Deaths overset one. Then there's
Captain Burney gone. What fun has whist now?" He proceeds, "I am made up
of queer points. My theory is to enjoy life; but my practice is against
it." The only hope he has, he says, is, "that some pulmonary affection may
relieve me." The success which attended the "Elia" Essays did not comfort
him, nor the (pecuniary) temptations of the bookseller to renew them. "The
spirit of the thing in my own mind is gone" (he writes). "Some brains," as
Ben Jonson says, "will endure but one skimming." Notwithstanding his
melancholy humor, however, there is Hope in the distance, which he does
not see, and Freedom is not far off.
It was during this period of Lamb's life (1823) that the quarrel between
him and his old friend Robert Southey took place. Southey had long been
(as was well known) one of the most constant and efficient contributors to
the "Quarterly Review;" and Lamb assigned to him the authorship of one of
the Review articles, in which he himself was scantily complimented, and
his friends Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt denounced. Sir T. Talfourd thinks that
Mr. Southey was not the author of the offending essay. Be that as it may,
Lamb was then of opinion that his old Tory friend was the enemy.
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