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After the inquest, Mary Lamb was placed in a lunatic asylum, where, after a short time, she recovered her serenity. A rapid recovery after violent madness is not an unusual mark of the disease; it being in cases of quiet, inveterate insanity, that the return to sound mind is more gradual and slow. The recovery, however, was only temporary in her case. She was throughout her life subject to frequent recurrences of the same disease. At one time her brother Charles writes, "Poor Mary's disorder so frequently recurring has made us a sort of marked people." At another time he says, "I consider her as perpetually on the brink of madness." And so, indeed, she continued during the remainder of her life; and she lived to the age of eighty-two years.

Charles was now left alone in the world. His father was imbecile; his sister insane; and his brother afforded no substantial assistance or comfort. He was scarcely out of boyhood when he learned that the world has its dangerous places and barren deserts; and that he had to struggle for his living, without help. He found that he had to take upon himself all the cares of a parent or protector even before he had studied the duties of a man.

Sudden as death came down the necessary knowledge: how to live, and how to live well. The terrible event that had fallen upon him and his, instead of casting him down, and paralyzing his powers, braced and strung his sinews into preternatural firmness. It is the character of a feeble mind to lie prostrate before the first adversary. In his case it lifted him out of that momentary despair which always follows a great calamity. It was like extreme cold to the system, which often overthrows the weak and timid, but gives additional strength and power of endurance to the brave and the strong.

In about a month after his mother's death , Charles writes, "My poor, dear, dearest sister, the unhappy and unconscious instrument of the Almighty's judgment on our house, is restored to her senses; to a dreadful sense of what has passed; awful to her mind, but tempered with a religious resignation. She knows how to distinguish between a deed committed in a fit of frenzy and the terrible guilt of a mother's murder." In another place he says, "She bears her situation as one who has no right to complain." He himself visits her and upholds her, and rejoices in her continued reason. For her use he borrows books , and gives up his time and all his thoughts to her comfort.

John Lamb, the elder brother of Charles, held a clerkship, with some considerable salary, in the South Sea House. I do not retain an agreeable impression of him. If not rude, he was sometimes, indeed generally, abrupt and unprepossessing in manner. He was assuredly deficient in that courtesy which usually springs from a mind at friendship with the world. Nevertheless, without much reasoning power , he had much cleverness of character; except when he had to purchase paintings, at which times his judgment was often at fault. One of his sayings is mentioned in the essay of "My Relations." He seems to have been, on one occasion, contemplating a group of Eton boys at play, when he observed, "What a pity it is to think that these fine ingenuous lads will some day be changed into frivolous members of Parliament?" Like some persons who, although case-hardened at home, overflow with sympathy towards distant objects, he cared less for the feelings of his neighbor close at hand than for the eel out of water or the oyster disturbed in its shell.

At this time, reckoning up their several means of living, Charles Lamb and his father had together an income of one hundred and seventy or one hundred and eighty pounds; out of which, he says, "we can spare fifty or sixty pounds at least for Mary whilst she stays in an asylum. If I and my father and an old maid-servant can't live, and live comfortably, on one hundred and thirty or one hundred and twenty pounds a year, we ought to burn by slow fires. I almost would, so that Mary might not go into a hospital." She was then recovering her health; had become serene and cheerful; and Charles was passionately desirous that, after a short residence in the lunatic establishment wherein she then was, she should return home: "But the surviving members of her family" , "especially John, who enjoyed a fair income from the South Sea House, opposed her discharge." Charles, however, ultimately succeeded in his pious desire, upon entering into a solemn undertaking to take care of his sister thereafter.

He provided a lodging for her at Hackney, and spent all his Sundays and holidays with her. I never heard of John Lamb having contributed anything, in money or otherwise, cowards the support of his deranged sister, or to assist his young struggling brother.

Soon after this time Charles took his sister Mary to live with himself entirely. Whenever the approach of one of her fits of insanity was announced by some irritability or change of manner, he would take her, under his arm, to Hoxton Asylum. It was very afflicting to encounter the young brother and his sister walking together on this painful errand; Mary herself, although sad, very conscious of the necessity for temporary separation from her only friend. They used to carry a strait jacket with them.

