ked and dressed, and how he stood bending
forward to welcome his guests as they arrived in his humble lodgings.
Procter thought nothing unimportant that might serve in any way to
illustrate character, and so he seemed to wish that I might get an exact
idea of the charming person both of us prized so ardently and he had
known so intimately. Speaking of Lamb's habits, he said he had never
known his friend to drink immoderately except upon one occasion, and he
observed that "Elia," like Dickens, was a small and delicate eater. With
faltering voice he told me of Lamb's "givings away" to needy,
impoverished friends whose necessities were yet greater than his own.
His secret charities were constant and unfailing, and no one ever
suffered hunger when he was by. He could not endure to see a
fellow-creature in want if he had the means to feed him. Thinking, from
a depression of spirits which Procter in his young manhood was once
laboring under, that perhaps he was in want of money, Lamb looked him
earnestly in the face as they were walking one day in the country
together, and blurted out, in his stammering way, "My dear boy, I have a
hundred-pound note in my desk that I really don't know what to do with:
oblige me by taking it and getting the confounded thing out of my
keeping." "I was in no need of money," said Procter, "and I declined the
gift; but it was hard work to make Lamb believe that I was not in an
impecunious condition."

Speaking of Lamb's sister Mary, Procter quoted Hazlitt's saying that
"Mary Lamb was the most rational and wisest woman he had ever been
acquainted with." As we went along some of the more retired streets in
the old city, we had also, I remember, much gossip about Coleridge and
his manner of reciting his poetry, especially when "Elia" happened to be
among the listeners, for the philosopher put a high estimate upon Lamb's
critical judgment. The author of "The Ancient Mariner" always had an
excuse for any bad habit to which he was himself addicted, and he told
Procter one day that perhaps snuff was the final cause of the human
nose. In connection with Coleridge we had much reminiscence of such
interesting persons as the Novellos, Martin Burney, Talfourd, and Crabb
Robinson, and a store of anecdotes in which Haydon, Manning, Dyer, and
Godwin figured at full length. In course of conversation I asked my
companion if he thought Lamb had ever been really in love, and he told
me interesting things of Hester S