rapid in succession, and the thoughts suggested -saw Lamb smoking the strongest prepaso new, that one destroyed the other, and left ration of the weed, puffing out smoke like only the sense of delight behind. Frequently some furious Enchanter, he gently laid down as I had the happiness of seeing him during his pipe, and asked him, how he had acquired twenty years, I can add nothing from my his power of smoking at such a rate? Lamb own store of recollection to those which replied, "I toiled after it, sir, as some men have been collected by others, and those toil after virtue." Partly to shun the I will abstain from repeating, so vapid temptations of society, and partly to preserve would be their effect when printed com- his sister's health, he fled from London, pared to that which they produced when, where his pleasures and his heart were, and stammered out, they gave to the moment buried himself in the solitude of the country, its victory. to him always dismal. He would even deny himself the gratification of meeting Wordsworth or Southey, or use it very sparingly during their visits to London, in order that the accompaniments of the table might not entice him to excess. And if sometimes, after miles of solitary communing with his own sad thoughts, the village inn did invite him to quaff a glass of sparkling ale; and if when his retreat was lighted up with the presence of some old friend, he was unable to refrain from the small portion which was too much for his feeble frame, let not the stoutlimbed and the happy exult over the consequence! Drinking with him, except so far as it cooled a feverish thirst, was not a sensual, but an intellectual pleasure; it lighted up his fading fancy, enriched his humour, and impelled the struggling thought or beautiful image into day; and perhaps by requiring for him some portion of that allowance which he extended to all human frailties, endeared him the more to those who so often received, and were delighted to bestow it.

It cannot be denied or concealed that Lamb's excellences, moral and intellectual, were blended with a single frailty; so intimately associating itself with all that was most charming in the one, and sweetest in the other, that, even if it were right to withdraw it wholly from notice, it would be impossible without it to do justice to his virtues. The eagerness with which he would quaff exciting liquors, from an early period of life, proved that to a physical peculiarity of constitution was to be ascribed, in the first instance, the strength of the temptation with which he was assailed. This kind of corporeal need; the struggles of deep thought to overcome the bashfulness and the impediment of speech which obstructed its utterance; the dull, heavy, irksome labours which hung heavy on his mornings, and dried up his spirits; and still more, the sorrows which had environed him, and which prompted him to snatch a fearful joy; and the unbounded craving after sympathy with human feelings, conspired to disarm his power of resisting when the means of indulgence were actually before him. Great exaggerations have been prevalent on this subject, countenanced, no doubt, by the "Confessions" which, in the prodigality of his kindness, he contributed to his friend's collection of essays and authorities against the use of spirituous liquors; for, although he had rarely the power to overcome the temptation when presented, he made heroic sacrifices in flight. His final abandonment of tobacco, after many ineffectual attempts, was one of these-a princely sacrifice. He had loved smoking, "not wisely, but too well," for he had been content to use the coarsest varieties of the " great plant." When Dr. Parr,-who took only the finest tobacco, used to half fill his pipe with salt, and smoked with a philosophic calmness,

Lamb's indulgence to the failings of others could hardly indeed be termed allowance; the name of charity is too cold to suit it. He did not merely love his friends in spite of their errors, but he loved them errors and all; so near to him was everything human. He numbered among his associates, men of all varieties of opinion-philosophical, religious, and political—and found something to like, not only in the men themselves, but in themselves as associated with their theories and their schemes. In the high and calm, but devious speculations of Godwin; in the fierce hatreds of Hazlitt; in the gentle and glorious mysticism of Coleridge; in the sturdy opposition of Thelwall to the government; in Leigh Hunt's softened and fancy-streaked patriotism; in the gallant Toryism of Stod

dart; he found traits which made the indi- his school-days or the joyous associate of his viduals more dear to him. When Leigh convivial hours, and he did not even make Hunt was imprisoned in Cold Bath Fields penitence or reform a condition of his regard. for a libel, Lamb was one of his most constant Perhaps he had less sympathy with phivisitors and when Thelwall was striving to lanthropic schemers for the improvement bring the "Champion" into notice, Lamb of the world than with any other class of was ready to assist him with his pen, and to men; but of these he numbered two of the fancy himself, for the time, a Jacobin.* In greatest, Clarkson the destroyer of the this large intellectual tolerance, he resembled slave-trade, and Basil Montague the conProfessor Wilson, who, notwithstanding his stant opponent of the judicial infliction of own decided opinions, has a compass of mind death; and the labours of neither have been large enough to embrace all others which in vain! have noble alliances within its range. But To those who were not intimately acquainted not only to opposite opinions, and devious with Lamb, the strong disinclination to conhabits of thought, was Lamb indulgent; he template another state of being, which he discovered "the soul of goodness in things sometimes expressed in his serious conversaevil" so vividly, that the surrounding evil tion, and which he has solemnly confessed in disappeared from his mental vision. Nothing his "New Year's Eve," might cast a doubt -no discovery of error or of crime-could on feelings which were essentially pious. divorce his sympathy from a man who had once engaged it. He saw in the spendthrift, the outcast, only the innocent companion of

The following little poem-quite out of Lamb's usual style was written for that journal.

THE THREE GRAVES.

Close by the ever-burning brimstone beds,
Where Bedloe, Oates, and Judas hide their heads,
I saw great Satan like a sexton stand,
With his intolerable spade in hand,
Digging three graves. Of coffin-shape they were,
For those who, coffinless, must enter there,

With unblest rites. The shrouds were of that cloth
Which Clotho weaved in her blackest wrath;
The dismal tint oppress'd the eye, that dwelt

Upon it long, like darkness to be felt.