In the latter days of his father's life, Charles must have had an uncomfortable home. "I go home at night overwearied, quite faint, and then to cards with my father, who will not let me enjoy a meal in peace. After repeated games at cribbage" , "I have got my father's leave to write; with difficulty got it: for when I expostulated about playing any more, he replied, 'If you won't play with me, you might as well not come home at all.' The argument was unanswerable, and I set to afresh."

Soon after this, the father, who at last had become entirely imbecile, died; and the pension which he had received from Mr. Salt, the old bencher, ceased. The aunt, who had been taken for a short time to the house of a rich relation, but had been sent back, also died in the following month. "My poor old aunt" , "who was the kindest creature to me when I was at school, and used to bring me good things; when I, schoolboy-like, used to be ashamed to see her come, and open her apron, and bring out her basin with some nice thing which she had saved for me; the good old creature is now lying on her death-bed. She says, poor thing, she is glad she has come home to die with me. I was always her favorite." Thus Charles was left to his own poor resources ; and these remained very small for some considerable time. His writings were not calculated to attract immediate popularity, and the increase of his salary at the India House was slow. Even in 1809 , almost fifteen years later, the addition of twenty pounds a year, which comes to him on the resignation of a clerk in the India House, is very important, and is the subject of a joyful remark by his sister Mary.

The impression made, in the first instance, on Charles Lamb, by the terrible death of his mother, cannot be explained in any condensed manner. His mind, short of insanity, seems to have been utterly upset. He had been fond of poetry to excess; almost all his leisure hours seemed to have been devoted to the books of poets and religious writers, to the composition of poetry, and to criticising various writers in verse. But afterwards, in his distress, he requests Coleridge to "mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind. Never send me a book, I charge you. I am wedded" "to the fortunes of my sister and my poor old father." At another time he writes, "On the dreadful day I preserved a tranquillity, not of despair." Some persons coming into the "house of misery," and persuading him to take some food, he says, "In an agony of emotion, I found my way mechanically into the adjoining room, and fell on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking forgiveness of Heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting her so soon."

A few days later, he says to his friend, "You are the only correspondent, and, I might add, the only friend I have in the world. I go nowhere and see no acquaintance." At this time he gave away all Coleridge's letters, burned all his own poetry, all the numerous poetical extracts he had made, and the little journal of "My foolish passion, which I had a long time kept." Subsequently, when he becomes better, he writes again to his friend, "Correspondence with you has roused me a little from my lethargy, and made me conscious of my existence."

Charles was now entirely alone with his sister. She was the only object between him and God, and out of this misery and desolation sprang that wonderful love between brother and sister, which has no parallel in history. Neither would allow any stranger to partake of the close affection that seemed to be solely the other's right. Doubts have existed whether Charles Lamb ever gave up for the sake of Mary the one real attachment of his youth. It has been considered somewhat probable that Alice W. was an imaginary being--some Celia, or Campaspe, or Lindamira; that she was in effect one of those visions which float over us when we escape from childhood. But it may have been a real love, driven deeper into the heart, and torn out for another love, more holy and as pure: for he was capable of a grand sacrifice. No one will, perhaps, ever ascertain the truth precisely. It must remain undiscovered--magnified by the mist of uncertainty--like those Hesperian Gardens which inspired the veises of poets, but are still surrounded by fable.

In contrast with this apocryphal attachment stands out his deep and unalterable love for his sister Mary. "God love her," he says; "may we two never love each other less." They never did. Their affection continued throughout life, without interruption; without a cloud, except such as rose from the fluctuations of her health. It is said that a woman rises or falls with the arm on which she leans. In this case, Mary Lamb at all times had a safe support; an arm that never shook nor wavered, but kept its elevation, faithful and firm throughout life.

