LAMB, CHARLES (1775-1834).--Essayist and poet, was _b._ in London, his _f._ being confidential clerk to Samuel Salt, one of the benchers of the Inner Temple. After being at a school in the neighbourhood, he was sent by the influence of Mr. Salt to Christ's Hospital, where he remained from 1782-89, and where he formed a lifelong friendship with Coleridge. He was then for a year or two in the South Sea House, where his elder brother John was a clerk. Thence he was in 1792 transferred to the India House, where he remained until 1825, when he retired with a pension of two-thirds of his salary. Mr. Salt _d._ in 1792, and the family, consisting of the _f._, mother, Charles, and his sister Mary, ten years his senior, lived together in somewhat straitened circumstances. John, comparatively well off, leaving them pretty much to their own resources. In 1796 the tragedy of L.'s life occurred. His sister Mary, in a sudden fit of insanity, killed her mother with a table-knife. Thenceforward, giving up a marriage to which he was looking forward, he devoted himself to the care of his unfortunate sister, who became, except when separated from him by periods of aberration, his lifelong and affectionate companion--the "Cousin Bridget" of his essays. His first literary appearance was a contribution of four sonnets to Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_ (1796). Two years later he _pub._, along with his friend Charles Lloyd, _Blank Verse_, the little vol. including _The Old Familiar Faces_, and others of his best known poems, and his romance, _Rosamund Gray_, followed in the same year. He then turned to the drama, and produced _John Woodvil_, a tragedy, and _Mr. H._, a farce, both failures, for although the first had some echo of the Elizabethan music, it had no dramatic force. Meantime the brother and sister were leading a life clouded by poverty and by the anxieties arising from the condition of the latter, and they moved about from one lodging to another. L.'s literary ventures so far had not yielded much either in money or fame, but in 1807 he was asked by W. Godwin (_q.v._) to assist him in his "Juvenile Library," and to this he, with the assistance of his sister, contributed the now famous _Tales from Shakespeare_, Charles doing the tragedies and Mary the comedies. In 1808 they wrote, again for children, _The Adventures of Ulysses_, a version of the _Odyssey, Mrs. Leicester's School_, and _Poetry for Children_ (1809). About the same time he was commissioned by Longman to ed. selections from the Elizabethan dramatists. To the selections were added criticisms, which at once brought him the reputation of being one of the most subtle and penetrating critics who had ever touched the subject. Three years later his extraordinary power in this department was farther exhibited in a series of papers on Hogarth and Shakespeare, which appeared in Hunt's _Reflector_. In 1818 his scattered contributions in prose and verse were