Memoir of Charles Lamb. CHARLES LAMB, though less esteemed as a poet mains on terms of friendship, himself unshaken than as a writer of essays and sketches of human and unseduced by their pernicious example. character, which display extraordinary powers of In 1798, Charles Lamb appeared before the description and observation, is one of the most public, in conjunction with his friend Charles peculiar and original characters of the time. His Lloyd; and the volume which they gave to the poetry is all copied from the Elizabethan era of world was entitled "Blank Verses." A "Tale of England, or rather modelled upon the style of Rosamund Grey and Old Blind Margaret" followthe Elizabethan writers, for his matter is exclu-ed, the same year; but a tragedy entitled "John sively his own; and his way of life, like that of Woodvil," a work of singular power and beauty, the courtiers and literary men around the Maiden which came out in 1801, may be said to have esQueen, is to the present public much of a mystery. tablished the writer's fame. This tragedy has all It is known that he was born in London about the faults and beauties of its author's style, but it the year 1775, educated at the Grammar School never has been popular, it being a great misfortune of Christ's Hospital, and that he spent his years, of the writers of more than one of the schools of up to a very recent period, in fulfilling the duties poetry which have been established and declined of a clerk in the Accomptant-General's office in in England during the last thirty years, that their the India House, an impediment in his speech mannerism has prevented their becoming riveted having incapacitated him for a situation where in the public mind; a sort of stiffness and myshe could have displayed his powers. tery too, in addition, has excluded them from beFrom the earliest time of his life Charles Lamb ing classed among those poets whose verses the showed a strong predisposition for literary pur- simple and wayfaring, the child and the uninsuits. With his fondness for these the active structed, keep perpetually upon their lips. The duties of his situation were never suffered to thousand songs of our writers in verse of past interfere. His friends were nearly all selected time dwell on all tongues, with the Melodies of from authors, and not from individuals employed Moore; but who learns or repeats the cumbrous in business or commerce. In early life his inti- verses of Wordsworth, which require an initiamacies and friendships were principally among tion from their writer to comprehend? Lamb has that class of writers designated as the "Lake written some beautiful poetry, as close as posPoets,"-men who set out with revolutionary sible to the style in which he thinks Beaumont principles in politics, sonnetized regicides, and and Fletcher would write it, or Sir Philip Sidney planned pantisocratic societies in transatlantic or any of the poets of the era on which he dedeserts; and then in a few years apostatized, and lights to dwell, and with the characters of which became the most servile tools of arbitrary power. he loves to fancy himself communing. Not so Charles Lamb. While it does not appear While he continued his acquaintance with that, even for a moment, he went into their wild many of the members of the Lake School, most extremes, so he never to the present hour desert-probably from early association and that noble ed the principles with which he began life, and principle which he avows of setting his face which, at between fifty and sixty years of age, against the too prevalent sin of estimating a man's he has lived to see obtain ground, and fix them-intellect by reference to his political tenets, anselves immutably in the world. Whatever he other school of poetry arose in opposition to that saw of genius in these writers he still admits; of the Lakers. The latter viewed this new school and it is not a little honorable to his charity, with bitter hatred; but though opposed in moral, that with most of his lake acquaintance he re- religious, and political principles to his early companions, Lamb became intimate among and 1 The lake poets were so designated because they af-lives on terms of friendship with most of its memfected solitude and a love of nature, and some of them bers, who have the merit, whatever may be the took up their residence on the Lakes of Cumberland. Southey was their leader. opinion of their doctrines, of far greater honesty and consistency of principle than the Lakers.