such to take my chance for the free charities of humanity."

Coleridge continued eight years at Christ's Hospital. It was a very
curious and important part of his life, giving him Bowyer for his
teacher, and Lamb for his friend. [1]

[Footnote 1: A few particulars of this "most remarkable and amiable
man," the well-known author of "Essays of Elia, Rosamund Gray, Poems",
and other works, will interest most readers of the "Biographia".

He was born on the 18th of February, 1775, in the Inner Temple; died
27th December, 1834, about five months after his friend Coleridge, who
continued in habits of intimacy with him from their first acquaintance
till his death in July of the same year. In "one of the most exquisite
of all the Essays of Elia," "The Old Benchers of the Middle Temple"
("Works", vol. ii, p. 188), Lamb has given the characters of his father,
and of his father's master, Samuel Salt. The few touches descriptive of
this gentleman's "unrelenting bachelorhood"--which appears in the sequel
to have been a persistent mourner-hood--and the forty years' hopeless
passion of mild Susan P.--which very permanence redeems and almost
dignifies, is in the author's sweetest vein of mingled humour and
pathos, wherein the latter, as the stronger ingredient, predominates.

Mr. Lamb never married, for, as is recorded in the Memoir, "on the death
of his parents, he felt himself called upon by duty to repay to his
sister [a] the solicitude with which she had watched over his infancy. To
her, from the age of twenty-one he devoted his existence, seeking
thenceforth no connection which could interfere with her supremacy in
his affections, or impair his ability to sustain and to comfort her."