Charles Lamb | Page 7

exclusiveness of more pretentious salons. "We play at whist, eat cold
meat and hot potatoes, and any gentleman that chooses smokes." At
these gatherings Mary Lamb moved about observantly looking after her
diverse guests, while Lamb himself, it has been said, might be
depended upon for at once the wisest and the wittiest utterance of the
evening. Here it was that he made his whimsical reproach to a player
with dirty hands: "I say, Martin, if dirt were trumps what a hand you'd
have." And it was on some such occasion, too, that he retorted on
Wordsworth, who had said that the writing of "Hamlet" was not so very
wonderful: "Here's Wordsworth says he could have written 'Hamlet'--if
he had the mind."
[Footnote 3: In Talfourd's "Memorials" of Lamb; in Hazlitt's essay "Of
Persons One would wish to have Seen."]
In the opening years of the century Lamb contributed epigrams and
paragraphs to "The Albion," "The Morning Chronicle," and "The
Morning Post" (thanks to Coleridge's introduction). His latest
contribution to the first-named journal helped to bring about its sudden
demise. One of the latest which was pointed at Sir James Mackintosh
(author of "Vindicæ Gallicæ") may serve as a specimen of the personal
epigram in which Lamb considered himself happiest:
Though thou'rt like Judas an apostate black, In the resemblance one
thing thou dost lack, When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf, He
went away and wisely hanged himself; This thou may'st do at last; yet
much I doubt, If thou hast any bowels to gush out.
Lamb's position after ten years at the India House had no doubt
considerably improved, but he was glad of the opportunity of making
an additional couple of guineas a week as epigrammatist to "The
Morning Post." He did not, however, continue long at the work; it was
too severe a tax to be ever wondering how this, that, or the other person
or event could be hit off in a few lines of copy, and the irksomeness he
felt, combined with the editorial exactions, caused him to give it up. In

1802 came a memorable visit by the Lambs to Coleridge at Keswick, a
visit which resulted in Charles Lamb's thinking kindlier of mountains
than he had hitherto done, without in any way lessening his strong local
attachment to the metropolis. Of the day in which he climbed Skiddaw
he said: "It was a day that will stand out, like a mountain, I am sure, in
my life"; a happy simile which would not have occurred to one who
stood, so to speak, on a familiar footing with mountains.
The life in the Temple was roughly divided into two portions: the first,
at Mitre Court Buildings, extended from the spring of 1801 to that of
1809; then there seems to have been a brief stay of a few weeks at 34,
Southampton Buildings, Holborn, and at the end of the following May
or beginning of June, the Lambs moved into 4, Inner Temple Lane,
which "looks out upon a gloomy churchyard-like court, called Hare
Court, with thin trees and a pump in it.... I was born near it, and used to
drink at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six years old." Here
Lamb and his sister lived until 1817, continuing in their pleasant
weekly evenings to afford a memorable centre for the meeting of
memorable men. At one of these meetings when it was being debated,
whom it was the different members of the company would like best to
meet from among the notable men of letters of the past, Lamb promptly
fixed upon Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville. How many of us in
such a debate to-day would as promptly name Charles Lamb!
During the first half of these years in the Temple, Charles Lamb had
written much that now endears him to us; but little, it is to be feared,
that made the great body of contemporary readers aware of his
existence. In 1806 he essayed dramatic authorship, had had his farce,
"Mr. H.," performed at Drury Lane, had been present on the occasion
of its solitary appearance when it was incontinently damned, and had
himself taken part in the damnatory hissing. At the beginning of 1807
was published the "Tales from Shakspeare," for which he and his sister
were jointly responsible, and for which they received a sum of sixty
guineas; in 1808 came another book for children in "The Adventures of
Ulysses," and in the same year the "Specimens of English Dramatic
Poets Contemporary with Shakspeare."

During the second half of the stay in the Temple--the years at 4, Inner
Temple Lane, which have been regarded as the happiest portion of his
life--Lamb made but slight advance in literary reputation, but he was
already firmly established in