His friends were the first literary men of the day,--Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Talfourd, Hazlitt, Southey, Coleridge,--all the giants of that day and generation, and he was loved by them all. Not that they did not know and deplore his faults,--or his one fault; for if he could have conquered his fondness for wine he would have had none of much moment left. But even this was overlooked by his friends at the time, and has not been considered as entirely inexcusable by posterity. That he smoked much and drank hard, even for that day, may be true; but it can scarcely justify the bitter sneers of Carlyle, or the holding of him up as an awful warning without putting in any plea in mitigation, as is sometimes done by severe moralists in our own day. He abased himself in awful shame over it many a time in life, and suffered in his own person all the fearful retribution which such habits bring in their train. Let this be sufficient for us, and let us but pity and pass on. One of the most beautiful things in his later life was his fatherly tenderness toward a friendless young girl whom he and Mary had befriended and finally adopted,--Emma Isola, who was afterwards married to Moxon, the publisher. He was extremely fond of her, and she brightened his home much in the later years, although she married before his death. It is sad to think that he should have died before his sister. He had often prayed that this might not be. But he provided for her tenderly, and gave her to the care of his friends. Lamb is described as having a face of "quivering sweetness, nervous, tremulous, and so slight of frame that he looked only fit for the most placid fortune." Fit or not, he had to contend with the hardest thing a man can have in life,--he had to live a life-long witness of the sufferings of one he dearly loved, and whom he was entirely powerless to help, the daily and hourly pathos of whose sufferings he was fitted to appreciate keenly, and for whom in all this wide weltering chaos of a world there was no hope. He renounced everything else in life to try to mitigate this dreadful lot. His kindness was unceasing, his pity was both fatherly and motherly; it was more,--Godlike; and yet it was of small avail. He toiled physically that she might live at ease. He exerted his mind constantly when in her presence, that she might be cheerful. He watched over her with the tenderness of both brother and lover; and this shall be his justification, if he needs one: he loved much. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHRISTOPHER NORTH.