"Do you
remember" (his sister says to him, in the Essay on "Old China") "the brown
suit that grew so threadbare, all because of that folio of Beaumont and
Fletcher that you dragged home late at night from Barker's, in Covent
Garden; when you set off near ten o'clock, on Saturday night, from
Islington, fearing you should be too late; and when you lugged it home,
wishing it was twice as cumbersome," &c.
These realities of poverty, very imperfectly covered over by words of
fiction, are very touching. It is deeply interesting, that Essay, where
the rare enjoyments of a poor scholar are brought into contrast and relief
with the indifference that grows upon him when his increased income
enables him to acquire any objects he pleases. Those things are no longer
distinguished as "enjoyments" which are not purchased by a sacrifice. "A
purchase is but a purchase now. Formerly it used to be a triumph. A thing
was worth buying when we felt the money that we paid for it."
(1804.) The intimacy of that extraordinary man, William Hazlitt, was the
great gain of Lamb at this period of his life. If Lamb's youngest and
tenderest reverence was given to Coleridge, Hazlitt's intellect must also
have commanded his later permanent respect.
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