It is difficult to explain fully the great love of Charles for his sister, except in his own words. Whenever her name occurs in the correspondence, the tone is always the same; always tender; without abatement, without change. "I am a fool" "bereft of her cooperation. I am used to look up to her in the least and biggest perplexities. To say all that I find her, would be more than I think anybody could possibly understand. She is older, wiser, and better than I am; and all my wretched imperfections I cover to myself, by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would share life and death with me." This was written in 1805, when she was suffering from one of her attacks of illness. After she became better, he became better also, and opened his heart to the pleasures and objects around him. It was open at all times to want, and sickness, and wretchedness, and generally to the friendly voices and homely realities that rose up and surrounded him in his daily walk through life.

During all his years he was encircled by groups of loving friends. There were no others habitually round him. It is reported of some person that he had not merit enough to create a foe. In Lamb's case, I suppose, he did not possess that peculiar merit; for he lived and died without an enemy.

After the pain arising from the deaths of his parents had somewhat subsided, and his sorrow, exhausting itself in the usual manner, had given way to calm, the story of Lamb becomes mainly an account of his intercourse with society. He was surrounded, during his somewhat monotonous career, by affectionate and admiring friends, who helped to bring out his rare qualities, who stimulated his genius, and who are in fact interwoven with his own history.

One of the earliest of these was his schoolfellow James White. This youth, who at the beginning of this period was his most frequent companion, had great cleverness and abundant animal spirits, under the influence of which he had produced a small volume, entitled "Original Letters of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends." These letters were ingenious imitations of the style and tone of thought of the celebrated Shakespearian knight and his familiars. Beyond this merit they are, perhaps, not sufficiently full of that enduring matter which is intended for posterity. Nevertheless they contain some good and a few excellent things. The letter of Davy giving an account to his master of the death of poor Abram Slender is very touching. Slender dies from mere love of sweet Ann Page; "Master Abram is dead; gone, your worship. A' sang his soul and body quite away. A' turned like the latter end of a lover's lute."

But Lamb had a great regard for Jem White. They had been boys together, school-fellows in Christ's Hospital; and these very early friendships seldom undergo any severe critical tests. At all events, Lamb thought highly of White's book, which he used often to purchase and give away to his friends, in justification of his own taste and to extend the fame of the author. The copy which he gave me I have still. White, it seems, after leaving Christ's Hospital as a scholar, took some office there; but eventually left it, and became an agent for newspapers.

In one of the Elia essays, "The Praise of Chimney-sweepers," Lamb has set forth some of the merits of his old friend. Undoubtedly Jem White must have been a thoroughly kind-hearted man, since he could give a dinner every year, on St. Bartholomew's day, to the little chimney-sweepers of London; waiting on them, and cheering them up with his jokes and lively talk; creating at least one happy day annually in each of their poor lives. At the date of the essay he had died. In Lamb's words, "James White is extinct; and with him the suppers have long ceased. He carried away with him half the fun of the world when he died--of my world, at least. His old clients look for him among the pens; and, missing him, reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholomew, and the glory of Smithfield departed forever."

The great friend and Mentor, however, of Charles Lamb's youth, was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was a philosopher, and who was considered, almost universally, to be the greater genius of the two. It may be so; and there is little doubt that in mere capacity, in the power of accumulating and disbursing ideas, and in the extent and variety of his knowledge, he exceeded Lamb, and also most of his other contemporaries; but the mind of Lamb was quite as original, and more compact. The two friends were very dissimilar, the one wandering amongst lofty, ill-defined objects, whilst the other "clung to the realities of life." It is fortunately not necessary to enter into any comparative estimate of these two remarkable persons. Each had his positive qualities and peculiarities, by which he was distinguishable from other men; and by these he may therefore be separately and more safely judged.

In his mature age Coleridge had a full, round face, a fine, broad forehead, rather thick lips, and strange, dreamy eyes, which were often lighted up by eagerness, but wanted concentration, and were adapted apparently for musing or speculation, rather than for precise or rapid judgment. Yet he was very shrewd, as well as eloquent; was addicted to jesting; and would talk "at sight" upon any subject with extreme fluency and much knowledge. "His white hair," in Lamb's words, "shrouded a capacious brain."

