,
if dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold!"
* * * * *
FORSTER.
[_From Mr. John Forsters Contribution to the New Monthly Magazine,_ 1835.
_Title, "Charles Lamb."_]
Charles Lamb's first appearance in literature was by the side of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. He came into his first battle, as he tells us
(literature is a sort of warfare), under cover of that greater Ajax.
We should like to see this remarkable friendship (remarkable in all
respects and in all its circumstances) between two of the most original
geniuses in an age of no common genius, worthily recorded. It would
outvalue, in the view of posterity, many centuries of literary quarrels.
Lamb never fairly recovered the death of Coleridge. He thought of little
else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great
spirit joined his friend's. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a
sort of mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, "cleanse his
bosom of the perilous stuff that weighed" upon it. In a jest, or a few
light phrases, he would lay open the recesses of his heart. So in respect
of the death of Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two or three
weeks ago, and remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind.
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