“And—and—and—and many Friends!”

The hesitation in the speech, and the readiness of the illusion, were alike characteristic of the individual, whom his familiars will perchance have recognised already as the delightful Essayist, the capital Critic, the pleasant Wit and Humorist, the delicate-minded and large-hearted Charles Lamb! He was shy like myself with strangers, so that, despite my yearnings, our first meeting scarcely amounted to an introduction. We were both at dinner, amongst the hare’s many friends, but our acquaintance got no farther, in spite of a desperate attempt on my part to attract his notice. His complaint of the Decay of Beggars presented another chance: I wrote on coarse paper, and in ragged English, a letter of thanks to him as if from one of his mendicant clients, but it produced no effect. I had given up all hope, when one night, sitting sick and sad, in my bed-room, racked with the rheumatism, the door was suddenly opened, the well-known quaint figure in black walked in without any formality, and with a cheerful “Well, boy, how are you?” and the bland sweet smile, extended the two fingers. They were eagerly clutched of course, and from that hour we were firm friends.

Thus characteristically commenced my intimacy with C. Lamb. He had recently become my neighbour, and in a few days called again, to ask me to tea, “to meet Wordsworth.” In spite of any idle jests to the contrary, the name had a spell in it that drew me to Colebrooke Cottage[7] with more alacrity[8] than consisted with prudence, stiff joints and a North wind. But I was willing to run, at least hobble, some risk, to be of a party in a parlour with the Author of Laodamia and Hartleap Well. As for his Betty Foy-bles, he is not the first man by many, who has met with a simple fracture through riding his theory-hack so far and so fast, that it broke down with him. If he has now and then put on a nightcap, so have his own next-door mountains. If he has babbled, sometimes, like an infant of two years old, he has also thought, and felt, and spoken, the beautiful fancies and tender affections, and artless language, of the children who can say “We are seven.” Along with food for babes, he has furnished strong meat for men. So I put on my great coat and in a few minutes found myself, for the first time at a door, that opened to me as frankly as its master’s heart; for, without any preliminaries of hall, passage, or parlour, one single step across the threshold brought me into the sitting-room, and in sight of the domestic hearth. The room looked brown with “old bokes,” and beside the fire sate Wordsworth, and his sister, the hospitable Elia, and the excellent Bridget. As for the bard of Rydal, his outward man did not, perhaps, disappoint one; but the palaver, as the Indians say, fell short of my anticipations. Perhaps my memory is in fault; ’twas many years ago, and, unlike the biographer of Johnson, I have never made Bozziness my business. However, excepting a discussion on the value of the promissory notes issued by our younger poets, wherein Wordsworth named Shelley, and Lamb took John Keats for choice, there was nothing of literary interest brought upon the carpet. But a book man cannot always be bookish. A poet, even a Rydal one, must be glad at times to descend from Saddleback, and feel his legs. He cannot, like the Girl in the Fairy Tale, be always talking diamonds and pearls. It is a “Vulgar Errour” to suppose that an author must be always authoring, even with his feet on the fender. Nevertheless, it is not an uncommon impression, that a writer sonnetises his wife, sings odes to his children, talks essays and epigrams to his friends, and reviews his servants. It was in something of this spirit that an official gentleman to whom I mentioned the pleasant literary meetings at Lamb’s, associated them instantly with his parochial mutual instruction evening schools, and remarked, “Yes, yes, all very proper and praiseworthy—of course, you go there to improve your minds.”

And very pleasant and improving, though not of set purpose, to both mind and heart, were those extempore assemblies at Colebrooke Cottage. It was wholesome for the soul but to breathe its atmosphere. It was a House of Call for All Denominations. Sides were lost in that circle, Men of all parties postponed their partisanship, and met as on a neutral ground. There were but two persons, whom L. avowedly did not wish to encounter beneath his roof, and those two, merely on account of private and family differences. For the rest, they left all their hostilities at the door, with their sticks. This forbearance was due to the truly tolerant spirit of the Host, which influenced all within its sphere. Lamb, whilst he willingly lent a crutch to halting Humility, took delight in tripping up the stilts of Pretension. Anybody might trot out his Hobby; but he allowed nobody to ride the High Horse. If it was a High German, one like those ridden by the Devil and Doctor Faustus, he would chaunt

“Gëuty Gëuty

Is a great Beauty,”

till the rider moderated his gallop. He hated anything like Cock-of-the-Walk-ism; and set his face and his wit against all Ultraism, Transcendentalism, Sentimentalism, Conventional Mannerism, and above all, Separatism. In opposition to the Exclusives, he was emphatically an Inclusive.

As he once owned to me, he was fond of antagonising. Indeed in the sketch of himself, prefacing the Last Essays of Elia—a sketch for its truth to have delighted Mason the Self-Knowledge man—he says, “with the Religionist I pass for a Free-thinker, while the other faction set me down for a Bigot.” In fact, no politician ever laboured more to preserve the Balance of Power in Europe, than he did to correct any temporary preponderances. He was always trimming in the nautical, not in the political, sense. Thus in his “magnanimous letter,” as Hazlitt called it, to High Church Southey, he professed himself a Unitarian[9]. With a Catholic he would probably have called himself a Jew; as amongst Quakers, by way of a set-off against their own formality, he would indulge in a little extra levity. I well remember his chuckling at having spirited on his correspondent Bernard Barton, to commit some little enormities, such as addressing him as C. Lamb, Esquire.

My visits at Lamb’s were shortly interrupted by a sojourn to unrheumatize myself at Hastings; but in default of other intercourse I received a letter in a well-known hand, quaint as the sentences it conveyed.

“And what dost thou at the Priory? Cucullus non facit Monachum. English me that, and challenge old Lignum Janua to make a better.