There is some beautiful writing in this fourth scene, which may be read after Mr. Wordsworth's equally beautiful reference to the Olympian gods and goddesses, in the fourth book of the "Excursion," entitled "Despondency Corrected." The last explains more completely than the other the attributes of the deities specially named.

The most elaborate sketches of Coleridge--his great talents, combined with his great weaknesses--may be found in Hazlitt's Essays, "The Spirit of the Age" and "My First Acquaintance with Poets;" and in the eighth chapter of Mr. Carlyle's "Life of John Sterling."

In Lamb's letters it is easy to perceive that the writer soon became aware of the foibles of his friend. "Cultivate simplicity, Coleridge," is his admonition as early as 1796. In another place his remark is, "You have been straining your faculties to bring together things infinitely distant and unlike." Again, "I grieve from my very soul to observe you in your plans of life veering about from this hope to the other, and settling nowhere." Robert Southey, whose prose style was the perfection of neatness, and who was intimate with Coleridge throughout his life, laments that it is "extraordinary that he should write in so rambling and inconclusive a manner;" his mind, which was undoubtedly very pliable and subtle, "turning and winding, till you get weary of following his mazy movements."

Charles Lamb, however, always sincerely admired and loved his old schoolfellow, and grieved deeply when he died. The recollection of this event, which happened many years afterwards , never left Lamb until his own death: he used perpetually to exclaim, "Coleridge is dead, Coleridge is dead," in a low, musing, meditative voice. These exclamations were, as Lamb was a most unaffected man, assuredly involuntary, and showed that he could not get rid of the melancholy truth.

Amongst other men of talent who have sung Coleridge's praises should be named Hazlitt, who knew him in 1798, and has enshrined him in the first of his charming papers, entitled "Winterslow Essays." Hazlitt admits his feebleness of purpose, but speaks of his genius, shining upon his own dumb, inarticulate nature, as the sun "upon the puddles of the road." Coleridge at that time was a Unitarian minister, and had come to preach, instead of the minister for the time being, at Shrewsbury. Hazlitt rose before daylight , and walked from Wem to Shrewsbury, a distance of ten miles, to hear the "celebrated" man, who combined the inspirations of poet and preacher in one person, enlighten a Shropshire congregation. "Never, the longest day I have to live" , "shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of 1798. When I got there , the organ was playing the one hundredth Psalm; and when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text--'And he went up into the mountain to pray, HIMSELF ALONE.' The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind," &c. Coleridge was at that time only five and twenty years of age; yet he seems even then to have been able to decide on many writers in logic and rhetoric, philosophy and poetry. Of course he was familiar with the works of his friend Wordsworth, of whom he cleverly observed, in reply to the depreciating opinion of Mackintosh, "He strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in the distance."

It would be very interesting, were it practicable, to trace with certainty the sources that supplied Charles Lamb's inspiration. But this must always be impossible. For inspiration, in all cases, proceeds from many sources, although there may be one influence predominating. It is clear that a great Tragedy mainly determined his conduct through life, and operated, therefore, materially on his thoughts as well as actions. The terrible death of his mother concentrated and strengthened his mind, and prevented its dissipation into trifling and ignoble thoughts. The regularity of the India House labor upheld him. The extent and character of his acquaintance also helped to determine the quality of the things which he produced. Had he seen less, his mind might have become warped and rigid, as from want of space. Had he seen too much, his thoughts might have been split and exhausted upon too many points, and would thus have been so perplexed and harassed, that the value of his productions, now known and current through all classes, might scarcely have exceeded a negative quantity.

Then, in his companions he must be accounted fortunate. Coleridge helped to unloose his mind from too precise notions: Southey gave it consistency and correctness: Manning expanded his vision: Hazlitt gave him daring: perhaps even poor George Dyer, like some unrecognized virtue, may have kept alive and nourished the pity and tenderness which were originally sown within him. We must leave the difficulty, as we must leave the great problems of Nature, unexplained, and be content with what is self-evident before us. We know, at all events, that he had an open heart, and that the heart is a fountain which never fails.

