Charles Lamb: A Memoir

rtly because they deserved them, partly because they were unjustly forgotten. The sentence of oblivion, passed by ignorant ages on the reputation of these fine authors, he has annulled, and forced the world to confess that preceding judges were incompetent to entertain the case.

I cannot imagine the mind of Charles Lamb, even in early boyhood, to have been weak or childish. In his first letters you see that he was a thinker. He is for a time made sombre by unhappy reflections. He is a reader of thoughtful books. The witticisms which he coined for sixpence each (for the Morning Chronicle) had, no doubt, less of metallic lustre than those which he afterwards meditated; and which were highly estimated. Effodiuntur opes. His jests were never the mere overflowings of the animal spirits, but were exercises of the mind. He brought the wisdom of old times and old writers to bear upon the taste and intellect of his day. What was in a manner foreign to his age, he naturalized and cherished. And he did this