without effort, as his language expanded from some common topic of the day to the loftiest abstractions; ascending by a winding track of spiral glory to the highest truths which the naked eye could discern, and suggesting starry regions, beyond, which his own telescopic gaze might possibly decipher. If his entranced hearers often were unable to perceive the bearings of his argument-too mighty for any grasp but his own-and sometimes reaching beyond his own-they understood "a beauty in the words, if not the words ;" and a wisdom and piety in the illustrations, even when unable to connect them with the idea which he desired to illustrate. If an entire scheme of moral philosophy was never developed by him either in speaking or writing, all the parts were great: vast biblical knowledge, though sometimes eddying in splendid conjecture, was always employed with pious reverence; the morality suggested was at once elevated and genial; the charity hoped all things; and the mighty imaginative reasoner, seemed almost to realise the condition suggested by the great Apostle, "that he understood all mysteries and all knowledge, and spake with the tongues both of men and angels!" After Coleridge had found his last earthly refuge, under the wise and generous care of Mr. Gilman, at Highgate, he rarely visited Lamb, and my opportunities of observing him ceased. From those who were more favoured, as well as from the fragments I have seen of his last effusions, I know that, amidst suffering and weakness, his mighty mind concentrated its energies on the highest subjects which had ever kindled them; that the speculations, which sometimes seemed like paradox, because their extent was too vast to be comprehended in a single grasp of intellectual vision, were informed by a serener wisdom; that his perceptions of the central truth became more undivided, and his piety more profound and humble. His love for Charles and Mary Lamb continued, to the last, one of the strongest of his human affections-of which, by the kindness of a friend,* I possess an affecting memorial under his hand, written in the margin of a volume of his "Sybilline Leaves," which-after his life-long habit―he has enriched by manuscript annotations. The poem, beside which it is inscribed, is entitled, "The Lime-Tree * Mr. Richard Welch, of Reading, editor of the Berkshire Chronicle-one of the ablest productions of the Conservative Periodical Press. Bower my Prison," composed by the poet in June, 1796, when Charles and Mary Lamb, who were visiting at his cottage near Bristol, had left him for a walk, which an accidental lameness prevented him from sharing. The visitors are not indicated by the poem, except that Charles is designated by the epithet, against which he jestingly remonstrated, as "gentle-hearted Charles ;" and is represented as "winning his way, with sad and patient soul, through evil and pain, and strange calamity." Against the title is written as follows: CH. & MARY LAMB, as it were, my heart, S. T. C. Et. 63. 1834. 1797 1834. 37 years! This memorandum, which is penned with remarkable neatness, must have been made in Coleridge's last illness, as he suffered acutely for several months before he died, in July of this same year, 1834. What a space did that thirty-seven years of fond regard for the brother and sister occupy in a mind like Coleridge's, peopled with immortal thoughts which might multiply in the true time, dialled in heaven, its minutes into years! These friends of Lamb's whom I have ventured to sketch in companionship with him, and Southey also, whom I only once saw, are all gone;—and others of less note in the world's eye have followed them. Among those of the old set who are gone, is Manning, perhaps, next to Coleridge, the dearest of them, whom Lamb used to speak of as marvellous in a tête-à-tête, but who, in company, seemed only a courteous gentleman, more disposed to listen than to talk. In good old age, departed Admiral Burney, frank-hearted voyager with Captain Cook round the world, who seemed to unite our society with the circle over which Dr. Johnson reigned; who used to tell of schooldays under the tutelage of Eugene Aram; how he remembered the gentle usher pacing the playground, arm-in-arm with some one of the elder boys, and seeking relief from the unsuspected burthen of his conscience by talking of strange murders, and how he, a child, had shuddered at the handcuffs on his teacher's hands when taken away in the post-chaise to prison;-the Admiral being himself the centre of a little circle which his sister, the famous authoress of "Evelina," "Cecilia," and "Camilla," sometimes graced. John Lamb, the jovial and burly, who dared to argue with Hazlitt on questions of art; Barron Field, who with veneration enough to feel all the despised greatness of Wordsworth, had a sparkling vivacity, and, connected with Lamb by the link of Christ's Hospital associations, shared largely in his regard; Rickman, the sturdiest of jovial companions, severe in the discipline of whist as at the table of the House of Commons, of which he was the principal clerk; and Alsager, so calm, so bland, so considerate-all are gone. These were all Temple-guests-friends of Lamb's early days; but the companions of a later time, who first met in Great Russell Street, or Dalston, or Islington, or Enfield, have been wofully thinned: Allan Cunningham, stalwart of form and stout of heart and verse, a ruder Burns; Cary, Lamb's "pleasantest of clergymen," whose sweetness of disposition and manner would have prevented a stranger from guessing that he was the poet who had rendered the adamantine poetry of Dante into English |