" This I saw, years after Charles Lamb's death, in
the possession of his sister, Mary. "All our furniture has faded," he
writes, "under the auctioneer's hammer; going for nothing, like the
tarnished frippery of the prodigal." Four years afterwards (in 1833) Lamb
moves to his last home, in Church Street, Edmonton, where he is somewhat
nearer to his London friends.
Very curious was the antipathy of Charles to objects that are generally so
pleasant to other men. It was not a passing humor, but a life-long
dislike. He admired the trees, and the meadows, and murmuring streams in
poetry. I have heard him repeat some of Keats's beautiful lines in the Ode
to the Nightingale, about the "pastoral eglantine," with great delight.
But that was another thing: that was an object in its proper place: that
was a piece of art. Long ago he had admitted that the mountains of
Cumberland were grand objects "to look at;" but (as he said) "the houses
in streets were the places to live in." I imagine that he would no more
have received the former as an equivalent for his own modest home, than he
would have accepted a portrait as a substitute for a friend. He was,
beyond all other men whom I have met, essentially metropolitan.
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