Lamb's very curious and peculiar humor showed itself early. It was perhaps
born of the solitude in which his childhood passed away; perhaps cherished
by the seeds of madness that were in him, that were in his sister, that
were in the ancestry from which he sprung. Without doubt, it caught color
from the scenes in the midst of which he grew up. Born in the Temple,
educated in Christ's Hospital, and passed onwards to the South Sea House,
his first visions were necessarily of antiquity. The grave old buildings,
tenanted by lawyers and their clerks, were replaced by "the old and awful
cloisters" of the School of Edward; and these in turn gave way to the
palace of the famous Bubble, now desolate, with its unpeopled Committee
Rooms, its pictures of Governors of Queen Anne's time, "its dusty maps of
Mexico, dim as dreams, and soundings of the Bay of Panama." These things,
if they impressed his mind imperfectly at first, in time formed themselves
into the shape of truths, and assumed significance and importance; as
words and things, glanced over hastily in childhood, grow and ripen, and
enrich the understanding in after days.

Lamb's earliest friends and confidants, with one exception, were
singularly void of wit and the love of jesting. His sister was grave; his
father gradually sinking into dotage; Coleridge was immersed in religious
subtilties and poetic dreams; and Charles Lloyd, sad and logical and
analytical, was the antithesis of all that is lively and humorous. But
thoughts and images stole in from other quarters; and Lamb's mind was
essentially quick and productive. Nothing lay barren in it; and much of
what was planted there, grew, and spread, and became beautiful. He himself
has sown the seeds of humor in many English hearts. His own humor is
essentially English. It is addressed to his own countrymen; to the men
"whose limbs were made in England;" not to foreign intellects, nor perhaps
to the universal mind. Humor, which is the humor of a man (of the writer