and better than I, and all my wretched imperfections I cover
to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would
share life and death, heaven and hell, with me. She lives
but for me.

On 25th July, 1834, Coleridge died, and the blow was a terrible one to
Charles Lamb; "we die many deaths before we die," he had said of the
departure of friends; and the passing of Coleridge may be said to have
come as a fatal shock, for he survived him but five months, and during
that time was heard to say again and again, as though the fact were
too stupendous to believe, not to be realized, "Coleridge is dead!"
Taking his usual morning walk in the fourth week of December, Lamb
stumbled and fell, bruising his face; the bruise did not seem serious,
but erysipelas supervened, and on 27th December, 1834, the beloved
friend, the noble man, passed into the great silence. He was buried in
Edmonton Churchyard, and there, nearly thirteen years later, was laid
by him the dear sister who had so long watched over him, whom he had
so long guarded.

* * * * *

"'Saint Charles,' said Thackeray to me, thirty years ago, putting one
of Charles Lamb's letters to his forehead."[5]

[Footnote 5: Edward FitzGerald's "Letters."]

HIS PRINCIPAL WRITINGS

The writings of Charles Lamb fall more or less naturally into four or
five groups--with, of course, inevitable overlappings--and it is
better to consider them thus, rather than in the strict order of their
production.

POETRY

It was in poetry that he made his first essays, as we have seen, and
this is not to be wondered at in one who had early read the old poetic
treasures of our literature, and in the close companion of so deeply
poetic a man as Coleridge. He was, indeed, himself essentially a poet,
though his work in verse falls far below that which he achieved in
prose. The perusal of a slim volume of the sonnets of William Lisle
Bowles was the small occasion from which sprang the great event of
Lamb's and Coleridge's commencing to write poetry. To the sonnet form
Lamb returned again and again, sometimes most felicitously, for two or
three of his sonnets have that haunting quality which makes them
remain in the mind. This one, with its familiar close, may stand as
representative of the days when Bowles was still the god of his
poetic idolatry:

The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed,
And 'gins to sprinkle on the