Lamb's position after ten years at the India House had no doubt
considerably improved, but he was glad of the opportunity of making an
additional couple of guineas a week as epigrammatist to "The Morning
Post." He did not, however, continue long at the work; it was too
severe a tax to be ever wondering how this, that, or the other person
or event could be hit off in a few lines of copy, and the irksomeness
he felt, combined with the editorial exactions, caused him to give it
up. In 1802 came a memorable visit by the Lambs to Coleridge at
Keswick, a visit which resulted in Charles Lamb's thinking kindlier of
mountains than he had hitherto done, without in any way lessening his
strong local attachment to the metropolis. Of the day in which he
climbed Skiddaw he said: "It was a day that will stand out, like a
mountain, I am sure, in my life"; a happy simile which would not have
occurred to one who stood, so to speak, on a familiar footing with
mountains.
The life in the Temple was roughly divided into two portions: the
first, at Mitre Court Buildings, extended from the spring of 1801 to
that of 1809; then there seems to have been a brief stay of a few
weeks at 34, Southampton Buildings, Holborn, and at the end of the
following May or beginning of June, the Lambs moved into 4, Inner
Temple Lane, which "looks out upon a gloomy churchyard-like court,
called Hare Court, with thin trees and a pump in it.... I was born
near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six
years old." Here Lamb and his sister lived until 1817, continuing in
their pleasant weekly evenings to afford a memorable centre for the
meeting of memorable men. At one of these meetings when it was being
debated, whom it was the different members of the company would like
best to meet from among the notable men of letters of the past, Lamb
promptly fixed upon Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville. How many of
us in such a debate to-day would as promptly name Charles Lamb!
During the first half of these years in the Temple, Charles Lamb had
written much that now endears him to us; but little, it is to be
feared, that made the great body of contemporary readers aware of his
existence. In 1806 he essayed dramatic authorship, had had his farce,
"Mr. H.," performed at Drury Lane, had been present on the occasion of
its solitary appearance when it was incontinently damned, and had
himself taken part in the damnatory hissing. At the beginning of 1807
was published the "Tales from Shakspeare," for which he and his sister
were jointly responsible, and for which they received a sum of sixty
guineas; in 1808 came another book for children in "The Adventures of
Ulysses," and in the same year the "Specimens of English Dramatic
Poets Contemporary with Shakspeare."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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