III
CHARLES LAMB
Everything in the end comes back to a question of taste. Why should one prefer a Corona cigar to a "gasper," a turkey to tripe, a magnum of Mumm to a quart of "swipes," crêpe de Chine and georgette to ninon, Gerald du Maurier to a patter comedian in a suburban pantomime, Titian to Kirchner, or a Savile Row suit to a "reach-me-down"?
It isn't only a question of expense or even of comfort; it's more a question of palate; man needs must love the highest when he sees it. We are most of us too dull of vision and too vitiated by gross familiarity with the commonplace and the vulgar to "see" in the true sense of the word.
There are few benefactors so admirable as those who effect an introduction between our insignificant selves and some genius who has the power to translate us into realms undreamt of in our puny imagination.
Among these geniuses Charles Lamb stands out pre-eminently for one most important reason: he wears no august cloak of ceremony to frighten us away; of all great writers he is the most human and the most lovable. Begin by listening to his preface prefixed to The Last Essay of Elia. There you will hear from his own lips the kind of writing he undertakes to give you—"a sort of unlicked, incondite things—villainously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and phrases."
Of himself we read with a grin of delight that "he never cared for the society of what are called good people" ... that "he herded always, while it was possible, with people younger than himself" ... that "his manners lagged behind his years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never sate gracefully on his shoulders."
He is more honest about his weaknesses than any other man of a like fame.
He was certainly not of the "unco' guid," which may have accounted partially for his dislike of Scotsmen, and he affected no indifferences. As a writer he matters just in so far as he felt "the difference of mankind—to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no indifferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste.... I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices ... the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies."