There appeared sometimes at these gatherings a most curious character, hardly known now as one of this group, but remembered rather from the parts he plays in the pages of Bulwer and of Dickens. This was Thomas Wainewright, the “Janus Weathercock” of the _London Magazine_; a flimsy, plausible, conceited scoundrel, in whom Lamb good-naturedly found something to like. It was after our friend’s death that Wainewright’s thefts and poisonings brought him to trial, and sent him to Van Diemen’s land, where the dandy convict died in madness, raving and unrepentant. And Charles Lamb, the central and dominating personality of all these strong characters, towers above them all, not only and not so much by the greatness of his gifts as by that of his character. For simplicity, sincerity, singleness of soul--all that is childlike in genius--all those qualities which go to make up greatness of character--these were his. He was always young. To that scoffer who, sneering at Lamb’s habits, said that no man ought to be a Bohemian after the age of thirty, as to all the scoffers since, there is only the one old answer--Lamb never got to be thirty. “Of all men of genius I ever knew,” said Crabb Robinson--and he knew all that were going in his day!--“Charles Lamb was the one most intensely and universally to be loved.” Among them all, he alone was known by his first name; just as, at school, he had been, as he always best liked to be, “Charles” to the other boys: “so Christians should call one another,” he used to say. Reason revolts and imagination cowers appalled before the forlorn and hopeless conception of Wordsworth addressed as “Willie,” or Coleridge as “Sam”! For, you see, _this_ man never posed, never paraded himself, had no jealousy, nor petulance, nor pettiness. He never lied for effect, nor harboured hypocrisies, big or little. He was lucky in possessing that supreme antidote to the pernicious poison of conceit--an abiding sense of humour--“a genius in itself, and so defends from the insanities,” in Emerson’s wise words. Your solemn ass must needs take himself seriously; the man of deep, keen, quick perception of the ludicrous can never do so. When Coleridge, during a visit of the brother and sister to him at Nether Stowey, addressed to Lamb his maudlin lines, entitled “This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison,” in which he gushes over “my gentle-hearted Charles,” the victim of these verses rebelled. “For God’s sake, don’t make me ridiculous by terming me gentle-hearted in print, _or do it in better verse_! Substitute drunken dog, ragged-head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering, and any other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in question.”