| CHARLES LAMB. | 47 |
I’m afraid it must not be concluded that Lamb gained in personal comfort and happiness by the change
of life consequent on his removal from London. It is true he got rid of all those visitors
who sought him only for his oddity or his reputation, and retained those only between whom
and himself there could be any real interchange of intellect and affection. But it may be
doubted whether the former were not more necessary to him than the latter;—for it was with
the poor and lowly (whether in spirit or in purse) that Lamb chiefly
sympathized, and with them he could hold communion only in the busy scenes of metropolitan
life; and that communion, either in imagination or in fact, was necessary to the due
exercise and healthy tone of his mind. The higher class of communion he could at all times
| 48 | CHARLES LAMB. |
In fact, Lamb’s retirement, first from the pleasant monotony of a public office, and afterwards from the busy idleness of his beloved London, was the crowning one of those self-sacrifices which he was ever ready to make at the shrine of human affection; sacrifices not the less noble and beautiful that they were submitted to with an ill grace; for what sacrifices are those which it costs us nothing to make? It was for the greater security of his sister’s health that Lamb retired from London; and, in doing so, he as much offered himself a sacrifice for her well-being as the martyrs and heroes of other times did for their religion or their country.
And why should the truth be concealed on this point? “The
country” was to Lamb precisely what London is
to thoroughly country people born and bred,—who, however they may long to see it for the
first time, and are lost in a week’s empty ad-
| CHARLES LAMB. | 49 |
| 50 | CHARLES LAMB. |
* At Christ’s Hospital, where he was contemporary with Coleridge, and where their life-long friendship commenced. † He was a clerk in the India House for that period, but before I knew him had retired on half-pay. |
| CHARLES LAMB. | 51 |
“Auburn, loveliest village of the plain.” |
To him, the tide of human life that flowed through Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill, was worth all the Wyes and Yarrows in the universe; there were, to his thinking, no “Green Lanes” to compare with Fetter Lane or St Bride’s; no Garden like Covent Garden; and the singing of all the feathered tribes of the air, “grated harsh discord” in his ear, attuned as it was only to the drone or squall of the London ballad-singer, the grinding of the hand-organ, and the nondescript “London cries,” set to their cart-wheel accompaniments.
And yet, when Lamb lived in the
country,
| 52 | CHARLES LAMB. |
There was another inducement to these long walks. In whatever direction they lay, Lamb always saw at the end of them the pleasant vision of a foaming pot of ale or porter, which was always liked the better for being quaffed
“In the worst inn’s worst room.” |
The reader, who has accompanied me thus far in my personal recollections of
Charles Lamb, will not object to my dwelling for
a few moments on a habit of his latter years,
| CHARLES LAMB. | 53 |
The truth is, that as “to the pure, all is pure,” so to the wise and good, all is wise and good. Now, there never was a wiser and better man than Charles Lamb, and the habit to which I am about to refer more definitely than in the above passage, was one of the wisest to which he addicted himself; and if it now and then lapsed into folly, what is the merely human wisdom which does not sometimes do the like?
When Lamb was about to accompany a
parting guest half a mile, or half a dozen miles on his way to town (which was his almost
constant practice), you could always see that his sister had rather he stayed at home; and
her last salutation was apt to be—“Now, Charles, you’re
not going to take any ale?” “No, no,” was his more than
half-impatient reply. Now, this simple question, and its simple reply, form the text on
which I ask leave to preach my little
| 54 | CHARLES LAMB. |
The truth, then, is, that Lamb’s excellent sister, in her over-anxious and affectionate care in
regard to what she looked at too exclusively as a question of bodily
health, endeavoured latterly to restrict her brother too much in the use—for to the abuse
he was never addicted—of those artificial stimuli which were to a certain extent
indispensable to the healthy tone of his mental condition. To keep him from the chance of
being ill, she often kept him from the certainty of being well and happy—not to mention the
keeping others from partaking in the inestimable results of that health and happiness. I
have listened delightedly to the intellectual Table Talk of a large proportion of the most
distinguished conversers of the day, and have ever found it, as a rule, to be infinitely
more deeply imbued with wisdom, and the virtues which spring from wisdom, and infinitely
more capable of impressing and generating these, than the written
words of the same teachers. But I have no recollection of any such colloquies that have
left such delightful
| CHARLES LAMB. | 55 |
No really good converser, who duly appreciates the use and virtue of that noble faculty, ever talks for the pleasure of talking, or in the absence of some external stimulus to the act. He talks wisely and eloquently only because he thinks and feels wisely and eloquently, and he is always fonder of listening than of talking. He talks chiefly that he may listen, not listens merely that he may talk.
Now Charles Lamb, who, when present
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But it was a very different case with regard to the little world of friends and intimates that his social and intellectual qualities had gathered about him. When with them, it was always as pleasant and easy for him to talk as it was to listen; but never more so; for the truth is, he did not care much even about them, so far as related to any pressing desire or necessity for their admiration or appreciation of his mental parts or acquirements: so that latterly nothing enabled or rather induced him to talk at all but that artificial stimulus which for a time restored to him his youth, and chased away that spirit of indifference which had pervaded the whole of his moral being during the last ten years of his life.
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In the country, too, this mental apathy and indifference gathered double weight and strength by the absence of any of those more legitimate means of resisting them, which were always at hand in London: for Lamb was not, as I have hinted, among those fortunate persons who
“Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything:” |
The reader must not for a moment suppose, from anything I have now said, that Charles Lamb was in the habit of indulging in that “inordinate cup” which is so justly said to be “unblest, and its ingredient a devil.” My very object and excuse in alluding to the subject has been to show that precisely the reverse was the case—that the cup in which he indulged was a blessing one, no less to himself than to others, and that for both parties “its ingredient” was an angel.
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