The earliest productions of Lamb which have come down to us, namely, verses, and criticism, and letters, are all in a grave and thoughtful tone. The letters, at first, are on melancholy subjects, but afterwards stray into criticism or into details of his readings, or an account of his predilections for books and authors. At one or two and twenty, he had read and formed opinions on Shakespeare, on Beaumont and Fletchcr, on Massinger, Milton, Cowley, Isaac Walton, Burns, Collins, and others; some of these, be it observed, lying much out of the ordinary course of a young man's reading. He was also acquainted with the writings of Priestley and Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards; for the first of whom he entertained the deepest respect.

Lamb's verses were always good, steady, and firm, and void of those magniloquent commonplaces which so clearly betray the immature writer. They were at no time misty nor inconsequent, but contained proof that he had reasoned out his idea. From the age of twenty-one to the age of fifty- nine, when he died, he hated fine words and flourishes of rhetoric. His imagination is to be discovered less in his verse than in his prose humor, than in his letters and essays. In these it was never trivial, but was always knit together by good sense, or softened by tenderness. Real humor seldom makes its appearance in the first literary ventures of young writers. Accordingly, symptoms of humor are not to be discovered in Charles Lamb's first letters or poems; the latter, when prepared for publication in 1796, being especially grave. They are entitled "Poems by Charles Lamb of the India House," and are inscribed to "Mary Anne Lamb, the author's best friend and sister."

After some procrastination, the book containing them was published in 1797, conjointly with other verses by Coleridge and Charles Lloyd. "We came into our first battle" "under cover of the greater Ajax." In this volume Lloyd's verses took precedence of Lamb's, at Coleridge's suggestion. This suggestion, the reason of which is not very obvious, was very readily acceded to, Lamb having a sincere regard for Lloyd, who was subject to that sad mental disease which was common to both their families. Lamb has addressed some verses to Lloyd at this date, which indicate the great respect he felt towards his friend's intellect:--

"I'll think less meanly of myself, That Lloyd will sometimes think of me."

This joint volume was published without much success. In the same year Lamb and his sister paid a visit to Coleridge, then living at Stowey, in Somersetshire; after which Coleridge, for what purpose does not very clearly appear, migrated to Germany. This happened in the year 1798.

Charles Lloyd, one of the triumvirate of 1797, was the son of a banker at Birmingham. He was educated as a Quaker, but seceded from that body, and afterwards became "perplexed in mind," and very desponding. He often took up his residence in London, but did not mingle much with society. An extreme melancholy darkened his latter days; and, as I believe, he died insane. He published various poems, and translated, from the Italian into English blank verse, the tragedies of Alfieri. His poems are distinguished rather by a remarkable power of intellectual analysis than by the delicacy or fervor of the verse.

The last time I saw Charles Lloyd was in company with Hazlitt. We heard that he had taken lodgings at a working brazier's shop in Fetter Lane, and we visited him there, and found him in bed, much depressed, but very willing to discuss certain problems with Hazlitt, who carried on the greater part of the conversation. We understood that he had selected these noisy apartments in order that they might distract his mind from the fears and melancholy thoughts which at that time distressed him.

It was soon after the publication of the joint volume that Charles chronicles the different tastes of himself and his friend. "Burns," he says, "is the god of my idolatry, as Bowles of yours." Posterity has universally joined in the preference of Lamb. Burns, indeed, was always one of his greatest favorites. He admired and sometimes quoted a line or two from the last stanza of the "Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn," "The bridegroom may forget his bride," &c.; and I have more than once heard him repeat, in a fond, tender voice, when the subject of poets or poetry came under discussion, the following beautiful lines from the Epistle to Simpson of Ochiltree:

"The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, Till by himsel he learn'd to wander, Adown some trotting burn's meander An' no think't lang."

These he would press upon the attention of any one present , and would bring down the volume of Burns, and open it, in order that the page might be impressed on the hearer's memory. Sometimes--in a way scarcely discernible--he would kiss the volume; as he would also a book by Chapman or Sir Philip Sidney, or any other which he particularly valued. I have seen him read out a passage from the Holy Dying and the Urn Burial, and express in the same way his devotion and gratitude.

