Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Godwin, De Quincey, Edward Irving, Thomas Hood, Leigh Hunt, and other men of literary fame were the warm and loving friends of Charles Lamb. With all his æsthetic proclivities, "Elia" was of a sensuous nature. Besides roast pig, he had other favored dishes, not rare and luxurious, but special, nevertheless. He was particularly fond of brawn, and considered tripe to be superlatively appetizing when suitably prepared. He was also a connoisseur in all sorts of drinks; not that he was extravagant,--on the contrary, he was to a degree self-denying, and even with all his little generosities and his care of his sister Mary he managed to leave two thousand pounds, saved out of his always moderate income, to make that sister comfortable. He wrote to Wordsworth: "God help me! I am a Christian, an Englishman, a Londoner, a Templar. When I put off these snug relations and go to the world to come, I shall be like a crow on the sand." Lamb said that oftentimes absurd images forced themselves with irresistible power upon his mind,--such, for instance, as an elephant in a coach office gravely waiting to have his trunk booked; or a mermaid over a fish-kettle cooking her own tail![144] Wordsworth--to whom we have already alluded more than once--was at times distressingly poor, and in such straitened circumstances that he and his family denied themselves meat for days together. Had it not been for the admirable influence of his sister Dorothy, who cheered his spirits and counteracted his morbid tendencies, his mind might have drifted into something like insanity. His disappointment was great at the comparative failure of his literary work, which brought him little in the way of pecuniary return during his life. A fortunate legacy and comparatively sinecure office, however, finally afforded him humble independence. It seems gratuitous to refer to the natural weakness of so pure and good a man as Wordsworth, but we have tried to be impartial in these pages. Grand and simple as our poet was, he had the element of vanity snugly stowed away among his attributes, yet ready to betray itself on occasion. It is related that sometimes when he met a little child he would stop and ask him to observe his face carefully, so that in after years the child might be able to say he had seen the great Wordsworth. "Wordsworth," says Charles Lamb, "one day told me that he considered Shakespeare greatly overrated. 'There is,' said he, 'an immensity of trick in all Shakespeare wrote, and people are taken by it. Now, if I had a mind, I could write exactly like Shakespeare!' So you see," added Lamb, "it was only the mind that was wanting!" The late James T. Fields, who was a hearty admirer and personal friend of the poet, said, "Yes, Wordsworth was vain; but think for a moment what he has produced, and how much he had in him to be self-conscious of!"