CHARLES LAMB. 1775-1834. There are few English authors with whose character and circumstances we may become so closely acquainted as with Charles Lamb's, on account of his habit of self-confession in his essays, his skill and charm as a letter-writer, and his many literary friendships. The first seven years of his life were spent at the Inner Temple, where his father had rooms as clerk and confidential servant to one of the barristers; for the next seven he was a "blue coat boy" at Christ's Hospital, of which he has left us the two accounts given in the following pages. Lamb was passionately fond of London, where he passed nearly all his days, but in Mackery End in Hertfordshire and other essays he has given us delightful glimpses of holiday visits to the country home of his grandmother Field. It was on one of these visits that he fell in love with the "fair Alice" of Dream Children, but this youthful romance was cruelly cut short. There was a strain of mental weakness in the family, and Lamb's mind gave way. Early in 1796 he writes to his schoolfellow and life-long friend Coleridge: "My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and began this, your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. But mad I was!" Hard upon this followed the tragedy which altered the whole course of his life. His much-loved sister Mary, the "Bridget Elia" of the essays, in a sudden fit of insanity, was the cause of her mother's death; on her recovery it was necessary that some one should be responsible for her safe keeping, 1 and to this task Charles devoted the rest of his life. At this time he was earning a small salary as a clerk in the office of the East India Company, and his first efforts in literature, apart from a few sonnets and other short poems, were directed to eking out their scanty income. A Tale of Rosamund Gray, published in 1798, had no great success; he could not get his tragedy, John Woodvil, put on the stage; his comedy, Mr. H., was acted at Drury Lane and failed. He contributed "witty paragraphs" to the morning papers at the rate of "sixpence a joke, and it was thought pretty high too," as he tells us in the essay on Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago. Fortune first smiled upon them in the Tales from Shakspeare, written for children by the brother and sister together, Charles taking the tragedies and Mary the comedies. His Specimens of English Dramatists contemporary with Shakspeare was an important contribution to the criticism of the Elizabethan drama, and his position in the world of letters was now well established. Leigh Hunt, Wordsworth, Southey, Keats, Hazlitt, De Quincey, and many other famous men of the time were among his friends, and much of his leisure was spent in conversation and convivial meetings, from which he sometimes returned, as his sister says, "very smoky and drinky." His ready wit and unfailing kindliness of heart endeared him to his friends, as the charm of his personality and the delicacy of his humour have to an ever-increasing circle of readers. His most characteristic work is to be found in the Essays of Elia, which appeared in the London Magazine from 1820 to 1826. Coleridge's death was a great blow to him and was closely followed by his own. His sister survived him for many years. |