Atlantic Monthly | Page 6

himself) until his own great spirit joined his friend. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a sort of mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, 'cleanse his bosom of the perilous stuff that weighed' upon it. In a jest, or a few light phrases, he would lay open the last recesses of his heart. So in respect of the death of Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two or three weeks ago and remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind. He interrupted-himself and them almost every instant with some play of affected wonder, or astonishment, or humorous melancholy, on the words, 'Coleridge is dead.' Nothing could divert him from that, for the thought of it never left him. About the same time, we had written to him to request a few lines for the literary album of a gentleman who entertained a fitting admiration of his genius. It was the last request we were destined to make, the last kindness we were allowed to receive. He wrote in Mr. Keymer's volume,--and wrote of Coleridge."
And this is what he said of his friend: it would be, as Mr. Foster says, impertinence to offer one remark on it:--
"When I heard of the death of Coleridge, it was without grief. It seemed to me that he long had been on the confines of the next world,--that he had a hunger for eternity. I grieved then that I could not grieve. But since, I feel how great a part he was of me. His great and dear spirit haunts me. I cannot think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to him. He was the proof and touchstone of all my cogitations. He was a Grecian (or in the first form) at Christ's Hospital, where I was Deputy-Grecian; and the same subordination and deference to him I have preserved through a life-long acquaintance. Great in his writings, he was greatest in his conversation. In him was disproved that old maxim, that we should allow every one his share of talk. He would talk from morn to dewy eve, nor cease till far midnight; yet who ever would interrupt him? who would obstruct that continuous flow of converse, fetched from Helicon or Zion? He had the tact of making the unintelligible seem plain. Many who read the abstruser parts of his 'Friend' would complain that his works did not answer to his spoken wisdom. They were identical. But he had a tone in oral delivery which seemed to convey sense to those who were otherwise imperfect recipients. He was my fifty-years-old friend without a dissension. Never saw I his likeness, nor probably the world can see again. I seem to love the house he died at more passionately than when he lived. I love the faithful Gilmans more than while they exercised their virtues towards him living. What was his mansion is consecrated to me a chapel.
"CHS. LAMB.
"EDMONTON, November 21, 1834."
* * * * *
Having seen what Charles Lamb says of Coleridge, perhaps the reader would like to see what Charles Lamb says of himself. For he, (though but few of his readers are aware of the fact,) like Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Gibbon, Franklin, and other eminent men, wrote an autobiography. It is certainly the briefest, and perhaps the wittiest and most truthful autobiographical sketch in the language. It was published in the "New Monthly Magazine" a few months after its author's death, with the following preface or introduction from the pen of some unknown admirer of Elia:--
"We have been favored, by the kindness of Mr. Upcott, with the following sketch, written in one of his manuscript collections, by Charles Lamb. It will be read with deep interest by all, but with the deepest interest by those who had the honor and the happiness of knowing the writer. It is so singularly characteristic, that we can scarcely persuade ourselves we do not hear it, as we read, spoken from his living lips. Slight as it is, it conveys the most exquisite and perfect notion of the personal manner and habits of our friend. For the intellectual rest, we lift the veil of its noble modesty, and can even here discern them. Mark its humor, crammed into a few thinking words,--its pathetic sensibility in the midst of contrast,--its wit, truth, and feeling,--and, above all, its fanciful retreat at the close under a phantom cloud of death."
CHARLES LAMB'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
"Charles Lamb, born in the Inner Temple, 10th February, 1775; educated in Christ's Hospital; afterwards a clerk in the Accountants' Office, East-India House; pensioned off from that service, 1825, after thirty-three years' service; is now a gentleman at large;--can remember few specialties in his life worth noting, except that