_Title, "Charles Lamb."_]

Charles Lamb's first appearance in literature was by the side of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. He came into his first battle, as he tells us
(literature is a sort of warfare), under cover of that greater Ajax.

We should like to see this remarkable friendship (remarkable in all
respects and in all its circumstances) between two of the most original
geniuses in an age of no common genius, worthily recorded. It would
outvalue, in the view of posterity, many centuries of literary quarrels.

Lamb never fairly recovered the death of Coleridge. He thought of little
else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great
spirit joined his friend's. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a
sort of mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, "cleanse his
bosom of the perilous stuff that weighed" upon it. In a jest, or a few
light phrases, he would lay open the recesses of his heart. So in respect
of the death of Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two or three
weeks ago, and remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind. He
interrupted himself and them almost every instant with some play of
affected wonder or humorous melancholy on the words "_Coleridge is dead_."
Nothing could divert him from that, for the thought of it never left him.
About the same time, we had written to him to request a few lines for the
literary album of a gentleman who entertained a fitting admiration of his
genius. It was the last request we were to make, and the last kindness we
were to receive. He wrote in Mr. ----'s volume, and wrote of Coleridge.
This, we believe, was the last production of his pen. A strange and not
unenviable chance, which saw him at the end of his literary pilgrimage, as
he had been at the beginning,--in that immortal company. We are indebted,
with the reader, to the kindness of our friend for permission to print the