LAMB, 1775-1834

Biographical Outline.-Charles Lamb, born February 10, 1775, in Crown Office Row, the Temple, London; father originally a domestic servant to a bencher of the Inner Temple; Lamb begins his school-life under one William Bird in a day-school leading out of Fetter Lane, which his sister Mary also attends; in 1782 he obtains a nomination to Christ's Hospital (the "Blue Coat School "), where he remains for seven years, and where he forms a lasting friendship with his fellow-pupil, Coleridge; Lamb is a fair student, acquiring a considerable knowledge of Latin and obtaining the rank of deputy Grecian "-next to the highest rank; a serious impediment in his speech prevents his obtaining an "exhibition" to the university, a favor extended only to those qualified to enter the Church; he leaves Christ's Hospital in 1789, while Coleridge remains three years longer, and goes thence to Cambridge; Lamb at first secures a humble clerkship in the South Sea House, where his older brother, John, was employed, but, early in 1792, he is appointed to a clerkship in the East India House, a place that he held for the next thirty years; his family leave the Temple on the death of Samuel Salt (Lamb's father's employer) in 1792, and their place of residence till 1796 is unknown; in 1796 they lodge in Little Queen Street, suffering from poverty and barely supported by the salary of Charles and the earnings of Mary as a seamstress; the elder brother, "John Lamb, Gentleman," lives comfortably elsewhere, and does not aid in the family support; Lamb's mother was an invalid, with an inclination to insanity; on September 22, 1796, Mary

Lamb becomes suddenly insane, attempts to stab a little 'prentice maid, and fatally stabs her mother, who had interfered; at an inquest Mary is pronounced temporarily insane, and she would have been consigned to a public lunatic asylum if Charles had not given bonds to become her guardian and to restrain her from doing further harm-a most trying burden, which he bore heroically till the day of his death; although in love with a girl living in a cottage near Blakesware House, Hertfordshire, he gives up all thought of matrimony, at his mother's death, and removes, with his now imbecile father and a maiden aunt, to 45 Chapel Street, Pentonville, temporarily placing Mary in a private sanitarium at Hackney; the old aunt dies in 1797 and the father in 1799; Lamb begins a life-long correspondence with Coleridge in May, 1796, and in one of his letters he records the fact that he himself had been in an asylum for six weeks during the winter of 1795-96 because of some mental derangement; there is no evidence that he ever afterward suffered in that way; his mental malady has been attributed to his disappointment in love affairs, but there is little evidence to support this theory ; in the spring of 1796 Coleridge publishes, through Cottle of Bristol, his first small volume of poems, and it includes four sonnets by Lamb, this being his first appearance in print; in 1797 the second edition of Coleridge's poems includes

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poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd;" in the summer of 1797 Lamb visits Coleridge at Nether Stowey, where he meets Wordsworth and others; in 1798 appears a small volume of verse by Lamb and Lloyd and Lamb's prose romance, "A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret;" our earliest portrait of Lamb is made, through Cottle's agency, in 1798; late in that year he begins his correspondence with Southey, in which he first manifests his peculiar humor and quaintness; on the death of Lamb's father, in the spring of 1799, Mary returns to live with her brother at Pentonville, but rumors of her insane violence soon compel

them to give up their lodgings; during the next nine months they lodge at Southampton Buildings, Holborn, but are again driven out because of the rumors of Mary's insanity; they then take lodgings in King's Bench Walk, in the Temple, where they remain for nine years, removing thence to lodgings in Inner Temple Lane for another nine years; late in 1799 Lamb begins his correspondence with Thomas Manning, a Cambridge mathematician and orientalist, whom Lamb had met while visiting Lloyd at Cambridge; about this time Lamb also begins to write for the newspapers; during the next three years he contributes paragraphs and epigrams to the Morning Post, the Morning Chronicle, and the Albion; in 1802 he publishes "John Woodvil," a play in blank verse, showing throughout the influence of the early Elizabethan dramatists, whom Lamb dearly loved and studied, and whose style he purposely imitated in his play; the play is ignorantly and unfavorably reviewed in the Edinburgh Review for April, 1803; meantime Lamb and his sister are, as she writes, "very poor;" late in 1805 he writes his farce "Mr. H. ;" it is produced at Drury Lane Theatre, December 10, 1805, and is, as he says, "incontinently damned; during 1805 he meets Hazlitt and, through him, Godwin, who was then publishing books for children; for Godwin Charles and Mary write "Tales from Shakespeare," which is published in 1807 and reaches a second edition in the following year; the "Tales" first brought Lamb into notice as a writer; in 1808 he publishes a child's version of the adventures of Ulysses, based on Chapman's "Odyssey; " in 1808 he also · publishes, through the Longmans, selections from the early English dramatists, under the title "Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare;" he is at once recognized by literary men as a critic of the highest order and a great prose writer; in 1811 he publishes in Leigh Hunt's Reflector his essay on Hogarth and that on the tragedies of Shakespeare; in 1813 he publishes "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" in the

