Charles Lamb | Page 6

were my heart.
In his "Sidelights on Charles Lamb," too, Mr. Bertram Dobell rescued a
remarkably interesting testimony "minuted down from the lips of
Coleridge," which shows that the poet came to know Lamb better than
when he sent his provocative message:
Charles Lamb has more totality and individuality of character than any
other man I know, or have ever known in all my life. In most men we
distinguish between the different powers of their intellect as one being
predominant over the other. The genius of Wordsworth is greater than
his talent, though considerable. The talent of Southey is greater than his
genius, though respectable; and so on. But in Charles Lamb it is
altogether one; his genius is talent, and his talent is genius, and his
heart is as whole and one as his head. The wild words that come from
him sometimes on religious subjects would shock you from the mouth
of any other man, but from him they seem mere flashes of fireworks. If
an argument seem to his reason not fully true, he bursts out in that odd
desecrating way; yet his will, the inward man, is, I well know,
profoundly religious. Watch him, when alone, and you will find him
with either a Bible or an old divine, or an old English poet; in such is
his pleasure.
In 1798 was published "A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Poor Blind
Margaret," a story of which Lamb wrote in the following year:
"Rosamund sells well in London, malgré the non-reviewal of it," and in
1798 also, Lloyd and Lamb published a joint volume of "Blank Verse."
It was in the spring of 1801--a pleasant beginning of the new century
for them--that the Lambs, after having had all too frequently to change
their lodgings owing to the "rarity of Christian charity," which objected
to housing a quiet couple because of their affliction, at length found
pleasant residence in 16, Mitre Court Buildings. Writing to his friend,
Thomas Manning--one of the correspondents with whom he was ever
in the happiest vein--Lamb expatiated upon the moving very much in

the style of his later essays:
I am going to change my lodgings, having received a hint that it would
be agreeable, at our Lady's next feast. I have partly fixed upon most
delectable rooms, which look out (when you stand a tip-toe) over the
Thames and Surrey Hills, at the upper end of King's Bench walks in the
Temple. There I shall have all the privacy of a house without the
encumbrance, and shall be able to lock my friends out as often as I
desire to hold free converse with my immortal mind; for my present
lodgings resemble a minister's levee, I have so increased my
acquaintance (as they call 'em), since I have resided in town. Like the
country mouse, that had tasted a little of urban manners, I long to be
nibbling my own cheese by my dear self without mouse-traps and
time-traps. By my new plan, I shall be as airy, up four pair of stairs, as
in the country; and in a garden, in the midst of enchanting, more than
Mahometan paradise, London, whose dirtiest, drab-frequented alley,
and her lowest-bowing tradesman, I would not exchange for Skiddaw,
Helvellyn James, Walter, and the parson into the bargain. O! her lamps
of a night! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, toy-shops, mercers,
hardwaremen, pastry-cooks! St. Paul's churchyard! the Strand! Exeter
Change! Charing Cross, with the man upon a black horse! These are
thy gods, O London! Ain't you mightily moped on the banks of the
Cam? Had you not better come and set up here? You can't think what a
difference. All the streets and pavements are pure gold, I warrant you.
At least I know an alchemy that turns her mud into that metal,--a mind
that loves to be at home in crowds.
Here we have the voice of the best of London-lovers, and here we have
also a hint of the way in which he was finding himself too much
"accompanied"--to use a phrase from one of his unpublished letters. He
frequently chafed against the number of visitors who ate up his day,
and at times had even to resent the way in which an intimate friend
would be over-zealous in entertaining him, when for his own part he
would rather have been alone. One special evening in each week was
set apart for cards and conversation, and those occasions are perhaps
among the best remembered features of early nineteenth-century
literary life. Representative evenings will be found described in various

works.[3] The company was not limited to literary folk, though many
notable men of letters were to be met there, along with humbler friends,
for the Lambs were catholic in their friendships, and had nothing of the