To this more high-pitched feeling, since predominant in our literature,
the writings of Charles Lamb, whose life occupies the last quarter of
the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, are a
transition; and such union of grave, of terrible even, with gay, we may
note in the circumstances of his life, as reflected thence into his
work. We catch the aroma of a singular, homely sweetness about his first
years, spent on Thames' side, amid the red bricks and terraced gardens,
with their rich historical memories of old-fashioned legal London. Just
above the poorer class, deprived, as he says, of the "sweet food of
academic institution," he is fortunate enough to be reared in the
classical languages at an ancient school, where he becomes the companion
of Coleridge, as at a later period he was his enthusiastic disciple. So
far, the years go by with less than the usual share of boyish
difficulties; protected, one fancies, seeing what he was afterwards, by
some attraction of temper in the quaint child, small and delicate, with
a certain Jewish expression in his clear, brown complexion, eyes not
precisely of the same colour, and a slow walk adding to the staidness of
his figure; and whose infirmity of speech, increased by agitation, is
partly engaging.
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