" I will not in this place attempt to
weave the moral which nevertheless lies hid in his unrequited life. At
that time the number of Lamb's old intimates was gradually diminished. The
eternally recurring madness of his sister was more frequent. The
hopelessness of it--if hope indeed ever existed--was more palpable, more
depressing. His own spring of mind was fast losing its power of rebound.
He felt the decay of the active principle, and now confined his efforts to
morsels of criticism, to verses for albums, and small contributions to
periodicals, which (excepting only the "Popular Fallacies") it has not
been thought important enough to reprint. To the editor of the
"Athenaeum," indeed, he laments sincerely over the death of Munden. This
was in February, 1832, and was a matter that touched his affections. "He
was not an actor" (he writes), "but something better." To a reader of the
present day--even to a contemporary of Lamb himself--there was something
almost amounting to extravagance in the terms of his admiration. Yet
Munden was, in his way, a remarkable man; and although he was an actor in
farce, he often stood aloof and beyond the farce itself. The play was a
thing merely on which to hang his own conceptions.
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