The biography of CHARLES LAMB lies within a narrow compass. It comprehends
only few events. His birth and parentage, and domestic sorrows; his
acquaintance with remarkable men; his thoughts and habits; and his
migrations from one home to another,--constitute the sum and substance of
his almost uneventful history. It is a history with one event,
predominant.

For this reason, and because I, in common with many others, hold a book
needlessly large to be a great evil, it is my intention to confine the
present memoir within moderate limits. My aim is not to write the "Life
and Times" of Charles Lamb. Indeed, Lamb had no influence on his own
times. He had little or nothing in common with his generation, which was
almost a stranger to him. There was no reciprocity between them. His
contemplations were retrospective. He was, when living, the centre of a
small social circle; and I shall therefore deal incidentally with some of
its members. In other respects, this memoir will contain only what I
recollect and what I have learned from authentic sources of my old friend.

The fact that distinguished Charles Lamb from other men was his entire
devotion to one grand and tender purpose. There is, probably, a romance
involved in every life. In his life it exceeded that of others. In
gravity, in acuteness, in his noble battle with a great calamity, it was
beyond the rest. Neither pleasure nor toil ever distracted him from his
holy purpose. Everything was made subservient to it. He had an insane
sister, who, in a moment of uncontrollable madness, had unconsciously
destroyed her own mother; and to protect and save this sister--a gentle
woman, who had watched like a mother over his own infancy--the whole
length of his life was devoted. What he endured, through the space of
nearly forty years, from the incessant fear and frequent recurrence of his