Such disturbances of the system interfere with the digestion of a truth.

Even Gulliver is sometimes too manifestly didactic. His adventures, simply
told, would have emitted spontaneously a luminous atmosphere, and need not
have been distilled into brilliant or pungent drops.

No history is barren of good. Even from the foregoing narrative some
benefit may be gleaned, some sympathy may be excited, which naturally
forms itself into a lesson.

Let us look at it cursorily.

Charles Lamb was born almost in penury, and he was taught by charity. Even
when a boy he was forced to labor for his bread. In the first opening of
manhood a terrible calamity fell upon him, in magnitude fit to form the
mystery or centre of an antique drama. He had to dwell, all his days, with
a person incurably mad. From poverty he passed at once to unpleasant toil
and perpetual fear. These were the sole changes in his fortune. Yet he
gained friends, respect, a position, and great sympathy from all; showing
what one poor man of genius, under grievous misfortune, may do, if he be
courageous and faithful to the end.

Charles Lamb never preached nor prescribed, but let his own actions tell
their tale and produce their natural effects; neither did he deal out
little apothegms or scraps of wisdom, derived from other minds. But he
succeeded; and in every success there must be a mainstay of right or truth
to support it; otherwise it will eventually fail.

It is true that in his essays and numerous letters many of his sincere
thoughts and opinions are written down. These, however, are written down