Lamb had been brought up a Unitarian; but he appears to have been occasionally fluctuating in a matter as to which boys are not apt to entertain very rigid opinions. At one time he longed to be with superior thinkers. "I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself," are his words. At another time he writes, "I have had thoughts of turning Quaker lately." A visit, however, to one of the Quaker meetings in 1797, decides him against such conversion: "This cured me of Quakerism. I love it in the books of Penn and Woodman; but I detest the vanity of man, thinking he speaks by the Spirit." A similar story is told of Coleridge. Mr. Justice Coleridge's statement is, "He told us a humorous story of his enthusiastic fondness for Quakers when at Cambridge, and his attending one of their meetings, which had entirely cured him."

In 1797 Charles Lamb accompanied Lloyd to a little village near Christchurch, in Hampshire, where Southey was at that time reading. This little holiday seems to have converted the acquaintanceship between Southey and Lamb into something like intimacy. He then paid another visit to Coleridge, who was residing at Stowey.

It must have been shortly after this first visit that Coleridge undertook the office of minister to a Unitarian congregation at Shrewsbury, and preached there, as detailed by Hazlitt in the manner already set forth. In 1798 he took his departure for Germany, and this led to a familiar correspondence between Lamb and Southey. The opening of Lamb's humor may probably be referred to this friendship with a congenial humorist, and one, like himself, taking a strong interest in worldly matters. Coleridge, between whom and Lamb there was not much similarity of feeling, beyond their common love for poetry and religious writings, was absent, and Lamb was enticed by the kindred spirit of Southey into the accessible regions of humor. These two friends never arrived at that close friendship which had been forming between Coleridge and Lamb ever since their school-days at Christ's Hospital. But they interchanged ideas on poetical and humorous topics, and did not perplex themselves with anything speculative or transcendental.

It has been surmised that there was some interruption of the good feeling between Coleridge and Lamb about this period of their lives; but I cannot discern this in the letters that occurred between the two schoolfellows. The message of Coleridge, and the questions in reply, occur in 1798; and in May, 1800, there is a letter from Lamb to Coleridge, and subsequently two others, in the same year, all couched in the old customary, friendly tone. In addition to this, Charles Lamb, many years afterwards, said that there had been an uninterrupted friendship of fifty years between them. In one letter of Lamb's, indeed , it appears that his early notions of Coleridge being a "very good man" had been traversed by some doubts; but these "foolish impressions" were short-lived, and did not apparently form any check to the continuance of their life-long friendship.

It is clear that Lamb's judgment was at this time becoming independent. In one of his letters to Coleridge, when comparing his friend's merits with those of Southey, he says, "Southey has no pretensions to vie with you in the sublime of poetry, but he tells a plain story better." Even to Southey he is equally candid. Writing to him on the subject of a volume of poems which he had lately published, he remarks, "The Rose is the only insipid poem in the volume; it has neither thorns nor sweetness."

The little story of Rosamond Gray was wrought out of the artist's brain in the year 1798, stimulated, as Lamb confesses, by the old ballad of "An old woman clothed in gray," which he had been reading. It is defective as a regular tale. It wants circumstance and probability, and is slenderly provided with character. There is, moreover, no construction in the narrative, and little or no progress in the events. Yet it is very daintily told. The mind of the author wells out in the purest streams. Having to deal with one foul incident, the tale is nevertheless without speck or blemish. A virgin nymph, born of a lily, could not have unfolded her thoughts more delicately. And, in spite of its improbability, Rosamond Gray is very pathetic. It touches the sensitive points in young hearts; and it was by no means without success--the author's first success. It sold much better than his poems, and added "a few pounds" to his slender income.

