ROMANTICISM IN ENGLISH PROSE 369 ary executor of that poet. His Life of Byron was long the standard biography. What Burns did for Scotland, Moore tried to do for Ireland; but his songs are less natural than those of the Scotch ploughman, and his other poetry, polished and sweet though it is, is artificial in the main. Leigh Hunt was born at Southgate, in Middlesex, and studied with Coleridge and Lamb at Christ's Hospital School. His career as a journalist began with the establishment in 1808 of a weekly paper, The Examiner, in which he published some articles reflecting upon the Prince Regent that led to his imprisonment for libel. A poem upon the subject of Francesca da Rimini, written during his imprisonment, had considerable influence upon both Shelley and Keats. His short poem Abou Ben Adhem is well known. His style was light and graceful; but his prose sketches and criticisms are of greater value than his verse. IV. ROMANTICISM IN ENGLISH PROSE: LAMB, DE QUINCEY The influence of the romantic movement is strongly felt in the work of two prose writers contemporary with the poets just described. They were not novelists. Although distinguished from the ordinary essay type by the nature of their subjects and the manner of treatment, their compositions are properly classified as essays. The essays of Charles Lamb, while Addisonian in a sense, are more truly Elizabethan in spirit, and there is not lacking a certain suggestiveness in them of the manner of Keats. A similar resemblance in spirit and method may be traced between the writings of De Quincey and the poetry of Coleridge. De Quincey and Lamb are both genuine romanticists. The imaginative element is conspicuous in the productions of each. Charles Charles Lamb, the most delightful of English essayists, whose memory is honored not only for the delicate grace and flavor of his style, but 1775-1834. as well for his sweet and lovable nature, was born in London, within the confines of the Temple that historic structure of huge proportions and rambling extent, once the chapter house of the Knights Templar, but for generations appropriated to the use of barristers for offices and lodgings. John Lamb was a lawyer's clerk, in exceedingly poor circumstances. There were three children who survived childhood: Charles; his sister Mary, ten years his senior; and an elder brother, John, who grew up selfish and easeloving, apparently without concern in the fortunes and trials of the family. Charles describes his father1 as a man of an incorrigible and losing honesty." 66 Through the interest of a friend of John Lamb's employer, Charles was taken when six years Childhood. old out of the dingy little school in Fetter Lane, where he obtained the rudiments of learning, and given a scholarship in the famous "blue-coat" school of Christ's Hospital, where he remained seven years, and where the life-long friendship with Coleridge, his fellow pupil, was firmly established. Lamb's childhood was darkened by the struggle with poverty, but his cheery, courageous temper was early in evidence. His imagination was particularly active; he declares that from his fourth to his seventh year he never laid his head on his pillow "without an assurance, which realized its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful spectre."2 He was a good Latin scholar, and amused himself by turning nursery rhymes into that language. 1 Under the name of "Lovel," in The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 2 Witches, and Other Night Fears. CHARLES AND MARY LAMB 371 In the study of Greek he did not proceed very far, reaching the rank of "deputy-Grecian," beyond which he could not pass, as the higher grade presupposed an entrance into the ministry; and from this he was prevented by an unfortunate impediment in his speech which made him a stutterer all his life. fourteen years In 1789 Charles Lamb left school old—and old and at that youthful age took up the An Office responsibilities of active life. His father's Clerk. health was failing, and the shadow of a terrible malady hung over the household. The boy found employment in the South-Sea House, the office of a great London trading company; two years later he secured a clerkship with the East India Company, in whose employ he continued for thirty-three years. He found little leisure; but when Coleridge occasionally ran down from Cambridge for a brief visit to London, it was the pleasure of the two school comrades to meet at the "Salutation and Cat" to spend long evenings together in the discussion of literature and old times. Lamb's first literary efforts appeared in connection with his friend's. In 1796 Coleridge printed his first volume of poems, and there were included four sonnets signed "C. L.” Household. The winter of 1795-96 ushered in a year of tragic significance for the Lambs. Insanity was a The Trafamily inheritance. John Lamb, the father, gedy of the had gradually lost his faculties until now he had lapsed into the condition of a child. During the winter Charles himself succumbed to an attack of the disease and passed some weeks. in confinement at a hospital for the insane. The mother was an invalid. The burden of the household necessarily fell upon Mary Lamb. In September, 1796, her own reason gave way, and in a fit of madness she took her mother's life. So long as the father lived Mary remained in confinement, gradually recovering her reason under treatment. Such was the calamity which fell upon Charles and Mary Lamb, an affliction from the effects of which they were never entirely freed. Some knowledge of its details is necessary if we would appreciate the extraordinary fortitude and patient heroism which distinguished the lives of brother and sister. Brother By and by, upon assuming certain responsibilities, Charles Lamb was permitted by the authoriand Sister. ties to care for his sister in his home. She continued subject to occasional temporary derangement all her life; when threatening symptoms appeared she was placed in a retreat, returning after recovery to the home. A friend of the family relates how once he met Charles and Mary Lamb walking, hand in hand, across the fields to the old asylum, their faces bathed in tears. The attachment of this brother and sister was ideal; none other ever crept in to interrupt it. As long as he lived Charles cared for his sister's comfort with an almost religious devotion; and in her turn she devoted herself to him. Mary Lamb shared the talents of Charles. "Her education in youth was not much attended to. She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage.' The Literary Life. " 1 Lamb's literary career began unostentatiously with the publication, in 1797, of Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd; fifteen of these, described by a contemporary reviewer as "plaintive," were by Lamb. In 1798 he published a prose tale of 1 Mackery End, in Hertfordshire, in which Lamb describes his sister under the name of "Bridget Elia." THE TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE 373 Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret. His unsuccessful drama, John Woodvil, followed in 1799. Success was slow in coming. There were occasional contributions to the newspapers, six jokes a day to The Post, at sixpence; but prospects were not very encouraging. You "It has been sad and heavy times with us lately," writes Mary Lamb in 1805. "When I am pretty well his low spirits throw me back again; and when he begins to get a little cheerful, then I do the same kind office for him. would laugh, or you would cry, perhaps both, to see us sit together, looking at each other with long and rueful faces, and saying 'How do you do?' and 'How do you do?' and then we fall a crying, and say we will be better on the morrow. He says we are like toothache and his friend gumboil, which though a kind of ease, is but an uneasy kind of ease, a comfort of rather an uncomfortable sort." But the spirit of the home was by no means gloomy. Coleridge, with his brilliant conversation, was a frequent guest; Wordsworth and Southey were familiar visitors and within the small circle of his intimate friends the gay spirits of Charles Lamb easily broke through the shyness and the melancholy that sometimes oppressed him. speare. The first real success came in 1807, with the publication of Tales from Shakespeare. In this The Tales work, which still remains a much used classic, trom the stories of the most important Shake- Shakespearian dramas are told with remarkable insight and charm of style. Mary Lamb had a part in the honors of this achievement, the comedies having been treated by her, while her brother worked upon the tragedies. A new interest was aroused in the literature of Elizabeth's time which had been long neglected, an interest which was further stimulated by |