assured of it; but perhaps he resembled no one.

Lamb had not many personal antipathies, but he had a strong aversion to
pretence and false repute. In particular, he resented the adulation of the
epitaph-mongers who endeavored to place Garrick, the actor, on a level
with Shakespeare. Of that greatest of all poets he has said such things as
I imagine Shakespeare himself would have liked to hear. He has also
uttered brave words in behalf of Shakespeare's contemporary dramatists;
partly because they deserved them, partly because they were unjustly
forgotten. The sentence of oblivion, passed by ignorant ages on the
reputation of these fine authors, he has annulled, and forced the world to
confess that preceding judges were incompetent to entertain the case.

I cannot imagine the mind of Charles Lamb, even in early boyhood, to have
been weak or childish. In his first letters you see that he was a thinker.
He is for a time made sombre by unhappy reflections. He is a reader of
thoughtful books. The witticisms which he coined for sixpence each (for
the Morning Chronicle) had, no doubt, less of metallic lustre than those
which he afterwards meditated; and which were highly estimated.
_Effodiuntur opes_. His jests were never the mere overflowings of the
animal spirits, but were exercises of the mind. He brought the wisdom of
old times and old writers to bear upon the taste and intellect of his day.
What was in a manner foreign to his age, he naturalized and cherished. And
he did this with judgment and great delicacy. His books never unhinge or
weaken the mind, but bring before it tender and beautiful thoughts, which
charm and nourish it as only good books can. No one was ever worse from
reading Charles Lamb's writings; but many have become wiser and better.
Sometimes, as he hints, "he affected that dangerous figure, irony;" and he
would sometimes interrupt grave discussion, when he thought it too grave,
with some light jest, which nevertheless was "not quite irrelevant." Long