wed by _Graham Hamilton_
(1822), and _Ada Reis_ (1823). Happening to meet the hearse conveying the
remains of Byron, she became unconscious, and fell into mental
alienation, from which she never recovered.

LAMB, CHARLES (1775-1834).--Essayist and poet, was _b._ in London, his
_f._ being confidential clerk to Samuel Salt, one of the benchers of the
Inner Temple. After being at a school in the neighbourhood, he was sent
by the influence of Mr. Salt to Christ's Hospital, where he remained from
1782-89, and where he formed a lifelong friendship with Coleridge. He was
then for a year or two in the South Sea House, where his elder brother
John was a clerk. Thence he was in 1792 transferred to the India House,
where he remained until 1825, when he retired with a pension of
two-thirds of his salary. Mr. Salt _d._ in 1792, and the family,
consisting of the _f._, mother, Charles, and his sister Mary, ten years
his senior, lived together in somewhat straitened circumstances. John,
comparatively well off, leaving them pretty much to their own resources.
In 1796 the tragedy of L.'s life occurred. His sister Mary, in a sudden
fit of insanity, killed her mother with a table-knife. Thenceforward,
giving up a marriage to which he was looking forward, he devoted himself
to the care of his unfortunate sister, who became, except when separated
from him by periods of aberration, his lifelong and affectionate
companion--the "Cousin Bridget" of his essays. His first literary
appearance was a contribution of four sonnets to Coleridge's _Poems on
Various Subjects_ (1796). Two years later he _pub._, along with his
friend Charles Lloyd, _Blank Verse_, the little vol. including _The Old
Familiar Faces_, and others of his best known poems, and his romance,
_Rosamund Gray_, followed in the same year. He then turned to the drama,
and produced _John Woodvil_, a tragedy, and _Mr. H._, a farce, both
failures, for although the first had some echo of the Elizabethan music,
it had no dramatic force. Meantime the brother and sister were leading a
life clouded by poverty and by the anxieties arising from the condition
of the latter, and they moved about from one lodging to another. L.'s
literary ventures so far had not yielded much either in money or fame,
but in 1807 he was asked by W. Godwin (_q.v._) to assist him in his
"Juvenile Library," and to this he, with the assistance of his sister,
contributed the now famous _Tales from Shakespeare_, Charles doi