their inspired clerk--as they did--and gave her the annuity to which a
wife would have been entitled--but of which he could not feel assured.
Living among literary men, some less distinguished and less discreet than
those whom we have mentioned, he was constantly importuned to relieve
distresses which an improvident speculation in literature produces, and
which the recklessness attendant on the empty vanity of self-exaggerated
talent renders desperate and merciless--and to the importunities of such
hopeless petitioners he gave too largely--though he used sometimes to
express a painful sense that he was diminishing his own store without
conferring any real benefit. "Heaven," he used to say, "does not owe me
sixpence for all I have given, or lent (as they call it) to such
importunity; I only gave it because I could not bear to refuse it; and I
have done good by my weakness."

* * * * *

[_B. W. P. "Athenaeum," January 24, 1835_.]

I was acquainted with Mr. Lamb for about seventeen or eighteen years. I
saw him first (I _think_, for my recollection is here imperfect) at one of
Hazlitt's lectures, or at one of Coleridge's dissertations on Shakespeare,
where the metaphysician sucked oranges and said a hundred wonderful
things. They were all three extraordinary men. Hazlitt had more of the
speculative and philosophical faculty, and more observation
(_circum_spection) than Lamb; whilst Coleridge was more subtle and
ingenious than either. Lamb's qualities were a sincere, generous, and
tender nature, wit (at command), humor, fancy, and--if the creation of
character be a test of imagination, as I apprehend it is--imagination
also. Some of his phantasms--the people of the South Sea House, Mrs.
Battle, the Benchers of the Middle Temple, &c. (all of them ideal), might