The pillows to these baleful beds were toads,
Large, living, livid, melancholy loads,

Whose softness shock'd. Worms of all monstrous size
Crawl'd round; and one upcoil'd, which never dies,

A doleful bell, inculcating despair,

Was always ringing in the heavy air.

And all around the detestable pit

Strange headless ghosts and quarter'd forms did flit
Rivers of blood from living traitors spilt,

By treachery stung from poverty to guilt.

;

I ask'd the fiend, for whom those rites were meant?
"These graves," quoth he, "when life's brief oil is
spent,

When the dark night comes, and they're sinking bed

wards,

I mean for Castles, Oliver, and Edwards."

+ Lamb only once met that remarkable person,-who has probably more points of resemblance to him than any other living poet,-and was quite charmed with him. They walked out from Enfield together, and strolled happily a long summer's day, not omitting, however, a call for a refreshing draught. Lamb called

for a pot of ale or porter-half of which would have been his own usual allowance; and was delighted to hear the Professor, on the appearance of the foaming tankard, say reproachfully to the waiter, "And one for me!"

The same peculiarity of nature which attached him to the narrow and crowded streets, in preference to the mountain and the glen— which made him loth to quit even painful circumstances and unpleasant or ill-timed company; the desire to seize and grasp all that was nearest, bound him to earth, and prompted his sympathies to revolve within a narrow circle. Yet in that very power of adhesion to outward things, might be discerned the strength of a spirit destined to live beyond them. Within the contracted sphere of his habits and desires, he detected the subtlest essences of Christian kindliness, shed over it a light from heaven, and peopled it with divine fancies and

"Thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality."

Although he numbered among his associates freethinkers and sceptics, he had a great dislike to any profane handling of sacred subjects, and always discouraged polemical discussion. One evening, when Irving and Coleridge were in company, and a young gentleman had spoken slightingly of religion, Lamb remained silent; but when the party broke up, he said to the youth who had thus annoyed his guests, "Pray, did you come here in a hat, sir, or in a turban ?"

The range of Lamb's reading was varied, but yet peculiar. He rejoiced in all old English authors, but cared little for the moderns, except one or two; and those whom he loved as authors because they were his

made some amends for his indifference to Shelley, by his admiration of Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein," which he thought the most

being out of nature which had ever been effected. For the Scotch novels he cared very little, not caring to be puzzled with new plots, and preferring to read Fielding, and Smollett, and Richardson, whose stories were familiar, over and over again, to being worried with the task of threading the maze of fresh adventure. But the good-naturedness of Sir Walter to all his contemporaries won his admiration, and he heartily rejoiced in the greatness of his fame, and the rich rewards showered upon him, and desired they might accumulate for the glory of literature and the triumph of kindness. He was never introduced to Sir Walter; but he used to speak with gratitude and pleasure of the circumstances under which he saw him once in Fleet-street. A man, in the dress of a mechanic, stopped him just at Inner Temple-gate, and said, touching his hat, "I beg your pardon, sir, but perhaps you would like to see Sir Walter Scott; that is he just crossing the road;" and Lamb stammered out his hearty thanks to his truly humane informer.

friends. Attached always to things of flesh renders our own passions and frailties and and blood rather than to "the bare earth virtues strange to us; presents them at a and mountains bare, and grass in the green distance in splendid masquerade; exalts them field," he chiefly loved the great dramatists, into new and unauthorised mythology, and whose beauties he supported, and sometimes crystallises all our freshest loves and mantheightened, in his suggestive criticisms. ling joys into clusters of radiant fancies. He While he enjoyed Wordsworth's poetry, especially "The Excursion," with a love which grew upon him from his youth, he would repeat some of Pope's divine compli- extraordinary realisation of the idea of a ments, or Dryden's lines, weighty with sterling sense or tremendous force of satire, with eyes trembling into tears. The comedies of Wycherley, and Congreve, and Farquhar, were not to him gross and sensual, but airy, delicate creations, framed out of coarse materials it might be, but evaporating in wit and grace, harmless effusions of the intellect and the fancy. The ponderous dulness of old controversialists, the dead weight of volumes of once fierce dispute, of which time had exhausted the venom, did not appal him. He liked the massive reading of the old Quaker records, the huge density of old schoolmen, better than the flippancy of modern criticism. If you spoke of Lord Byron, he would turn the subject by quoting the lines descriptive of his namesake in Love's Labour Lost-"Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Byron," &c.—for he could find nothing to revere or love in the poetry of that extraordinary but most uncomfortable poet; except the apostrophe to Parnassus, in which he exults in the sight of the real mountain instead of the mere poetic image. All the Laras, and Giaours, and Childe Of his own writings it is now superfluous Harolds, were to him but "unreal mockeries," to speak; for, after having encountered long -the phantasms of a feverish dream,-forms derision and neglect, they have taken their which did not appeal to the sympathies of place among the classics of his language. mankind, and never can find root among They stand alone, at once singular and them. Shelley's poetry, too, was icy cold to delightful. They are all carefully elaborated; him; except one or two of the minor poems, yet never were works written in a higher in which he could not help admiring the defiance to the conventional pomp of style. exquisite beauty of the expression; and the A sly hit, a happy pun, a humorous com"Cenci," in which, notwithstanding the bination, lets the light into the intricacies painful nature of the subject, there is a of the subject, and supplies the place of warmth and passion, and a correspondent ponderous sentences. As his serious consimplicity of diction, which prove how versation was his best, so his serious writing mighty a poet the author would have become is far preferable to his fantastical humours, had he lived long enough for his feelings to cheering as they are, and suggestive ever have free discourse with his creative power. as they are of high and invigorating thoughts. Responding only to the touch of human Seeking his materials, for the most part, in affection, he could not bear poetry which, the common paths of life,-often in the instead of making the whole world kin, humblest, he gives an importance to every