weetness 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.

And the cheerfulness of all this, of the mere aspect of Lamb's quiet
subsequent life also, might make the more superficial reader think of
him as in himself something slight, and of his mirth as cheaply bought.
Yet we know that beneath this blithe surface there was something of the
fateful domestic horror, of the beautiful heroism and devotedness too,
of old Greek tragedy. His sister Mary, ten years his senior, in a sudden
paroxysm of madness, caused the death of her mother, and was brought to
trial for what an overstrained justice might have construed as the
greatest of crimes. She was released on the brother's pledging himself
to watch over her; and to this sister, from the age of twenty-one,
Charles Lamb sacrificed himself, "seeking thenceforth," says his
earliest biographer, "no connection which could interfere with her
supremacy in his affections, or impair his ability to sustain and
comfort her." The "feverish, romantic tie of love" he cast away in
exchange for the "charities of home." Only, from time to time, the
madness returned, affecting him too, once; and we see the brother and
sister voluntarily yielding to restraint. In estimating the humour of
_Elia_, we must no more forget the strong undercurrent of this great
misfortune and pity, than one could forget it in his actual story. So he
becomes the best critic, almost the discoverer, of Webster, a dramatist
of genius so sombre, so heavily coloured, so _macabre._[87] _Rosamund
Grey_ written in his twenty-third year, a story with something bitter
and exaggerated, an almost insane fixedness of gl