Charles Lamb: A Memoir | Page 6

the air above, the murmur of which, descending, seemed to render the place more lonely. Midway, between the Inner Temple Lane and the Thames, was, and I believe still is, a range of substantial chambers (overlooking the gardens and the busy river), called Crown Office Row. In one of these chambers, on the 18th day of February, 1775, Charles Lamb was born.
He was the son of John and Elizabeth Lamb; and he and his brother John and his sister Mary (both of whom were considerably older than himself) were the only children of their parents. John was twelve years, and Mary (properly Mary Anne) was ten years older than Charles. Their father held the post of clerk to Mr. Samuel Salt, a barrister, one of the benchers of the Inner Temple; a mild, amiable man, very indolent, very shy, and, as I imagine, not much known in what is called "the profession."
Lamb sprang, paternally, from a humble stock, which had its root in the county of Lincoln. At one time of his life his father appears to have dwelt at Stamford. In his imaginary ascent from plain Charles Lamb to Pope Innocent, one of the gradations is Lord Stamford. His mother's family came from Hertfordshire, where his grandmother was a housekeeper in the Plumer family, and where several of his cousins long resided. He did not attempt to trace his ancestry (of which he wisely made no secret) beyond two or three generations. In an agreeable sonnet, entitled "The Family Name," he speaks of his sire's sire, but no further: "We trace our stream no higher." Then he runs into some pleasant conjectures as to his possible progenitors, of whom he knew nothing.
"Perhaps some shepherd on Lincolnian plains,"
he says, first received the name; perhaps some martial lord, returned from "holy Salem;" and then he concludes with a resolve,--
"No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle Name,"
which he kept religiously throughout his life.
When Charles was between seven and eight years of age, he became a scholar in Christ's Hospital, a presentation having been given to his father, for the son's benefit. He entered that celebrated school on the 9th of October, 1782, and remained there until the 23d November, 1789, being then between fourteen and fifteen years old. The records of his boyhood are very scanty. He was always a grave, inquisitive boy. Once, when walking with his sister through some churchyard, he inquired anxiously, "Where do the naughty people lie?" the unqualified panegyrics which he encountered on the tombstones doubtless suggesting the inquiry. Mr. Samuel Le Grice (his schoolfellow) states that he was an amiable, gentle youth, very sensible, and keenly observing; that "his complexion was clear brown, his countenance mild, his eyes differing in color, and that he had a slow and peculiar walk." He adds that he was never mentioned without the addition of his Christian name, Charles, implying a general feeling of kindness towards him. His delicate frame and difficulty of utterance, it is said, unfitted him for joining in any boisterous sports.
After he left Christ's Hospital, he returned home, where he had access to the large miscellaneous library of Mr. Salt. He and his sister were (to use his own words) "tumbled into a spacious closet of good old English reading, and browsed at will on that fair and wholesome pasturage." This, however, could not have lasted long, for it was the destiny of Charles Lamb to be compelled to labor almost from, his boyhood. He was able to read Greek, and had acquired great facility in Latin composition, when he left the Hospital; but an unconquerable impediment in his speech deprived him of an "exhibition" in the school, and, as a consequence, of the benefit of a college education.
The state of Christ's Hospital, at the time when Lamb was a scholar there, may be ascertained with tolerable correctness from his two essays, entitled "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" and "Christ's Hospital five and thirty years ago." These papers when read together show the different (favorable and unfavorable) points of this great establishment. They leave no doubt as to its extensive utility. Although, strictly speaking, it was a charitable home for the sustenance and education of boys, slenderly provided, or unprovided, with the means of learning, they were neither lifted up beyond their own family nor depressed by mean habits, such as an ordinary charity school is supposed to generate. They floated onwards towards manhood in a wholesome middle region, between a too rare ether and the dense and abject atmosphere of pauperism. The Hospital boy (as Lamb says) never felt himself to be a charity boy. The antiquity and regality of the foundation to which he belonged, and the mode or style of his education, sublimated him beyond the heights of the laboring classes.
From the "Christ's