Gentleman's Magazine and, in 1814, his "Confessions of a Drunkard" in his friend Montagu's book, "Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors; between 1808 and 1818 Lamb forms friendships with Procter, Talfourd, Crabbe, Haydon, and others, and is frequently embarrassed by the expenditures incident to the entertainment of numerous visitors; in the autumn of 1817 the Lambs remove to lodgings in Great Russell Street, Covent Garden; in 1818 Charles publishes a collection of his miscellaneous writings, both prose and verse, including "John Woodvil" and "Rosamund Gray," dedicating the two volumes to Coleridge; early in 1820 he is presented by Hazlitt to the editor of the newly established London Magazine, and agrees to contribute occasional essays; in August, 1820, he contributes "Recollections of the South Sea House," to which he first appends his pseudonyme "Elia" (at first spelled Ellia), appropriating the name of a long-forgotten old clerk in the South Sea House; between August, 1820, and December, 1822, he contributes to the London Magazine twenty-five essays signed "Elia; these were reprinted in a single volume in 1823; after the death of his brother in 1821, Lamb writes "Dream Children;" in 1822 the Lambs make a brief tour in France, visiting Charles's friend, James Kenney, a dramatist, at Versailles; while abroad Mary suffers from one of her then more frequently recurring fits of insanity; early in 1823 Southey publishes a severe criticism of Lamb's "Essays of Elia,” declaring that the essays, as a whole, lack sound religious feel ing; Lamb, deeply hurt, replies in "A Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, Esq.," published in the London Magazine for October, 1823; Southey replies in a generous letter of explanation, and their friendship is renewed; while visiting at Cambridge, in 1823, the Lambs meet Emma Isola, daughter of one of the esquire bedells of the university; Emma afterward often visits them in London, and is eventually adopted by them; she becomes a great comfort to both

Charles and Mary, by whom she is educated, and remains with them till her marriage to Moxon, the publisher, in 1833; in August, 1823, the Lambs remove from Great Russell Street to a cottage in Colebrooke Row, Islington, where the New River runs at the foot of the garden; about this time Lamb becomes attached to Bernard Barton, the Quaker Poet, to whom many of his best letters are addressed; after a severe illness in the winter of 1824-25, by the advice of his physicians he applies to the directors of the East India House for retirement with a pension; his request is granted in March, 1825, his pension amounting to three-fourths of his salary at the time, less a slight deduction, to insure an allowance to Mary in case she should survive her brother; the amount available for Lamb was £441 a year; the Lambs make frequent visits to Hertfordshire, where they eventually take the little house known as "The Chace," at Enfield ; Lamb seeks relief from the tedium of having nothing to do in long walks about the country; in 1826 he contributes to the Monthly Magazine his papers on "Popular Fallacies; " in 1828 he writes his verses "On An Infant Dying as Soon as Born" (the child of his friend Thomas Hood), and makes extracts from the Garrick plays in the British Museum for the Table Book" of his friend Hone; in 1830 he makes a collection of his acrostics, album-verses, etc., and publishes them through his friend Moxon under the title "Album Verses;" in 1829 Mary's increasing fits of insanity compel them to give up housekeeping, and they take lodgings in Enfield, near The Chace," with a family named Westwood; Mary improves, but Charles grows restless to return to town life; in 1833 they remove to Edmonton, the parish adjoining Enfield, where they take lodgings at Bay Cottage with the Waldens, who had cared for Mary during her previous attacks; here the Lambs pass the last two years of their united lives; in 1833 Moxon marries Emma Isola, and publishes "The Last Essays of Elia," drawn mainly from the London

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