-ing Shakspeare read one of his scenes to him, Their talents are before the world. To this new hot from the brain." school belonged the late poet Shelley, whose The conversation of Charles Lamb is very preg. lofty powers are unquestionable; Keats, also nant with matter from his extensive reading, parnow deceased; and Leigh Hunt. These were ticularly on those subjects which are his hobbies. generally called the "Cockney" school by their It would be no great difficulty, in this book-makopponents. Their peculiar style of writing is ing age, to compile one out of the conversations getting into desuetude among that portion of the of an evening or two spent in his society. He is community with which it was once popular:- a great humorist, even in his most serious opinwild and theoretic, but displaying talent amidst ions, and displays at times a fund of drollery. In all, the fate of these literary schools is what might everything, however, even in his philosophy and be expected, when they carried so far into ex- his jokes, humanity is paramount; and no man tremes, opinions and systems that overstepped the exists who believes more devoutly in the axiom modesty of nature. Charles Lamb's intrepid re- of Shakspeare, that "there is a soul of goodness sistance to despotism in the republic of letters, in things evil." He is the least obtrusive man in did him infinite honor; and he never would existence, and lives amid the dreams of the past have been forgiven by the "Lakers," had not time. Antiquity is his idol; he cannot fling himhis companionship been too interesting and his self forward into the future, and build his image friendship too honorable, to allow his early as- of poetic glory in an approaching optimism of sociates to forego either in revenge for his liber- things; he is content to think the past good ality. Lamb is independent in property, and enough for his quiet unambitious spirit, and to beyond any interested motives in his conduct; desire to re-embody the dust which he worships. political subserviency he would look upon with All he does is in a calm atmosphere, musing on scorn, for he would purchase nothing with the bygone things. Obscure or dim as these may be, sacrifice of one iota of free thought or expression. they lose none of their charms for him. He disIt was his lofty abhorrence of calculating a wri- likes novelty of every kind, and has no vulgar ter's talents by his political creed, that made artifices or cant about him. To describe an old Charles Lamb alike a contributor to the "Lon-building, portrait, or his school-days at Christ's don Magazine," the "New Monthly," and "Black- Hospital, is his greatest enjoyment. In reading, wood's," though each publication supported opposite political parties. it is the same. Few of the books on which he delights to dwell have been written since the first Besides the poetical works already enumerat- year of the last century. The English authors, ed, Charles Lamb has published, from time to down to the year 1700, are his revel,-not that time,-"Tales from Shakspeare," "The Adven- he is ignorant of the productions of more recent tures of Ulysses," "Specimens of English Dra- writers, but they have not the same hold on his matic Poetry, with Notes, etc." "Essays," and an mind, because they do not belong to his peculiar unsuccessful farce called "Mr. H," brought time, to the day with which his spirit claims kinout at Drury-Lane, in 1806. Having scattered his dred. Over old John Bunyan he will expatiate writings about anonymously in periodical works, by the hour, or on Burton's “Anatomy of Melanit was not until 1818 that the first collection of choly." All around him is tempered with a simthem was made. Lamb is utterly careless of plicity peculiarly his own, and the same thing is fame, and looks upon ambition with the eye of a observable in his manners, for he is remarkably philosopher. His works, though so various, are plain, with somewhat of singularity in his car original, and his essays and criticisms equal to riage. He is a connoisseur in pictures of a peany of modern times; perhaps the first are de- culiar class; but his knowledge of art is con cidedly superior to any that have been produced fined, like his favorite study of poetry, to one by contemporaries. His sketches published under particular line. He is in every sense of the word the signature of "Elia" are charming specimens a "Londoner," and lives among its old localities, of this kind; and his remarks on the works of connecting them with associations of past things, the contemporaries of Shakspeare gave a new which he would not part with for any earthly tone to the criticism of the day, and even were consideration. An old building, a spot in a corner the means of reviving and bringing into general of a street, consecrated by tale or romance, by estimation that great body of dramatists. They real events, departed genius, or lofty character, is introduced the public, as it were, into the very to him fairy-land. literary atmosphere that Shakspeare inhaled.—| Such a temperament may well be supposed to Of Charles Lamb's comprehension of the finest shrink from everything meretricious and gaudy, and subtlest things in a great writer, Leigh Hunt and accordingly Charles Lamb is utterly destisays, that he "would have been worthy of hear-tute of presumption and intrusion, of everything |