You see
that you are welcome. He speaks: "Well, boys, how are you? What's the news
with you? What will you take?" You are comfortable in a moment. Reader! it
is Charles Lamb who is before you--the critic, the essayist, the poet, the
wit, the large-minded _human_ being, whose apprehension could grasp,
without effort, the loftiest subject, and descend in gentleness upon the
humblest; who sympathized with all classes and conditions of men, as
readily with the sufferings of the tattered beggar and the poor chimney-
sweeper's boy as with the starry contemplations of Hamlet "the Dane," or
the eagle-flighted madness of Lear.
The books that I have adverted to, as filling his shelves, were mainly
English books--the poets, dramatists, divines, essayists, &c.,--ranging
from the commencement of the Elizabeth period down to the time of Addison
and Steele. Besides these, of the earliest writers, Chaucer was there;
and, amongst the moderns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and a few others, whom he
loved.
He had more real knowledge of old English literature than any man whom I
ever knew. He was not an antiquarian. He neither hunted after commas, nor
scribbled notes which confounded his text.
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