leaders and persons of influence direct towards the heads of their
adherents. No Dives ever selected him for his golden bounty. No potent
critic ever shouldered him up the hill of fame. In the absence of these
old-fashioned helps, he was content that his own unassisted efforts should
gain for him a certificate of capability to the world, and that the choice
reputation which he thus earned should, with his own qualities, bring
round him the unenvying love of a host of friends.

Lamb had always been a studious boy and a great reader; and after passing
through Christ's Hospital and the South Sea House, and being for some
years in the India House, this instinctive passion of his mind (for
literature) broke out. In this he was, without doubt, influenced by the
example and counsel of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, his school-fellow and
friend, for whom he entertained a high and most tender respect. The first
books which he loved to read were volumes of poetry, and essays on serious
and religious themes. The works of all the old poets, the history of
Quakers, the biography of Wesley, the controversial papers of Priestley,
and other books on devout subjects, sank into his mind. From reading he
speedily rose to writing; from being a reader he became an author. His
first writings were entirely serious. These were verses, or letters,
wherein religious thoughts and secular criticisms took their places in
turn; or they were grave dramas, which exhibit and lead to the
contemplation of character, and which nourish those moods out of which
humor ultimately arises.

So much has been already published, that it is needless to encumber this
short narrative with any minute enumeration of the qualities which
constitute his station in literature; but I shall, as a part of my task,
venture to refer to some of those which distinguish him from other
writers.