"Her love," as Mr. Wordsworth states
in the epitaph on Charles Lamb, "was as the love of mothers" towards her
brother. It may be said that his love for her was the deep life-long love
of the tenderest son. In one letter he writes, "It was not a family where
I could take Mary with me; and I am afraid that there is something of
dishonesty in any pleasures I take without her." Many years afterwards (in
1834, the very year in which he died) he writes to Miss Fryer, "It is no
new thing for me to be left with my sister. When she is not violent, _her
rambling chat is better to me than the sense and sanity of the world."_
Surely there is great depth of pathos in these unaffected words; in the
love that has outlasted all the troubles of life, and is thus tenderly
expressed, almost at his last hour.
John Lamb, the elder brother of Charles, held a clerkship, with some
considerable salary, in the South Sea House. I do not retain an agreeable
impression of him. If not rude, he was sometimes, indeed generally, abrupt
and unprepossessing in manner. He was assuredly deficient in that courtesy
which usually springs from a mind at friendship with the world.
Nevertheless, without much reasoning power (apparently), he had much
cleverness of character; except when he had to purchase paintings, at
which times his judgment was often at fault.
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