he did not care for music. I never heard a song in his house, nor any conversation on the subject of melody or harmony, "I have no ear," he says; yet the sentiment, apart from the science of music, gave him great pleasure. He reverenced the fine organ playing of Mr. Novello, and admired the soaring singing of his daughter,— "the tuneful daughter of a tuneful sire;" but he resented the misapplication of the theatres to sacred music. He thought this a profanation of the good old original secular purposes of a playhouse.

As a comprehension of all delights he loved London; with its bustle and its living throngs of men and women; its shops, its turns and windings; the cries and noises of trade and life; beyond all other things. He liked also old buildings and out-of-the-way places; colleges; solemn churchyards, round which the murmuring thousands floated unheeding. In particular he was fond of visiting, in his short vacations, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Although (he writes) "Mine have been anything but studious hours," he professes to have received great solace from those "repositories of 'mouldering' learning." "What a place to be in is an old library!" he exclaims, "where the souls of the old writers seem reposing, as in some dormitory or middle state." The odor of the "moth- scented" coverings of the old books is "as fragrant as the blooms of the tree of knowledge which grew in the happy orchard."

An ancient manor-house, that Vanbrugh might have built, dwelt like a picture in his memory. "Nothing fills a child's mind like an old mansion," he says. Yet he could feel unaffectedly the simplicity and beauty of a country life. The heartiness of country people went to his heart direct, and remained there forever. The Fields and the Gladmans, with their homely dwellings and hospitality, drew him to them like magnets. There was nothing too fine nor too lofty in these friends for his tastes or his affection; they did not "affront him with their light." His fancy always stooped to moralize; he hated the stilted attitudes and pretensions of poetasters and self-glorifying artists.

He never spoke disparagingly of any person, nor overpraised any one. When it was proposed to erect a statue of Clarkson, during his life, he objected to it: "We should be modest," he says, "for a modest man." He was himself eminently modest; he never put himself forward: he was always sought. He had much to say on many subjects, and he was repeatedly pressed to say this, before he consented to do so. He was almost teased into writing the Elia Essays. These and all his other writings are brief and to the point. He did not exhale in words. It was said that Coleridge's talk was worth so many guineas a sheet. Charles Lamb talked but sparingly. He put forth only so much as had complete flavor. I know that high pay and frequent importunity failed to induce him to squander his strength in careless essays: he waited until he could give them their full share of meaning and humor.

When I speak of his extreme liking for London, it must not be supposed that he was insensible to great scenery. After his only visit to the Lake country, and beholding Skiddaw, he writes back to his host, "O! its fine black head, and the bleak air at the top of it, with a prospect of mountains all about making you giddy. It was a day that will stand out like a mountain in my life;" adding, however, "Fleet Street and the Strand are better places to live in, for good and all. I could not live in Skiddaw. I could spend there two or three years; but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet Street at the end of that time, or I should mope and pine away." He loved even its smoke, and asserted that it suited his vision. A short time previously he had, in a touching letter to Wordsworth (1801), enumerated the objects that he liked so much in London. "These things," he writes, "work themselves into my mind: the rooms where I was born; a bookcase that has followed me about like a faithful dog (only exceeding him in knowledge) wherever I have moved; old chairs; old tables; squares where I have sunned myself; my old school: these are my mistresses. Have I not enough, without your mountains? I do not envy you; I should pity you, did I not know that the mind will make friends with anything."

Besides his native London, "the centre of busy interests," he had great liking for unpretending men, who would come and gossip with him in a friendly, companionable way, or who liked to talk about old authors or old books. In his love of books he was very catholic. "Shaftesbury is not too genteel, nor Jonathan Wild too low. But for books which are no books," such as "scientific treatises, and the histories of Hume, Smollett, and Gibbon," &c., he confesses that he becomes splenetic when he sees them perched up on shelves, "like false saints, who have usurped the true shrines" of the legitimate occupants. He loved old books and authors, indeed, beyond most other things. He used to say (with Shakespeare), "The Heavens themselves are old." He would rather have acquired an ancient forgotten volume than a modern one, at an equal price; the very circumstance of its having been neglected and cast disdainfully into the refuse basket of a bookstall gave it value in his eyes. He bought it, and rejoiced in being able thus to remedy the injustice of fortune.

He liked best those who had not thriven with posterity: his reverence for Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, can only be explained in this way. It must not be forgotten that his pity or generosity towards neglected authors extended also to all whom the goddess of Good Fortune had slighted. In this list were included all who had suffered in purse or in repute. He was ready to defend man or beast, whenever unjustly attacked. I remember that, at one of the monthly magazine dinners, when John Wilkes was too roughly handled, Lamb quoted the story (not generally known) of his replying, when the blackbirds were reported to have stolen all his cherries, "Poor birds, they are welcome." He said that those impulsive words showed the inner nature of the man more truly than all his political speeches.

Lamb's charity extended to all things. I never heard him speak spitefully of any author. He thought that every one should have a clear stage, unobstructed. His heart, young at all times, never grew hard or callous during life. There was always in it a tender spot, which Time was unable to touch. He gave away greatly, when the amount of his means are taken into consideration; he gave away money—even annuities, I believe—to old impoverished friends whose wants were known to him. I remember that once, when we were sauntering together on Pentonville Hill, and he noticed great depression in me, which he attributed to want of money, he said, suddenly, in his stammering way, "My dear boy, I—I have a quantity of useless things. I have now—in my desk, a—a hundred pounds—that I don't—don't know what to do with. Take it." I was much touched; but I assured him that my depression did not arise from want of money.

