THE

ANNUAL

BIOGRAPHY AND OBITUARY,

OF

1835.

PART I.

MEMOIRS OF CELEBRATED PERSONS, WHO HAVE DIED WITHIN THE YEARS 1834-1835.

EVERY body quotes this touching phrase, “the old familiar faces;" but very few know that they are indebted for it, among a hundred other humanities, to the most human of all writers, Charles Lamb-human in his virtues, human in his errors. Not only did he think (to use the language of Terence) nothing human alien from him, but he considered nothing interesting to him but what was human. He avowed a want of conception of any thing transcendental. When his friend Coleridge was speculating, in a dream worthy of Plato, upon a future state of existence, upon man as he is, and man as he is to be, it was Lamb that said, "Give me man as he is not to be." school-fellow to the tomb! the motto to their united similium junctarumque camoenarum, quod utinam neque

VOL. XX.

How soon has he followed his "Duplex nobis vinculum (said volume of poems), et amicitiæ et

B

mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas." The wish has been fulfilled.

Charles Lamb was the last of his family. With the exception of his elder sister, who survives him, "there runs not (as Logan said) a drop of his blood in the veins of any living creature." How keenly he felt this, let his divine essay called "Dream Children," witness; and let tell the following verses, which have been unaccountably omitted in his collected works:

"A heavy lot hath he, most wretched man,
Who lives the last of all his family!

He looks around him, and his eye discerns
The face of the stranger, and his heart is sick.
Man of the world, what canst thou do for him?
Wealth is a burthen which he could not bear;
Mirth a strange crime, the which he does not act ;
And wine no cordial, but a bitter cup.

For wounds like his Christ is the only cure;

And gospel promises are his by right,

Since these were given to the poor in heart.

Go, preach then to him of a world to come,

Where friends shall meet, and know each other's faces,
Say less than this, and say it to the winds!"

And again, of "the family name.”

"What reason first imposed thee, gentle name,
Name that my father bore, and his sire's sire
Without reproach? we trace our stream no higher,
And I, a childless man, may end the same.
Perchance some shepherd on Lincolnian plains,
In manners guileless as his own sweet flocks,
Received thee first amidst the merry mocks
And arch allusions of his fellow-swains.
Perchance from Salem's holier fields return'd
With glory gotten on the heads abhorr'd
Of faithless Saracens, some martial lord
Took His meek title, in whose zeal he burn'd.
Whate'er the fount whence thy beginnings came,

No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle Name."

Charles Lamb was the second son of Mr. John Lamb (Lovell, as he is called, in the Elian essay, entitled "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple"), who was clerk to Samuel Salt, Esq.; and he was born (as he says) in Crown-office

Row, on the ground-floor looking into Middle Temple Lane. This event took place on the 10th of February, 1775; and on the 9th of October, 1782, he was presented to the school of Christ Hospital, by Timothy Yeats, Esq., Governor, as the son of John Lamb, scrivener, and Elizabeth his wife.

In the first volume of "Elia," there are two papers entitled "My Relations," and "Mackery End;" and in the little volume of Mr. Lamb's collected poems, there is a paper well placed there, called "Recollections of Christ Hospital;" to all of which the reader may be referred for a more minute account of the author's family; but he must be apprised, that his only brother and sister, John and Mary, are in the former papers veiled under the title of " Cousins par excellence," and under the names of James and Bridget Elia. The rest is all verity. Mr. John Lamb of the South Sea House has been dead many years, but Miss Lamb survives. The last of these papers, and "the seamy side of it without," turned by Mr. Lamb himself in the first volume of “ Elia,” under the title of "Christ Hospital Five and Thirty Years ago," contain the history of his mind at school, where, as he acknowledges, he never made any progress beyond the highest form in the under grammar school. An impediment in his speech prevented him from being chosen, like his friend Coleridge, one of the school exhibitioners to an English university; and, therefore, as he says in his exquisite sonnet written at Cambridge,

"I was not train'd in academic bow'rs,

And to those learned streams I nothing owe

Which copious from those twin fair founts do flow;
Mine have been any thing but studious hours.
Yet can I fancy, wand'ring 'mid thy tow'rs,

Myself a nurseling, Granta, of thy lap :

My brow seems tight'ning with the doctor's cap,

And I walk gowned; feel unusual pow'rs.

Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech;

Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain;

And my skull teems with notions infinite.

Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach

Truths, which transcend the searching schoolmen's vein,
And half had stagger'd that stout Stagyrite!"

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On the 23d of November, 1789, having completed the usual period allotted for education at that school, he was discharged from Christ Hospital to the home of his mother, who still resided in the Temple, although his father was now dead. At first he was employed for a short time in the South Sea House with his brother (witness his essay under that title); but on the 5th of April, 1792, he obtained an appointment in the Accountant's Office of the East India Company. He remained in the employment of these princely merchants till the 29th of March, 1825, by which time his salary had gradually risen to above 700l. per annum ; when he was suffered to invalid upon the handsome pension of 450%, which he enjoyed till his death, on the 27th of December, 1834. His surviving sister is entitled to a small annuity from the fund for the widows and families of deceased officers in the Company's home service.

Mr. Lamb has pleasantly touched upon the uncongenial pursuits of his official life, in a paper in the second volume, of " Elia," entitled "Oxford in the Vacation ;" and his retirement from the India House is gratefully and beautifully shadowed out in another in the same volume, called "The Superannuated Man." He lived a bachelor with his sister in various dwellings, but for the greater part of his life in the Temple, which he preferred to any other spot in the world. Latterly he sequestered himself in the suburbs of London, at Colebrook Row in Islington, at Enfield, and at Edmonton, where he died; but London was

the main haunt and region of his song."

He was a great walker to the last, and could always soon transport himself to town; but, while he lived in London, there were few persons who enjoyed an excursion into the country more; witness his paper, entitled "The Old Margate Hoy," and witness the following lines of his friend Coleridge; written upon a visit paid to him by Mr. Lamb in the country in June, 1797: