business matter,"--words too often held to exclude all such Quixotic
matters as sentiment, gratitude, and Christian equity between man and
man,--were not only just, but munificent. [16] From the path of Charles
and Mary Lamb--already beset with anxieties grave enoughthey removed
forever the shadow of want. Lamb's salary at the time of his retirement
was nearly seven hundred pounds a year, and the offer made to him was a
pension of four hundred and fifty, with a deduction of nine pounds a
year for his sister, should she survive him.

Lamb lived to enjoy his freedom and the Company's bounty nearly nine
years. Soon after his retirement he settled with his sister at Enfield,
within easy reach of his loved London, removing thence to the
neighboring parish of Edmonton,--his last change of residence.
Coleridge's death, in July, 1834, was a heavy blow to him. "When I heard
of the death of Coleridge," he wrote, "it was without grief. It seemed
to me that he had long been on the confines of the next world, that he
had a hunger for eternity. I grieved then that I could not grieve; but
since, I feel how great a part he was of me. His great and dear spirit
haunts me. I cannot think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or
books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to him. He was the
proof and touchstone of all my cogitations." Lamb did not long outlive
his old schoolfellow. Walking in the middle of December along the London
road, he stumbled and fell, inflicting a slight wound upon his face. The
injury at first seemed trivial; but soon after, erysipelas appearing, it
became evident that his general health was too feeble to resist. On the
27th of December, 1834, he passed quietly away, whispering in his last
moments the names of his dearest friends.

Mary Lamb survived her brother nearly thirteen years, dying, at the
advanced age of eighty-two, on May 20, 1847. With increasing years her