He was able to
read Greek, and had acquired great facility in Latin composition, when he
left the Hospital; but an unconquerable impediment in his speech deprived
him of an "exhibition" in the school, and, as a consequence, of the
benefit of a college education.
The state of Christ's Hospital, at the time when Lamb was a scholar there,
may be ascertained with tolerable correctness from his two essays,
entitled "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" and "Christ's Hospital five
and thirty years ago." These papers when read together show the different
(favorable and unfavorable) points of this great establishment. They leave
no doubt as to its extensive utility. Although, strictly speaking, it was
a charitable home for the sustenance and education of boys, slenderly
provided, or unprovided, with the means of learning, they were neither
lifted up beyond their own family nor depressed by mean habits, such as an
ordinary charity school is supposed to generate. They floated onwards
towards manhood in a wholesome middle region, between a too rare ether and
the dense and abject atmosphere of pauperism. The Hospital boy (as Lamb
says) never felt himself to be a charity boy.
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