It happened that he reckoned amongst his
schoolfellows one who afterwards achieved a very extensive reputation,
namely, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This youth was his elder by two years;
and his example influenced Lamb materially on many occasions, and
ultimately led him into literature. Coleridge's projects, at the outset of
life, were vacillating. In this respect Lamb was no follower of his
schoolfellow, his own career being steady and unswerving from his entrance
into the India House until the day of his freedom from service--between
thirty and forty years. His literary tastes, indeed, took independently
almost the same tone as those of his friend; and their religious views
(for Coleridge in his early years became a Unitarian) were the same.
When Coleridge left Christ's Hospital he went to the University--to Jesus
College, Cambridge; but came back occasionally to London, where the
intimacy between him and Lamb was cemented. Their meetings at the smoky
little public house in the neighborhood of Smithfield--the "Salutation and
Cat"--consecrated by pipes and tobacco (Orinoco), by egg-hot and Welsh
rabbits, and metaphysics and poetry, are exultingly referred to in Lamb's
letters.
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