into new and pleasant countries.  To his work largely, with that of Lamb, was due the new interest in Elizabethan literature, which so strongly influenced Keats’s last and best volume of poetry.  For those interested in the art of criticism, and in the appreciation of literature, both Hunt and Hazlitt will well repay study; but we must pass over their work to consider the larger literary interest of Lamb and De Quincey, who were not simply critics of other men’s labor, but who also produced some delightful work of their own, which the world has carefully put away among the “things worthy to be remembered.”

CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834)

In Lamb and Wordsworth we have two widely different views of the romantic movement; one shows the influence of nature and solitude, the other of society.  Lamb was a lifelong friend of Coleridge, and an admirer and defender of the poetic creed of Wordsworth; but while the latter lived apart from men, content with nature and with reading an occasional moral lesson to society, Lamb was born and lived in the midst of the London streets.  The city crowd, with its pleasures and occupations, its endless little comedies and tragedies, alone interested him.  According to his own account, when he paused in the crowded street tears would spring to his eyes,—­tears of pure pleasure at the abundance of so much good life; and when he wrote, he simply interpreted that crowded human life of joy and sorrow, as Wordsworth interpreted the woods and waters, without any desire to change or to reform them.  He has given us the best pictures we possess of Coleridge, Hazlitt, Landor, Hood, Cowden Clarke, and many more of the interesting men and women of his age; and it is due to his insight and sympathy that the life of those far-off days seems almost as real to us as if we ourselves remembered it.  Of all our English essayists he is the most lovable; partly because of his delicate, old-fashioned style and humor, but more because of that cheery and heroic struggle against misfortune which shines like a subdued light in all his writings.

LIFE.  In the very heart of London there is a curious, old-fashioned place known as the Temple,—­an enormous, rambling, apparently forgotten structure, dusty and still, in the midst of the endless roar of the city streets.  Originally it was a chapter house of the Knights Templars, and so suggests to us the spirit of the Crusades and of the Middle Ages; but now the building is given over almost entirely to the offices and lodgings of London lawyers.  It is this queer old place which, more than all others, is associated with the name of Charles Lamb.  “I was born,” he says, “and passed the first seven years of my life in the Temple.  Its gardens, its halls, its fountain, its river... these are my oldest recollections.”  He was the son of a poor clerk, or rather servant, of one of the barristers, and was the youngest of seven children, only three of whom survived infancy.  Of these three, John, the elder, was apparently a selfish creature, who took no part in the heroic struggle of his brother and sister.  At seven years, Charles was sent to the famous “Bluecoat” charity school of Christ’s Hospital.  Here he remained seven years; and here he formed his lifelong friendship for another poor, neglected boy, whom the world remembers as Coleridge.[230]