_Specimen of Lamb's Humor.--Death of Mr. Norris.--Garrick Plays.--Letters to Barton.--Opinions on Books.--Breakfast with Mr. N. P. Willis.--Moves to Enfield.--Caricature of Lamb.--Albums and Acrostics.--Pains of Leisure.-- The Barton Correspondence.--Death of Hazlitt.--Munden's Acting and Quitting the Stage.--Lamb becomes a Boarder.--Moves to Edmonton.-- Metropolitan Attachments.--Death of Coleridge.--Lamb's Fall and Death.-- Death of Mary Lamb.--POSTSCRIPT._ With the expiration of the "London Magazine," Lamb's literary career terminated. A few trifling contributions to the "New Monthly," and other periodicals, are scarcely sufficient to qualify this statement. It may be convenient, in this place, to specify some of those examples of humor and of jocose speech for which Charles Lamb in his lifetime was well known. These (not his best thoughts) can be separated from the rest, and may attract the notice of the reader, here and there, and relieve the tameness of a not very eventful narrative. It is possible to define wit (which, as Mr. Coleridge says, is "impersonal"), and humor also; but it is not easy to distinguish the humor of one man from that of all other humorists, so as to bring his special quality clearly before the apprehension of the reader. Perhaps the best (if not the most scientific) way might be to produce specimens of each. In Charles Lamb's case, instances of his humor are to be found in his essays, in his sayings (already partially reported), and throughout his letters, where they are very frequent. They are often of the composite order, in which humor, and wit, and (sometimes) pathos are intermingled. Sometimes they merely exhibit the character of the man. He once said of himself that his biography "would go into an epigram." His sayings require greater space. Some of those which have been circulated are apocryphal. The following are taken chiefly from his letters, and from my own recollections. In his exultation on being released from his thirty-four years of labor at the India House, he says, "Had I a little son, I would christen him 'Nothing to do'" (This is in the "Superannuated Man.") Speaking of Don Quixote, he calls him "the errant Star of Knighthood, made more tender by eclipse." On being asked by a schoolmistress for some sign indicative of her calling, he recommended "The Murder of the Innocents." I once said something in his presence which I thought possessed smartness. He commended me with a stammer: "Very well, my dear boy, very well; Ben (taking a pinch of snuff), Ben Jonson has said worse things than that-and b-b-better." [1] His young chimney-sweepers, "from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys) in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind." His saying to Martin Burney has been often repeated--"O Martin, if dirt were trumps, what a hand you would hold!"