He was very home-loving; he loved London as the best of places; he loved his home as the dearest spot in London: it was the inmost heart of the sanctuary. Whilst at home he had no curiosity for what passed beyond his own territory. His eyes were never truant; no one ever saw him peering out of window, examining the crowds flowing by; no one ever surprised him gazing on vacancy. "I lose myself," he says, "in other men's minds. When I am not walking I am reading; I cannot sit and think; books think for me." If it was not the time for his pipe, it was always the time for an old play, or for a talk with friends. In the midst of this society his own mind grew green again and blossomed; or, as he would have said, "burgeoned."

In the foregoing desultory account of Charles Lamb I have, without doubt, set forth many things that are frequently held as trivial. Nothing, however, seems to me unimportant which serves in any way to illustrate a character. The floating straws, it is said, show from what quarter the wind is blowing. So the arching or knitting of the brow is sometimes sufficient to indicate wonder or pride, anger or contempt. On the stage, indeed, it is often the sole means of expressing the fluctuation of the passions. I myself have heard of a "Pooh!" which interrupted a long intimacy, when the pander was administering sweet words in too liberal a measure.

As with Lamb so with his companions. Each was notable for some individual mark or character. His own words will best describe them: "Not many persons of science, and few professed literati, were of his councils. They were for the most part persons of an uncertain fortune. His intimados were, to confess a truth, in the world's eye, a ragged regiment; he found them floating on the surface of society, and the color or something else in the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck to him; but they were good and loving burrs, for all that."

None of Lamb's intimates 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. The only tie that held these last and Lamb together was a long-standing mutual friendship—a sufficient link. None of them ever forsook him: they loved him, and in return he had a strong regard for them. His affections, indeed, were concentrated on few persons; not widened (weakened) by too general a philanthropy. 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 snuff-box; and the game was enlivened by sundry brief ejaculations and pungent questions, which kept alive the wits of the party present. It was not "silent whist!" I do not remember whether, in common with Sarah Battle, Lamb had a weakness in favor of "Hearts." I suppose that it was at one of these meetings that he made that shrewd remark which has since escaped into notoriety: "Martin" (observed he), "if dirt were trumps, what a hand you would hold!" It is not known what influence Martin's trumps had on the rubber then in progress.—When the conversation became general, Lamb's part 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 his earnestness; but I never heard him argue or talk for argument's sake. If he was indifferent to the question, he was silent.

The supper of cold meat, on these occasions, was always on the 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, without reflecting on the abstinence of the rest of the company. Lamb would, perhaps, call out and bid the hungry guest help himself without ceremony. We learn (from Hazlitt) that Martin Burney's eulogies on books were sometimes intermingled with expressions of his satisfaction with the veal pie which employed him at the sideboard. After the game was won (and lost) the ring of the cheerful glasses announced that punch or brandy and water had become the order of the night.

It was curious to observe the gradations in Lamb's manner to his various guests, although it was courteous to all. With Hazlitt he talked 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 familiar; with Manning affectionate; with Godwin merely courteous; or, if friendly, then in a minor degree. The man whom I found at Lamb's house more frequently than any other person was Martin Burney. He is now scarcely known; yet Lamb dedicated his prose works to him, in 1818, and there described him as "no common judge of books and men;" and Southey, corresponding with Rickman, when his "Joan of Arc" was being reprinted, says, "The best omen I have heard of its welldoing is, that Martin Burney likes it." 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 diffident and retiring, yet pronouncing 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 Wild (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, he always spoke of him, with respect, as Mr. Lamb. "He is on the top scale of my friendship ladder," Lamb says, "on which an angel or two is still climbing, and some, alas! descending." The last time I saw Burney was at the corner of a street in London, when he was overflowing on the subject of Raffaelle and Hogarth. After a great and prolonged struggle, he said, he had arrived at the conclusion that Raffaelle 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, Kenney, Godwin, the Burneys, Payne Collier, and others whose names I need not chronicle. I met there, also, on one or 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.

Lamb's old associates are now dead. "They that lived so long," as he says, "and flourished so steadily, are all crumbled away." 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 permitted to out-talk the rest. No one was allowed to hector another, or to bring his own grievances too prominently forward, so as to disturb the harmony of the night. Every one had a right to speak, and to be heard; and no one was ever trodden or clamored down (as in some large assemblies) until he had proved that he was not entitled to a hearing, or until he had abused his privilege. 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 humor was shot out that illuminated the whole evening. Sometimes there was a flight of high and earnest talk, that took one half way towards the stars.

It seems great matter for regret that the thoughts of men like Lamb's associates should have passed away altogether; for scarcely any of them, save Wordsworth and Coleridge, are now distinctly remembered; and it is, perhaps, not impossible to foretell the duration of their fame. All have answered their purpose, I suppose. Each has had his turn, and has given place to a younger thinker, as the father is replaced by the son. Thus Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne, and Webster, and the old Dramatists, have travelled out of sight, and their thoughts are reproduced by modern writers, the originators of those thoughts often remaining unknown. Perhaps One, out of many thousand authors, survives into an immortality. The manner and the taste change. The armor and falchion of old give place to the new weapons of modern warfare—less weighty, but perhaps as trenchant. We praise the old authors, but we do not read them. The Soul of Antiquity seems to survive only in its proverbs, which contain the very essence of wisdom.