Sometimes--in a
way scarcely discernible--he would kiss the volume; as he would also a
book by Chapman or Sir Philip Sidney, or any other which he particularly
valued. I have seen him read out a passage from the Holy Dying and the Urn
Burial, and express in the same way his devotion and gratitude.
Lamb had been brought up a Unitarian; but he appears to have been
occasionally fluctuating in a matter as to which boys are not apt to
entertain very rigid opinions. At one time he longed to be with superior
thinkers. "I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself,"
are his words. At another time he writes, "I have had thoughts of turning
Quaker lately." A visit, however, to one of the Quaker meetings in 1797,
decides him against such conversion: "This cured me of Quakerism. I love
it in the books of Penn and Woodman; but I detest the vanity of man,
thinking he speaks by the Spirit." A similar story is told of Coleridge.
Mr. Justice Coleridge's statement is, "He told us a humorous story of his
enthusiastic fondness for Quakers when at Cambridge, and his attending one
of their meetings, which had entirely cured him."
In 1797 Charles Lamb (who had been introduced to Southey by Coleridge two
years previously) accompanied Lloyd to a little village near Christchurch,
in Hampshire, where Southey was at that time reading.
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