ssage leading from Fetter Lane
into Bartlett's Buildings," was the one to which Mary Lamb appears to
have owed her regular training; but Samuel Salt had a goodly
collection of old books in his chambers, and among these the brother
and sister browsed most profitably, to use his own expressive word,
acquiring an early liking for good literature and learning to take
their best recreation in things of the mind. But if from the "school
room looking into a discoloured dingy garden" Mary Lamb was presumed
to be able to acquire a sufficiency of knowledge, it was seen that her
younger brother needed something more than Mr. Bird could give to fit
him for a life in which he would have to take an early place as
bread-winner. John Lamb's friendly employer--whom lovers of Lamb can
never recall but to honour--secured a nomination for the boy to
Christ's Hospital, and thither in his eighth year the little fellow
was transferred from the home in the Temple.

Should a zealous compiler seek to arrange an autobiography of Charles
Lamb from his writings he would not have a difficult task, and he
would find two delightful essays devoted to the famous school--so long
the distinguishing feature of Newgate Street--where "blue-coat boys"
passed the most importantly formative period of their lives.
Handicapped somewhat by a stuttering speech Charles Lamb did not
perhaps join in all the boyish sports of his fellows, though there are
many testimonies to the regard in which he was held by his
school-mates, and the fact is stressed that though the only one of his
surname at Christ's Hospital, he was never "Lamb" but always "Charles
Lamb," as though there were something of an endearment in the constant
use of his Christian name. "The Christ's Hospital or Blue-coat boy,
has a distinctive character of his own, as far removed from the abject
qualities of a common charity-boy as it is from the disgusting
forwardness of a lad brought up at some other of the public schools."
In the essay from which this is quoted, Charles Lamb, looking back a
quarter of a century after leaving the old foundation, summed up the
characteristics of his school as reflected in the character of its
boys of whom he and the close friend he made there are the two whose
names are the most commonly on the lips of men. It is, indeed, worthy
of remark that from amid the countless boys educated at Christ's
Hospital since it was founded three centuries and a half ago by "the
flower of th