George Dyer, once a pupil in Christ's Hospital, possessing a good reputation as a classical scholar, and who had preceded Lamb in the school, about this time came into the circle of his familiars. Dyer was one of the simplest and most inoffensive men in the world: in his heart there existed nothing but what was altogether pure and unsophisticated. He seemed never to have outgrown the innocence of childhood; or rather he appeared to be without those germs or first principles of evil which sometimes begin to show themselves even in childhood itself. He was not only without any of the dark passions himself, but he would not perceive them in others. He looked only on the sunshine. Hazlitt, speaking of him in his "Conversation of Authors," says, "He lives amongst the old authors, if he does not enter much into their spirit. He handles the covers, and turns over the pages, and is familiar with the names and dates. He is busy and self-involved. He hangs like a film and cobweb upon letters, or is like the dust upon the outside of knowledge, which should not too rudely be brushed aside. He follows learning as its shadow, but as such he is respectable. He browses on the husks and leaves of books." And Lamb says, "The gods, by denying him the very faculty of discrimination, have effectually cut off every seed of envy in his bosom."

Dyer was very thin and short in person, and was extremely near-sighted; and his motions were often spasmodic. His means of living were very scanty; he subsisted mainly by supervising the press, being employed for that purpose by booksellers when they were printing Greek or Latin books. He dwelt in Clifford's Inn, "like a dove in an asp's nest," as Charles Lamb wittily says; and he might often have been seen with a classical volume in his hand, and another in his pocket, walking slowly along Fleet Street or its neighborhood, unconscious of gazers, cogitating over some sentence, the correctness of which it was his duty to determine. You might meet him murmuring to himself in a low voice, and apparently tasting the flavor of the words.

Dyer's knowledge of the drama may be guessed, by his having read Shakespeare, "an irregular genius," and having dipped into Rowe and Otway, but never having heard of any other writers in that class. In absence of mind, he probably exceeded every other living man. Lamb has set forth one instance of Dyer's forgetfulness, in his "Oxford in the Vacation;" and to this various others might be added, such as his emptying his snuff-box into the teapot when he was preparing breakfast for a hungry friend, &c. But it is scarcely worth while to chronicle minutely the harmless foibles of this inoffensive old man. If I had to write his epitaph, I should say that he was neither much respected nor at all hated; too good to dislike, too inactive to excite great affection; and that he was as simple as the daisy, which we think we admire, and daily tread under foot.

In 1799 Charles Lamb visited Cambridge, and there, through the introduction of Lloyd, made the important acquaintance of Mr. Thomas Manning, then a mathematical tutor in the university. This soon grew into a close intimacy. Charles readily perceived the intellectual value of Manning, and seems to have eagerly sought his friendship, which, he says, , will render the prospect of the approaching century very pleasant. "That century must needs commence auspiciously for me" , "that brings with it Manning's friendship as an earnest of its after gifts." At first sight it appears strange that there should be formed a close friendship between a youth, a beginner, or student in poetry , and a professor of science at one of our great seats of learning. But these men had, I suppose, an intuitive perception of each other's excellences. And there sometimes lie behind the outer projections of character a thousand concealed shades which readily intermingle with those of other people. There were amongst Lamb's tender thoughts, and Manning's mathematical tendencies, certain neutral qualities which assimilated with each other, and which eventually served to cement that union between them which continued unshaken during the lives of both.

Lamb's correspondence assumed more character, and showed more critical quality, after the intimacy with Manning began. His acquaintance with Southey, in the first instance, had the effect of increasing the activity of his mind. Previously to that time, his letters had consisted chiefly of witticisms , religious thoughts, reminiscences, &c., for the most part unadorned and simple. Afterwards, especially after the Manning era, they exhibit far greater weight of meaning, more fecundity, original thoughts, and brilliant allusions; as if the imagination had begun to awaken and enrich the understanding. Manning's solid, scientific mind had, without doubt, the effect of arousing the sleeping vigor of Lamb's intellect.

A long correspondence took place between them. At first Lamb sent Manning his opinions only: "Opinion is a species of property that I am always desirous of sharing with my friends." Then he communicates the fact that George Dyer, "that good-natured poet, is now more than nine months gone with twin volumes of odes." Afterwards he tells him that he is reading Burnet's History of his own Times--"full of scandal, as all true history is."

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