That I may never leave this place:
But lest your fetters prove too weak,
Ere I your silken bondage break,
Do you, O brambles, chain me too,
And, courteous briers, nail me through.'"

At Blakesware, too, was the room whence the spirit of Sarah Battle--that
"gentlewoman born"--winged its flight to a region where revokes and
"luke-warm gamesters" are unknown.

To John and Elizabeth Lamb were born seven children, only three of whom,
John, Mary, and Charles, survived their infancy. Of the survivors,
Charles was the youngest, John being twelve and Mary ten years his
senior,--a fact to be weighed in estimating the heroism of Lamb's later
life. At the age of seven, Charles Lamb, "son of John Lamb, scrivener,
and Elizabeth, his wife," was entered at the school of Christ's
Hospital,--"the antique foundation of that godly and royal child King
Edward VI." Of his life at this institution he has left us abundant and
charming memorials in the Essays, "Recollections of Christ's Hospital,"
and "Christ's Hospital Five-and-thirty Years Ago,"--the latter sketch
corrective of the rather optimistic impressions of the former.

With his schoolfellows Charles seems to have been, despite his timid and
retiring disposition (he said of himself, "while the others were all
fire and play, he stole along with all the self-concentration of a young
monk"), a decided favorite. "Lamb," wrote C. V. Le Grice, a schoolmate
often mentioned in essay and letter, "was an amiable, gentle boy, very
sensible and keenly observing, indulged by his schoolfellows and by his
master on account of his infirmity of speech.... I never heard his name
mentioned without the addition of Charles, although, as there was no